Sun Hoon Kim started Daldang in 2019 after noticing the increasing popularity of K-Pop in Aotearoa.
Sun Hoon Kim started Daldang in 2019 after noticing the increasing popularity of K-Pop in Aotearoa.
South Korean culture has exploded in Aotearoa in recent years with the likes of BTS, fried chicken and the more recent addition of “fatcarons”.
Noticing a gap in the NZ market, Sun Hoon Kim and his wife travelled to Korea, visited over a hundred fatcaron outlets and brought their expertiseback to NZ where they opened Daldang, the country’s first fatcarons store.
What do you do at Daldang?
Daldang is the first “Fatcarons” store in Auckland, New Zealand.
At Daldang, we make unique, Korean-fusion desserts called fatcarons in a variety of designs and flavours. We also make meringue cookies, shellcarons and coque flakes too.
They are twice the thickness of a regular macaron but less sweet so you can enjoy more of it without feeling overwhelmed by the sweetness.
Ever since K-pop stars BTS became famous worldwide, many foreigners have started to become interested in Korean culture, including K-food and K-dessert.
In 2017, fatcarons slowly became a trending dessert in Korea.
Sun Hoon Kim at Daldang.
Many YouTubers had shared videos of them trying out this new dessert and we really wanted to try the dessert ourselves but we couldn’t find a place that made or sold them in New Zealand.
Our best friend casually mentioned that we should be the first to make them in NZ but that casual comment became life-changing for us.
We flew to Korea and visited over a hundred fatcaron stores to try a variety of fatcarons. We had two years to prepare and perfect our fatcarons, and we were finally ready to open our first store at the end of 2019.
How did you get into business?
My wife and I started Daldang together. We both graduated from art school, majoring in fashion design and fine art. We never thought of making desserts before we started Daldang.
Kim and his team make all their products in-store daily.
While my wife was studying in New York, we were both sweet tooths and loved finding dessert shops that sold unique and delicious treats.
Our most favourite dessert shop in New York City was a place called Baked by Melissa, where they sell little cupcakes. The cupcakes weren’t too sweet and we were quite surprised that we ate 25 cupcakes in one sitting.
Since then, we baked as a hobby together but none of us knew that we would be opening a fatcaron store.
When did you start Daldang?
We opened our first store at the end of 2019.
Where was your first store and what led you to expand?
We have three locations: Auckland CBD, Newmarket and Henderson.
Our first store was our Auckland CBD store.
The main reason we decided on opening our second store, which is now our flagship store in Newmarket, was to make more quantities of fatcarons. We needed a bigger kitchen to keep up with the demand.
Daldang has faced increasing cost pressures and is still struggling to find a consistent supply of eggs.
When we first opened, we were lucky enough to have many customers love our fatcarons but there were times we had to turn customers away because we had sold out before their turn in the queue.
We didn’t want to disappoint our customers so we made the decision to change our opening hours from six days to five, so we had the extra day to make more fatcarons.
Even then, with the small kitchen in the CBD store, we couldn’t make enough to keep up with the demand. Only two people could fit in the kitchen and that meant limited staff and limited machinery to make the desserts too.
We scouted out for a good location with a bigger kitchen space so that we could make more fatcarons and that’s how we ended up opening our flagship store in Newmarket.
Have you been affected by any supply shortage issues?
Due to the impact of Covid, most of the prices for our key ingredients and materials have spiked but our biggest challenge was when the shortage of eggs began at the end of last year.
Eggs are our main ingredient and we use more than 1000 eggs a week. Even now, there are weeks where eggs are not delivered due to lack of supply, making it very difficult for us to operate. There were days when we would visit every supermarket possible to buy the eggs needed to make our fatcarons for our stores.
What is the price range for your products?
Our fatcarons are $4.80 each, mermaid shellcarons are $7.20, coque flakes are $6 and meringue cookies are $8.
