Office workers are out for lunch on the street in Jongno, Seoul. [사진 출처 = 연합뉴스]“You go to work every day. The basic price is 10,000 won per meal, so it’s a burden.” (30s, office worker)
As the price of eating out has risen sharply, the burden of lunch for office workers is increasing. With the advent of the era of ‘10,000 won a meal’, a new word called ‘lunchflation’, which combines lunch and inflation, was born. Some office workers go to convenience stores instead of restaurants or pack their lunches at home.
According to the price information site of the Korea Consumer Agency on the 26th, the price of jajangmyeon per serving in Seoul was 6,146 won as of last month, up 14.1% from the previous year (5385 won). Kimbap, the representative lunch menu, costs 2,908 won per line, and the era of 3,000 won per line is on the horizon, and the price of naengmyeon is 11,192 won, up 9.5% from the previous year. Kalguksu was 8,269 won, up 10.8% from the previous year, exceeding the 8,000 won mark for the first time.
The rising price of eating out is putting a lot of pressure on office workers who have to buy lunch outside every day. In fact, according to a recent survey by HR tech company Incruit, more than half of 1004 office workers, 56%, answered ‘very burdensome’ and ‘a little burdensome’ accounted for 39.5%. This means that 95.5% of them answered that they felt burdened by the cost of lunch. Only 0.2% of the respondents answered ‘not burdened’.
“I didn’t feel it when I was working from home due to Corona 19, but when I resumed my office work, the cost of lunch was definitely burdened,” said Mr. A, a third-year office worker in Pangyo-ro. “Yesterday, I ate beef soup for 9,000 won. I think I spend more than 5,000 to 60,000 won in Romance,” he said.
“The salary is the same, but the price is constantly rising, so it’s dark,” said B, a fifth-year office worker commuting to Seolleung.
Instead of going to a restaurant, more and more people are using convenience store lunch boxes. According to the four convenience stores, the sales growth rate of convenience store lunch boxes from 1st to 24th of this month was 48.2% for GS25, 40.7% for CU, 52% for Emart 24, and 20% for 7-Eleven.
More and more office workers are preparing lunch boxes to cut down on lunch expenses. “It’s difficult every day, but I try to pack my lunch two or three times a week,” said C, an office worker with 13 years of experience.
It seems difficult for food prices to find stability for the time being. As export restrictions on wheat, cooking oil, and sugar have begun in the followingmath of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, it is predicted that the resulting increase in raw material prices might further boost the prices of major food service items.
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