Korean Food & Lifestyle brand company GFFG attracts $23 million Series A investment

GFFG, a Korean food & lifestyle brand company, has completed a Series A investment of 30 billion won ($23 million). Altos Ventures led this investment with Quad Asset Management.

Established in 2015, GFFG stands for GOOD FOOD FOR GOOD, and the startup has operated nine food service brands, including ‘Noted,’ ‘Downtowner, ‘ and ‘Little Neck.’ This year, it introduced ‘Aniocation’ and ‘Kimashi,’ and recently expanded to the liquor market and opened a whiskey bar, ‘Open End,’ in Cheongdam.

GFFG is accelerating its global expansion by establishing Noted and Hojokban US corporations this year and is also set to launch a new bakery brand in December. It has achieved sales growth that doubles yearly, and last year sales recorded about 70 billion won ($54 million).

GFFG launches and incubates brands with various tastes and concepts in the domestic F&B market, serving as a brand platform that connects online to offline demand. In addition, based on food IP, it is expanding its business area by collaborating with various industries. Representatively, ‘Noted,’ one of GFFG’s brands, introduced everything from food to goods and living products with Kakao, Lotte Confectionery, GS25, Samsung Electronics, Musinsa, SPAO, and Shinhan Card.

Taking this investment as a starting point, GFFG plans to focus on opening complex culture stores, developing new brands, expanding online commerce, and focusing on customer experience marketing strategies. Furthermore, it plans to open up various possibilities, reorganize the work environment and organization for this purpose, and actively recruit excellent personnel to strengthen the company’s expansion.

Lee Jun-beom, CEO of GFFG, said, “As the Korean cultural industry has successfully entered overseas markets, I believe the offline-based F&B industry also has infinite possibilities. We will speed up the expansion of new business areas, such as preparing to take a step forward and strive to expand our business.” He added, “I hope for a lot of support from colleagues who will pioneer the future and grow together to create a brand loved by everyone.”

Hee-Eun Park, a partner at Altos Ventures who led the investment, said, “It was impressive to see the GFFG team constantly researching and working hard without being obsessed with the current success. As a team that never neglects to discover trends, we decided to make this investment considering that it is a company that can prove the potential and value of K-Food not only in Korea but also globally.”

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