Profits up more than 3X at Korean noodle maker... thanks to TikTok
Marketing used to be a slow affair. You’d set a budget, make an ad, show it to potential customers, and hope they buy your product. Today, all of that effort is often bested by simply going viral on TikTok.
Case in point: Samyang Foods, which has seen its shares soar 30% today, the daily limit on the exchange it trades on.
The South Korean company reported a blow-out quarter, with revenues rising more than 50% year-on-year, thanks to surging sales of its buldak carbonara spicy noodles, which have been the subject of TikToks that have racked up hundreds of millions of views in aggregate... including one by rapper Cardi B.
Buldak (which translates to “fire chicken”) carbonara noodles have all the ingredients for going viral on FoodTok: they’re hyper-convenient, bright, glossy, and (perhaps most importantly of all) can easily be customized... spawning an endless wave of copycat videos as creators try adding various items to the dish. All told, operating profit hit more than $60M for Samyang Foods Co., more than triple the figure from Q1 2023.
The South Korean company reported a blow-out quarter, with revenues rising more than 50% year-on-year, thanks to surging sales of its buldak carbonara spicy noodles, which have been the subject of TikToks that have racked up hundreds of millions of views in aggregate... including one by rapper Cardi B.
Buldak (which translates to “fire chicken”) carbonara noodles have all the ingredients for going viral on FoodTok: they’re hyper-convenient, bright, glossy, and (perhaps most importantly of all) can easily be customized... spawning an endless wave of copycat videos as creators try adding various items to the dish. All told, operating profit hit more than $60M for Samyang Foods Co., more than triple the figure from Q1 2023.
