People wait in line to dine at Korean BBQ restaurant YORI at Piccadilly Circus in central London in this 2021 photo. Courtesy of Kim Jong-soon

JS Holdings, under the leadership of CEO Kim Jong-soon, has made significant strides in popularizing Korean cuisine across Britain with its flagship restaurant brand, YORI.

Kim, who previously worked for Samsung Electronics' innovation team at its European headquarters, started his own Korean BBQ restaurant, YORI, in London in late 2016. Since then, he has expanded his business to encompass 14 Korean restaurants under his company.

His vision extends beyond restaurants. The 42-year-old entrepreneur has built a comprehensive Korean cultural experience in Europe. This includes some 15 Life 4 Cuts studios — Korean-style photo booths — across Britain and other parts of Europe, alongside Korean dessert cafes, beauty and nail salons and fashion shops in Britain. Altogether, his business employs around 400 people.

Kim said that during his business trips across European countries for his former Korean employer, he struggled to find restaurants offering authentic Korean cuisine. This observation sparked the idea that led him to open his first YORI restaurant at Piccadilly Circus in central London.

His restaurant offers authentic Korean cuisine, including "bulgogi" (marinated grilled meat) and "samgyeopsal," or grilled pork belly.

His concept for the restaurant was "young and rich," Kim said. Back then, when many Korean restaurants were small-scale, operating under a one-owner, one-shop structure, his approach wasn't "Please help us because we're working hard," but rather, "We are fine, and we can give extras and free bottles of soju on special days like your birthdays."

Korean BBQ restaurant YORI's authentic Korean dishes are seen at its Cambridge branch in England in this 2023 photo. Courtesy of Kim Jong-soon

Then he built relationships with customers employing "jeong," a Korean word describing emotional bond between people, fostering a sense of closeness, intimacy and mutual care.

"For the first year or two, I could remember almost every customer by matching their glasses and shoes. Customers really love it when I talk to them remembering who they came with, where they sat and what they ordered last time," Kim told The Korea Times during a video interview last week.

If a customer does not finish a dish, he would remove it from the bill.

"When the customer says the food was spicy, then I would say like 'next time, try this instead,' or 'I can make it less spicy for you next time,' and remove the menu from the bill," he said, while typical restaurants in Britain and Europe tend to remove just the service charge or give some 10 percent discount in such cases.

"I greeted customers by their names and gave them hugs and soon I realized that the number of names that I should remember has gotten bigger and bigger. Within a year of opening, I saw a line out the door. That week, people kept lining up. And before the pandemic, we became a restaurant where people would line up every day. The moment I thought to myself, this Korean 'jeong' spirit serves here as well," he said.

King Charles III, right, speaks with Kim Jong-soon, CEO of JS Holdings, at Kim's Korean dessert cafe Cake & Bing Soo in New Malden, England, in this November 2023 photo. The king visited the community ahead of the state visit by Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. Courtesy of Kim Jong-soon

Not your typical Korean restaurant

As a business management graduate from the University of Surrey in Britain and not a chef by training, Kim focused on building a system for his restaurant franchise on top of the taste of the food. He says great taste is a must, but running multiple Korean restaurant branches requires more than that.

He simplified the menu that he could even teach it to someone passing by on the street.

"People say that Korean food is difficult to franchise because it relies on the chef's touch, but I believe that, to expand Korean food's reach in the global market, the taste of the Korean restaurants should be standardized — with each branch maintaining similar tastes of the foods with that chef or not."

Apart from standardizing the taste of Korean foods, he made a rotation system, where managers and chefs rotate from branches after one or two years to encourage innovation.

"Managers become complacent and act like they are owners after being in one place for a year or two, with all the employees under them," he said. "So we rotate employees. In the same sense, we reorganized the whole personnel when the number of employees reaced 100 and 300."

People take a picture at a Korean-style photo studio, Life 4 Cuts, in Cambridge, England, in this 2023 photo. Courtesy of Kim Jong-soon

Making bigger pie

Kim learned through his photo studio business, Life 4 Cuts, that there is a surprisingly large number of K-pop fans in smaller European countries. Currently, Life 4 Cuts operates in five European countries, including the Netherlands, Italy, Czech Republic and Romania, with Denmark, Germany, France and Malta joining the lineup next month.

Kim believes that it is important to integrate Korean culture into local contexts without the "K-" prefix, emphasizing the need for organic entrance rather than reliance on popular media.

"A Korean restaurant [is successful because Korean cuisine] is a recognized cuisine, not because of the release of 'Squid Game 2.' Similarly, the success of Life 4 Cuts does not rely on Netflix exposure," he said. "I think it is more about fulfilling a universal desire to capture and share memories, a concept that resonates beyond the Korean or Asian communities."

"Hallyu is like a bonus for our business. Our direction is to maintain the business even if the Korean wave is not there."

Kim wants to spread Korean culture to Europe through his network of businesses.

"We bring things from Korea and do business here, but many people who want to do anything related to Korea in Europe come to us and ask how. I think there has been a surge of interest in Korea itself as a country," he said.

"This is the first time in history that Korean dramas, movies and fashion have all been popular at the same time. It feels like people are becoming interested in Korea from various aspects and our company is trying to connect this with other industries, offer new to keep alive people's interest," Kim said, recallling the proud moment of him explaining how to make Korean "bingsu" (milk-based Korean shaved ice dessert) to King Charles III who visited his store before Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol visited Britain in Novermber 2023.

"I heard that it was the first time that any kin of royal family has visited to New Malden, where a large Korean population lives," he added.

Regarding worries that hallyu, or the Korean wave, might be short-lived, Kim said hallyu is more like an ocean than a wave.

"Hallyu has come, and some people are worried that it will eventually fade away. But I think now it has become an ocean, deeply integrated into people's lives. It's up to people like us to keep it going by continuously finding the next and the next things."