Five Guys. Chipotle. Shake Shack. Pick any American chain that’s opened in Korea, and day one looks almost identical — hours-long lines, people camping out overnight, coverage on the local news like it’s an actual event.
What happens after opening week is a completely different story.
Opening Day, Every Time
Five Guys opened its first Korean location on Gangnam-daero in June 2023. It rained that morning. People still lined up overnight — the first person in line had been waiting since 11 PM the night before — and by the time the doors opened at 11 AM, 700 people had already shown up. The line stretched for hundreds of meters. Staff handed out printed menus to people still waiting outside so they could decide what to order before they even got in.
Chipotle’s Gangnam opening — its actual first store in Asia, this past September — pulled a line past 100 meters, with some people waiting three hours for a burrito bowl. One American influencer living in Korea stood in that line holding a sign that read “Flying to America would be faster.”
This isn’t a coincidence repeating by accident. It’s what these companies have learned to expect when they open here.
What the Companies Actually Say
Chipotle’s CEO put it plainly when explaining the choice: Asia has strong demand for variety, convenience, and fast fresh food, and Korea specifically was “ideal” as an entry point given its growth potential. Translated out of press-release language, part of what he’s describing is Korean consumers’ comfort with build-your-own-order formats — Chipotle’s whole model — plus a market that’s proven, repeatedly, that it’ll show up in force for a brand-new name.
There’s also a simpler business reason: proven local partners. Chipotle entered Korea through a joint venture with the company that had already taken Shake Shack from zero to a real business here in 2016, then expanded that same playbook into Singapore and Malaysia. If a brand wants a partner who’s already shown they can launch an American chain in Asia and make it work, Korea is where that partner already exists.
The Overnight Line Doesn’t Predict What Happens Next
Here’s the part that makes all of this a little stranger: the instant, overwhelming demand on day one doesn’t reliably become anything long-term.
Eggslut is the cleanest example. It opened at COEX in 2020 with a line of 300 people. It expanded to five locations — The Hyundai Seoul, Hannam-dong, Bundang — and its Korean operator publicly said it was aiming for even more by 2025. Instead, one by one, every location closed. The last one, the original COEX store, shut down for good in November 2024. Four years, start to finish.
Shake Shack tells a slower version of the same story. Its 2016 opening in Gangnam drew a line of over 1,500 people through a record heat wave — the first customer in line waited 15 hours just to get a burger. The store hit ₩100 million in sales within three days and briefly ranked as the highest-grossing Shake Shack location in the world. A decade later, it’s still around — but its Korean operating company posted higher overhead costs than gross profit last year, meaning even after ten years and 32 locations, it’s still not reliably profitable.
Five Guys, meanwhile, currently ranks #1 in average revenue per location out of the chain’s roughly 1,900 stores worldwide — genuinely the best-performing Five Guys locations on Earth — and its Korean operator is reportedly trying to sell its stake anyway, citing high fixed costs.
The Real Filter Is What Happens After the Hype
Every one of these chains got the same welcome: a line around the block and a country’s worth of people who just wanted to be able to say they tried it first. That part’s almost guaranteed here. What happens next depends entirely on one boring, unavoidable question — is the food actually good enough to bring people back once “I was first” isn’t a reason to go anymore?
If you visit and see a long line outside an American chain, that part’s real. Whether it’s actually good is a completely separate question — and often, so is whether it’ll still be around in a year.
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