Rice packaged in bottles (image: Lotte Super)
SEOUL, Aug. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — The sales of small-sized food products jumped in the first half of this year on rising demands from one-person households, industry data showed Wednesday.
According to E-Mart Inc., South Korea’s largest discount chain operator, sales of small fruit containers rose 71.9 percent on-year in the January-July period.
Auction, a leading online marketplace, said the sales of mini watermelons, about one-fourth the size of a whole watermelon, surged 1,969 percent on-year during the same period.
Sales of rice packages weighing 5 kilograms or less increased 32 percent, the online shopping mall said. The staple grain for Koreans usually had been sold in much larger packages.
The surging consumption of small-sized food products is largely attributed to the rapid increase in the number of one-person households in the country.
According to government data, the number of single-member households came to 5.28 million last year, accounting for 27.8 percent of all household types.
(Yonhap)
