How a Viral TikTok Catapulted Korean Street Food Into the Next Hot Frozen Food Category
Korean street food like kimbap and mandu are growing in popularity as they expand their presence in American frozen food aisles.
If you’ve scrolled food TikTok in the past two years, you’ve watched Korean street food dishes muscle their way from niche craving to grocery-store staple. The freezer aisle is now one of the clearest places to see the K-wave in action, with kimbap, mandu and Korean BBQ bowls sitting a microwave away from millions of American shoppers.
The shift didn’t happen quietly. A single creator video, a sold-out Trader Joe’s product and a Korean food giant’s aggressive U.S. retail push have reshaped what quick weeknight eating looks like.
What Korean street food is and why it’s in the frozen aisle
Kimbap, sometimes spelled gimbap, is a Korean roll made with seaweed and rice wrapped around cooked fillings. It resembles Japanese sushi at a glance but uses cooked ingredients instead of raw fish, and it’s typically eaten at room temperature once the rice and fillings cool slightly.
That room-temperature flexibility makes it a natural fit for the freezer. A roll stays frozen until you need it, defrosts in a few minutes in the microwave and arrives as a perfect desk lunch or dorm dinner. The frozen case has moved well past the TV-dinner era, and Korean dishes have become some of the clearest proof of that evolution.
Why Trader Joe’s kimbap went viral in 2023
The breakout moment came in August 2023, when Trader Joe’s frozen kimbap sold out nationally after social-media amplification and in-store scarcity. The spark was a TikTok review posted by Korean-American creator Sarah Ahn, who tried the product on camera with her mother. The response turned the roll into one of the most talked-about Trader Joe’s frozen items of the year, and it gave the moment a face that resonated far beyond food TikTok.
“My other viral videos that I have on my TikTok and Instagram were about me being bullied for kimbap when I was 5 years old. Now it’s being sold at Trader Joe’s and sold out. That says a lot about how far we’ve come to have our culture be seen by others and accepted and consumed. It’s a crazy shift,” Ahn told NBC News. “Social media has definitely magnified the ability for different cultures and cuisines to be shared across the world.”
How bibigo and major retailers are scaling the category
Trader Joe’s lit the fuse, but bibigo, Kroger, Target and Korea’s export machine are the ones scaling frozen Korean food into a full-fledged retail category. Target’s current frozen inventory alone includes dozens of Korean dishes, from Korean BBQ chicken bowls to mandu, plus Asian-fusion items that lean on Korean influence.
The numbers back the vibe. Sales of bibigo frozen gimbap in the U.S. rose 59% from January to July this year compared with the same period last year, according to a recent article from BusinessKorea. The number of retail locations carrying the product also surged 145%, from 1,924 stores last year to 4,734.
Much of that growth traces back to bibigo’s entry into Kroger in December 2024 and later expansion to 10 major retail channels across the United States, per BusinessKorea.
Distribution is only half the story. CJ Foods, which owns bibigo, completed its fully automated frozen gimbap production line in March of this year at its CJ Blossom Campus in Korea. The company says it is the first of its kind in Korea’s food industry.
“This goes beyond a simple capacity expansion. It is a strategic investment to accelerate the global expansion of K-food,” a CJ Foods representative said in a press release on the company’s website. “We are committed to growing bibigo Gimbap into a flagship K-gimbap brand worldwide.”
What it means for shoppers looking for quick meals
For U.S. shoppers, the practical payoff is a wider menu in the freezer. A product that defrosts in minutes and travels well answers the needs of college students and office workers hunting for something more interesting than the usual frozen rotation.
It also broadens what counts as healthy frozen meals in the first place. A rice-and-vegetable roll or a bowl of dumplings reads very differently from the heavy entrees that used to define the aisle, and the category keeps expanding as more retailers chase the trend.
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