A cafeteria in Seoul is crowded with diners, Jan. 9. Yonhap

Park Yong-jin, a 30-year-old office worker in Seoul, used to go to restaurants near his office for lunch but began to feel the impact on his wallet because of soaring dining costs.

Therefore, he has recently begun using a cafeteria where he can use coupons provided by his company. Most of the local restaurants near his office have increased their menu prices steeply, therefore Park needs at least 10,000 won ($7.33) to have a meal. However, the coupons bring the cost of a meal down to half of that for him.

"Now is not the time to splurge on my appetite. I mean, look how expensive food has become," Park said. "Nowadays, I go to a cafeteria and the place is packed. It looks like all the workers in this area have begun rushing to it."

Another office worker Choi Yu-ra, 26, also finds "lunchflation" hard to swallow and has recently started visiting a cafeteria near her office.

Her small-size company didn't offer coupons and she personally went out searching for them. The cafeteria wasn't big but had quite a variety in its buffet so she didn't have to worry about leaving the place feeling unsatisfied. And she pays just 5,000 won per meal.

"I used to eat at my favorite places with my colleagues," Park said. "But as lunchflation was no longer just news and began to affect me personally, I stopped hanging around and started tightening my purse strings."

Kitchen workers at one of the cafeterias inside the Government Complex in Sejong prepare lunch meals for public servants, Sept. 13, 2023. Yonhap

Rising dining prices at local restaurants are increasingly drawing people to cafeterias where meals are sold at more affordable prices. Large-size companies with their own cafeterias started seeing an increasing number of visitors, while employees at smaller companies are rushing to local canteens where food service companies are selling meals for lower prices than local restaurants.

According to Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corp., food service firms that saw their sales rise last year outnumbered those with reduced sales.

Statistics Korea said that the consumer price index for dining out last month jumped three percent from the previous month. The index also topped the average of consumer price indexes, continuing the higher-than-average streak for the 35th month.

Food service firms are seeing rising profits and have begun expanding their businesses.

Samsung Welstory's operating profit in the first quarter registered 32 billion won, a 10.3 percent increase from the previous year. It is currently catering to offices of SK hynix, CJ Cheiljedang and Hanwha Aerospace.

Shinsegae Food saw an operating profit of 4.6 billion won during the same period, a 1.7 percent jump from the previous year, and Hyundai Green Food saw an operating profit of 29.8 billion won, a 12.5 percent jump from 2023.

"We saw rising demand from local cafeterias as well as from outside the country," a Hyundai Green Food official said. The company's first quarter sales registered 559.5 billion won, a 4.6 percent jump from the previous year. "Here, our clients include Naver, Hyundai Motor Company and Shinhan Securities. Our services also met demands from large-scale construction sites in the Middle East, Mexico, China and the United States."