Bonjuk Brand Guidelines: A 2002 Daehangno Porridge Shop and the Bon (本) Name

A small shop in Daehangno.

Bonjuk is a South Korean chain of restaurants serving juk, rice porridge. It began in 2002, when Kim Cheol-ho opened the first Bonjuk store in a small shop in Daehangno, in central Seoul, according to The Asia Business Daily in January 2020. Korean Wikipedia gives the same year, and the group’s own timeline lists the first store, in Daehangno, in 2002, the 100th store in 2003 and the 500th in 2005.

The brand is run by BonIF, part of what the company calls Bon Group. By the group’s own account, a company called BJIF was set up in 2004, and in 2008 it was merged with BJ Foods to form BonIF. By 2020, The Asia Business Daily reported, the group had grown to four companies: BonIF for the franchises, Bon Food Service for catering and dining, BonFD for distribution and logistics, and Sunsubon for ready-made home meals.

The name rests on one character. BonIF says its brands are built on the idea of bon (本), meaning root or basis, and its website says Bonjuk makes porridge that keeps and grows that “bon.” In September 2021 The Asia Business Daily described the same core philosophy, applied to taste, ingredients, portions and service, and reported that BonIF then ran four brands with about 1,960 franchised stores across Korea.

Kim led the company through its early growth: in January 2006 the Financial News named him as Bonjuk’s chief executive. In January 2020 Bon Group said that Lee Jin-hee, who had joined BonIF’s sales team in 2006 and had headed the Bonjuk business from December 2018, would become BonIF’s chief executive at its March shareholders’ meeting, with Kim continuing as group leader. BonIF’s website now names Lee Jin-hee as its representative.

Porridge as a full meal.

Bonjuk grew quickly. In December 2004 Maekyung Economy counted about 300 franchised Bonjuk stores, more than 150 of them opened that year, and described a wave of some 30 porridge franchise companies, many with café-style interiors, that had appeared within two years. The magazine credited Bonjuk with turning porridge from a cheap stopgap into a meal people sought out: portions large enough to fill a diner, and porridge cooked to order in each store rather than made from powders or vacuum packs sent by head office, which supplied little beyond sauces. The Asia Business Daily later reported that Bonjuk reached 1,000 franchised stores within six years of its start.

The menu still works the same way, by the company’s account. Its website says each store cooks rice for porridge every morning and simmers each bowl one at a time, and that staff ask “Who is it for?” so that a bowl can be adjusted: divided into portions, ground smoother, made less salty or less sweet, or cooked with a different grain, and packed in a choice of containers. BonIF’s current brands include Bonjuk itself and the combined Bonjuk & Bibimbap, alongside Bon Dosirak lunchboxes, Bon Seolleongtang beef-bone soup and Bon Wooribansang set meals. The group’s timeline dates Bon Dosirak to 2009, Bon Seolleongtang to 2014 and Bon Wooribansang to 2016, and records the purchase of the ramen brand Menji in 2022.

Bonjuk & Bibimbap has become the larger format. The Asia Business Daily reported in March 2020 that the combined store, serving porridge and bibimbap in one place, began with a branch at Hadan in Busan in 2009, reached 200 stores in November 2016 and passed 400 in March 2020. In April 2021, the same paper reported, the brand and menu were revamped, with the bibimbap dishes divided into four named “tables.” Etoday reported in January 2024 that Bonjuk & Bibimbap had opened its 1,000th franchised store, nine years after it began franchising in 2015, helped by existing Bonjuk stores converting to the combined format: 57 conversions in 2019, rising to 134 in 2022.

Korean café and food chains.

South Korea’s café, bakery and quick-meal chains present themselves first through the street. Most are franchise networks, so a shopfront, a cup and a menu board have to look the same in thousands of places run by different owners. When the Korea Times reported in January 2025 that one coffee chain’s rebrand was on hold, the reason it gave was franchisees’ reluctance to pay for new store fittings: in a franchise system, a new look is also a shared bill.

Menus carry much of the identity. The chains in this group name their dishes and drinks rather than describing them in general terms, and abroad they lean on Korean flavours: dalgona lattes, sikhye, roasted sweet potato, injeolmi and black sesame cakes, misutgaru drinks and street snacks such as hotteok and bungeoppang, according to press reports on their stores in Malaysia, Laos and the United States. Cakes, toast, porridge, lunchboxes and burgers each give a chain its own signature.

Ownership is described plainly in the companies’ own pages and in the business press. Some chains belong to large food groups, some to private equity funds and some to individual owners; a single brand can pass through several of these in two decades. Store counts are published by the companies and repeated by the press with dates, and the numbers change quickly in a market the Korea Times described as split between premium and budget tiers.

Expansion abroad takes two main forms in these reports: a master franchise, in which a local partner runs the stores, or a subsidiary that runs them directly. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it now, how its stores and menus present it at home and abroad, and which facts rest only on the company’s own word.

Tokyo, Los Angeles and home.

Bonjuk went abroad early. Maeil Business reported in July 2005 that it had set up a Japanese subsidiary that May and was preparing a model shop in Akasaka, Tokyo. In January 2006 the Financial News reported that, after opening that company-run store in Akasaka in July 2005, Bonjuk had opened a company-run store in Los Angeles on 25 January 2006, on Wilshire Boulevard, operated by its American company, BJIF USA. Korean Wikipedia records both moves.

The brand’s presentation leans on plain words about care and on the character for its name. BonIF’s pages describe porridge simmered “bowl by bowl,” rice cooked each morning and ingredients prepared for the day, and they present Bonjuk and Bonjuk & Bibimbap side by side as two formats built on the same idea. Store counts vary by source and date: about 300 in 2004, about 1,960 across BonIF’s four brands in 2021, and 1,000 Bonjuk & Bibimbap franchised stores by January 2024. The group’s own timeline records 2,000 stores across its Bon brands in 2021.

For a design guide, Bonjuk shows how one short name, built on a single character, can carry a whole family of food brands, from porridge to lunchboxes and soup. Compare Hansot, the Korean lunchbox chain, and Mom’s Touch, another Korean franchise network. For this guide we use a pine green and a porridge cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Bonjuk’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.