1. K-food's global growth
Korean food is quickly growing in popularity around the world. In major U.S. cities, waiting for a table at a Korean restaurant has become routine, and the K-food market is still expanding.
- Korean restaurants in the U.S.: up about 10% in a year (Circana, 2024).
- Korean agri-food exports to the U.S.: up 13.2% to a record of about $1.8B (2025).
- Global Korean BBQ market: about $6.8B, projected to reach $13.2B (2025 → 2034, 7.6% CAGR).
- Asian food-service growth: about 6–8% CAGR, roughly twice the 3–4% of the industry as a whole.
- NYT's 100 Best Restaurants 2025: nine Korean restaurants in New York made the list (Atomix, Jungsik, Atoboy, Okdongsik and others).
- Eater LA calls LA's Koreatown the "mecca of Korean cuisine in America."
It makes sense to see this as lasting growth rather than a passing trend.
2. Growing with AI: where this business is headed
AI improves month after month. Each time a new model comes out, we retrain the data we have built up for each head restaurant on that model. Step by step, we aim to reach, within 1–2 years, a complete version that outdoes the head restaurant's own chef at one thing: teaching. Today's build is about 70% of the way to that complete teaching version. This is a development roadmap, not a promise: it depends on each head restaurant's footage and on testing we have yet to finish.
The cooking itself is the chef's own creation, and that mastery is not something AI can imitate. Teaching is different. Passing those skills on to many learners at once, consistently and without tiring, is where AI can complement and amplify the head restaurant's chef.
3. Where we're heading
Our ultimate goal is simple: to bring a little more happiness to more people's tables, with food that is just a bit better.
We want the cooking of Korea's authentic head restaurants not to be lost to distance, franchise teams to learn the real thing rather than an imitation, and diners to taste a head restaurant's depth in any city. That is what this system is working toward.
Market data sources: Circana (2024), Statista, Dataintelo, NYT (2025), Eater LA and Restaurant Business Online. The market figures on this page come from externally verifiable public sources and do not represent or imply the financial performance of this business.