C’s website

In January 2024, a U.S. buyer contacted KITA to ask for help in looking for a Korean frozen bakery brand, and the matching manager introduced Korean bakery companies that met the buyer’s requirements. Of the companies, the buyer was interested in C and a meeting was arranged.

Now in its 24th year of business, C produces, distributes, and supplies a wide variety of desserts to over 30,000 cafes, major franchise businesses, and large corporations across Korea. Currently, the company is supplying bakery items, cakes, and cookies to approximately 40,000 businesses including Starbucks, Tous Les Jours, Ediya Coffee, Paul Bassett, The Venti, E-Mart, and Homeplus. Having entered the export market two years ago, it is now shipping its products to CJ Foodville USA, Cocohodo in Hawaii, Wow Bakery in Canada, Jidubang Market in Thailand, and K-market in Vietnam.

C’s new bakery items and cakesC’s new bakery items and cakes

Founded in 2006 in New York, the buyer is the procurement headquarters of H Mart, the largest supermarket chain in the U.S., and a wholesale food distributor with over ten departments that supplies frozen seafood, meat, grains, nuts, and other food items across the U.S. The company supplies grocery items directly from the state of New Jersey to H Mart stores across the U.S. and some ingredients to local restaurants as well.

Before having a meeting with the buyer, the Korean company expressed concern about the confusion that could be caused by opening a new trade channel because it had long been working with two other agencies on product selection and the USDA permit for animal-derived ingredients to supply to H Mart. The manager informed the US buyer of the sensitive situation facing the Korean company and asked the buyer to check with H Mart before proceeding further. As there are multiple divisions handling distribution within H Mart, the buyer checked with them and confirmed that there would be no problem proceeding with the deal as long as there was no product overlap. So the two parties resumed talks on the items to be ordered.

Months of talks led to an official export contract worth USD 33,585.32 in June 2024, and C is now engaged in talks on the 2nd contract. It was not an easy process until the final export contract was concluded, and C thanked the matching manager for arranging a meeting with the buyer, which would not have been possible without his help, as the meeting led to a new opportunity to export. In the case of a large corporation with multiple departments and channels, the matching manager will look carefully into the internal circumstances within the corporation before proceeding with talks, and will explore transaction possibilities in order to work out a deal to ensure successful matching.