Daesang to shut down food ingredient online mall Beston

Daesang is shutting down Beston, its comprehensive online food ingredient mall, roughly four years after the platform launched in 2022. The move is part of a broader push to streamline operations and concentrate resources on the company's core businesses.

Beston, a business-to-business online mall for food ingredients operated by Daesang, will end its service at noon on Aug. 31, according to industry sources. The company's 10 offline food ingredient stores under the Bestco brand — located in Goyang, Gangneung, Wonju, Cheongju and other cities — will continue operating.

Beston serves self-employed restaurant operators through a B2B food ingredient distribution platform. Daesang relaunched the service under the Beston name in 2022, rebranding it from an earlier direct-sales mall called Zero Food. Last year, the company introduced a "mart delivery" service that shipped orders directly from Bestco stores nationwide, replacing conventional courier delivery.

The shutdown is widely seen as a move to improve business efficiency and redirect focus to core operations. "We plan to close the Beston online mall service in order to concentrate our capabilities on strengthening our fundamental competitiveness, in line with our company-wide business strategy and structural reorganization," a Daesang official said.

Daesang has been pursuing profitability-focused management this year by winding down non-core and low-efficiency categories. The company's consolidated operating profit last year came to 170.6 billion won ($118 million), down 3.6 percent from the previous year. Net profit for the period also fell 21.7 percent to 75.7 billion won, from 96.7 billion won a year earlier. First-quarter operating profit this year edged up 0.4 percent to 57 billion won, though the improvement was marginal.

The economic downturn in the dining-out sector has also weighed on the business. The Ministry of Statistics said the food service industry business trend index for the second quarter of this year stood at 78.82. A reading below 100 signals deteriorating conditions in the restaurant sector. The food ingredient distribution market remains largely offline: the domestic food service ingredient distribution market is estimated at around 43 trillion won, with online transactions accounting for only about 4 percent.

Daesang is not alone in pulling back from online food ingredient services. CJ Freshway is also set to close its own food ingredient online mall, Freshen, on Sept. 29 — less than a year after the platform debuted in November last year. CJ Freshway plans to restructure its online B2B business around Sikbom, an open-market food ingredient platform in which it acquired a controlling stake in February this year.