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Honey Butter Chips

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South Korean potato chip brand
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Honey Butter Chips logo

Honey Butter Chips (Korean: 허니버터칩) is a brand of fried potato chips manufactured by Haitai Calbee and sold in South Korea. The snacks were first made available in August 2014, and they are renowned for their rise to popularity through social media viral marketing from late 2014 to early 2015. The product was created by Korean confectioner Haitai in a joint effort with Japanese snack manufacturer Calbee. This snack was so popular that it created a trend called the Honey-Butter Craze among South Koreans.

The snack is called Happiness Butter Potato Chips (ポテトチップスしあわせバター) in Japan.

Haitai-Calbee joint ventures

Calbee previously produced a Honey Butter Chip in 2012 for the Japanese market. Calbee set up a joint venture with Haitai and expanded its snack market to Korea in order to increase profits in the Japanese snack market.

Honey Butter Craze

A bag of Honey Butter Chips

The Honey-Butter Craze, or Honey Butter Yeolpung (열풍, 熱風), is a craze for the Honey Butter Chip product which arose in August 2014. The formal version of Honey Butter Chip named ‘Happiness Butter Potato Chips’ was produced by Calbee in Japan, 2012. This honey-flavored buttery potato chip did not gain popularity in Japan and was sold for a limited period of time. However, when Honey Butter Chip was introduced in Korea by Haitai-Calbee in August 2014, its popularity exploded among young consumers and quickly spread via social networks during the last quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015. Haitai-Calbee enjoyed such tremendous popularity with Honey Butter Chip that the product was unavailable in stores and was being resold online for three times its original price.

Although limited in production and supply, the product has taken over the Korean market. To meet demand, Haitai-Calbee plans to build a factory in South Korea. This new facility is set to begin operation in early 2016.

After ‘Honey Butter Chip’ was released in August, Haitai-Calbee officially announced that sales in January and February 2015 had reached 23 billion won (USD 20.3 million), and has forecast of sales of one hundred billion won (USD one hundred million) by year-end.

Celebrity influence

The Honey Butter Craze spread further when Korean celebrities started endorsing the product. K-pop stars such as Sooyoung of Girls' Generation, Siwon of Super Junior, and T-ara's Hyomin began posing in selfies with gilded Honey Butter bags propped beside their cheeks and posting the pictures online. On August 31, 2021 k-pop boy group MCND released their album “THE EARTH : SECRET MISSION Chapter.1” which features the song H.B.C, standing for Honey Butter Chip. Actress So Yoo-Jin posted a picture of a bag on her Instagram account. A popular news broadcaster for KBS even proclaimed that she was “laughing and crying over one bag of chips” and uploaded a picture of herself holding up the famously elusive golden yellow bag. On the May 23rd broadcast of MBC's My Little Television, rock singer Jung Joon Young reviewed and compared many types of honey-butter-flavored snacks in the Korean market.

Limited supply

The product went viral through social networks and achieved popularity in Korea. Haitai-Calbee temporarily suspended orders in November 2014 because of overwhelming demand. "Honey Butter Chip may be one of the most difficult products to buy these days,” said a Korean convenience store owner. Many convenience stores put up paper signs with “Honey Butter Chip, sold out”. Some stores made ‘Honey Butter Chip waiting list’ for customers and limited the selling quantity as one bag for a person. Due to the scarcity, in December 2014, Honey Butter Chips were traded back and forth on e-commerce websites at inflated prices, reaching nearly 50 times the original cost of a 60-gram bag. In 2023, the Haitai Honey Butter Chip could be found on Amazon for almost $56 USD.

To keep up with the huge demand for Honey Butter Chip, Haitai-Calbee has raised its production by a factor of three and put its production line in full operation for 24 hours. Although the product was in short supply, the company did not further increase production because the actual demand is not obvious and crazes can be short-lived.

Line extensions

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  • Jagabee Honey Mild
    • Honey butter potato fries created by Haitai-Calbee
  • Honey Tong Tong
    • Ridged triangle potato chips created by Haitai (not joint with Calbee) after the viral popularity of Honey Butter Chips

Special editions

  • Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Canada Maple Syrup
  • Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Cherry Blossom
  • Honey Butter Chip Winter Warmers - Almond Caramel
  • Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Lavender & Blueberry
  • Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Chou Cream & Maple Syrup
  • Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Fromage Blanc
  • Honey Butter Chip Save the Date - Wedding Cake
  • Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Sentimental Season - Mocha
  • Honey Butter Chip Especial Edicion - Dulce de Leche

Competitor products

After Honey Butter Chip became famous, many companies have produced similar products which plagiarize the name, design, and flavor of its original to take advantage of the popularity of Honey Butter Chip. The word ‘Honey Butter’ are used by companies to promote their food products to the consumers as if it is a magic spell for high sales of product. A major Korean food maker, Nongshim has launched ‘Sumi Chip Honey Mustard’ in December, whose taste is similar to Honey Butter Chip. Unlike Honey Butter Chip, Sumi chip was easier to find in many stores. Therefore, consumers started to buy Sumi chip as a replacement. The Sumi Chip became more popular than its original, and sold four times more than the Honey Butter Chip with average of ten thousands pack per day. Nongshim has achieved the new record of having the greatest monthly sales in the Korean snack industry. Because of the supply shortage and many other copy products, Honey Butter Chip which once had the highest sales during the last quarter of 2014 fell to the third place in the snack sales of January and February, 2015.

  • NongShim "Sumi Potato Chips"
    • Due to the limited manufacturing of the original Honey Butter Chips, the product became increasingly difficult to find, prompting South Korean food manufacturer NongShim to release their own similar product in mass volumes. With the widespread availability of NongShim's chips, Sumi Potato Chips overtook Honey Butter Chips in sales.
  • Lotte "Honey Drunken Potato Chips" (꿀먹은 감자칩)

Other products are not only limited in the area of confectioneries and food products, but even in other goods such as cosmetic products made of Honey and Butter, and furniture designed in the shape of pack of Honey Butter Chip.

Recipes on YouTube

During the craze, homemade Honey Butter Chip recipes began to be posted on YouTube. Using ingredients that can be easily found, people can make their own potato chips with similar flavors to the original product.

References

  1. 허니버터칩 열풍, 품귀 현상에 끼워 팔기까지 등장! ‘열풍 언제까지 이어질까?.Moneytoday Network Inc. Retrieved November 26, 2014
  2. "Calbee and Haitai form joint venture to produce chips in South Korea". 6 December 2013.
  3. "Establishment of Korean Joint Venture Company by CALBEE, Inc" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2017-09-24.
  4. Honey Butter Chips: Six things to know. The Korea Times. Retrieved November 23, 2014
  5. "Haitai-Calbee to build snack factory in South Korea to meet soaring demand". 9 April 2015.
  6. Sale of Honey Butter Chip will reach 100 billion won by the end of year 2015. Asiatoday. Retrieved March 6, 2015
  7. "Korean Honey Butter Chip Hysteria Has Created a Snack Black Market". 14 April 2015.
  8. "'마리텔' 정준영, 내 맘대로 중구난방 방송…웃음폭탄 '예고'".
  9. It’s snack time in Korea. The Korea Herald. Retrieved February 4, 2015
  10. ‘허니버터칩’ 물량 부족 일시 발주중단.. 제과업계’들썩’ Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine . 경제투데이. Retrieved November 13, 2014
  11. Honey Butter Chip - sorry, sold out!. The Korea Times. Retrieved December 24, 2014
  12. ‘대박’ 허니버터칩 증산 안 하는 이유? Archived 2015-04-03 at the Wayback Machine. 한겨레뉴스. Retrieved December 30, 2014
  13. Honey Butter Chip - sorry, sold out!. The Korea Times. Retrieved December 24, 2014
  14. 중독되는 그 맛… '허니버터칩'의 건강학. Hankookilbo. Retrieved December 29, 2014
  15. Honey Butter Chip - sorry, sold out!. The Korea Times. Retrieved December 24, 2014
  16. 허니버터칩 메이플시럽 Retrieved June 20, 2019
  17. 허니버터칩 체리블라썸 special edition Retrieved June 20, 2019
  18. 허니버터칩 아몬드카라멜 Winter Warmers Retrieved June 20, 2019
  19. 허니버터칩 라벤더&블루베리맛 Retrieved June 20, 2019
  20. 허니버터칩 차용 “짝퉁마케팅”열풍, 대책없나. Sisafocus. Retrieved January 14, 2015
  21. 허니버터칩 차용 “짝퉁마케팅”열풍, 대책없나. Sisafocus. Retrieved January 14, 2015
  22. 이름 갖다 붙이기 열풍 계속…라면,휴지,통까지 선거에도 나올판. 국민일보. Retrieved March 6, 2015
  23. 허니버터칩, 수미칩 허니머스타드에 밀렸다. 아주경제. Retrieved January 8, 2015
  24. 허니버터칩, 수미칩 허니머스타드에 밀렸다. 아주경제. Retrieved January 8, 2015
  25. "Nongshim outdoes original honey butter chips – the Korea Times".
  26. 화장품도 허니 버터 열풍. Metroseoul. Retrieved January 18, 2015
  27. 해태제과, 허니 인기 편승 '고가' 허니버터칩 쿠션까지 판매.아시아경제. Retrieved March 10, 2015
  28. Honey butter potato chips recipe 생감자로 허니버터칩 만들기 蜂蜜バターポテトチップを作成する方法 [4K]

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