Hyami Wang

Hyami Wang (Yeonseongi: 향미왕, Flavor King) is a Gyunghwan fast-food restaurant chain founded March 19, 1951, by Bak Geol in Yurishi, Mansan where it is still headquartered. The chain has over 3,100 locations in Valeya, with around 3,000 operating throughout the United Republics. A few stores currently operate in Cartageña, Yeongseon, and Anglia.

Food items include a variety of rice bowls and baozi, along with fried chicken and stir fry noodle dishes, and selections of Gyunghwanized internationally themed foods such as hamburgers and tacos.

History
Hyami Wang was founded by Bak Geol, an entrepreneur who started off selling rice bowls from a stand in Yurishi called Uncle Oh's Drive-in. As the stand gain popularity, Bak purchased a two way intercom system for faster ordering for his restaurant with the intention of the restaurant being a quick service to meet the demands of the customer base. In March 19th, 1951, Bak converted the stand with a focus on drive-through service, rebranding the restaurant as Hyami Wang with an imperial and royal decor inside the restaurant.

Bak formed Dynasty Flavors Inc as a holding company for Hyami Wang in 1958 and was able to expand Hyami Wang throughout the Greater Yurishi Area and later Mansan and the southeastern United Republics throughout the 1960s. At this time, all Hyami Wang locations were company-owned and new locations and managerial hires went through rigorous trainings strict performance standards.

Hyami Wang underwent its most prolific growth from 1965 to 1977, expanding into the midwestern United Republics and Dynasty Flavors became a publicly traded company in the Mijeon Stock Exchange in 1975. It soon begins to resemble its larger competitors, particularly industry giant Bao Hwangje in its effort to compete for its target market of families with young children. However, the franchise begins to struggle after 1977, closing some of its midwestern branches and forcing the company to halt its plans of expanding to the Deep West.

In 1981, Dynasty Flavors announced that Hyami Wang would no longer compete for Bao Hwangje's target audience of families with young children, instead targeting older, more affluent customers with a higher-quality, more upscale menu. Dynasty Flavors spent billions of wons to remodel all of their Hyami Wang locations and its logo to mature the restaurant chain's image. The menu, having focused mostly on rice bowls and pancakes, begin to diversify with the inclusion of fried chickens and stir fry noodle dishes, even venturing into Gyunghwanized ethnic foods such as pastrami, finger foods, pita wraps, and tacos in a time when few fast food chains in Gyunghwa offer more than the standard rice bowls and bokssam.

In November 10th, 1994, Dynasty Flavors suffered a major corporate crisis involving an e coli outbreak in Gyoshi, Jinhae coming from undercooked ground beef. Four children died while 438 were hospitalized. The company faced multiple lawsuits and was nearly bankrupt after settling most of them out of court. After the incident, the company standardized cleaning and cooking laws and launched an aggressive campaign to show its new commitment to food safety, working with food safety experts to ensure that their kitchen and distribution sources meet and exceed federal regulations.

In 1996, Hyami Wang saw a rebound in popularity after the success of the "The King is back" advertisement campaign where the fictitious founder and chairman of the company Wang Hya-mi (portrayed by actor and singer Yi Moon-gyu) boldly entered a fictional Hyami Wang corporate office building to reclaim his rightful place, followed by employees cheering for his return and as he blew up a fictional corporate boardroom.

The first international location opened at Yorcke, Anglia in 2003 and at Santa Inéz, Cartageña in 2008. By 2019, there are 58 stores in Anglia while Cartageña operates 39 restaurants. Plans are currently made to expand to Escar with three stores having opened in Yeongseon in August 19th, 2020.

Products
Although starting off with popular Gyunghwan fast food dishes such as rice bowls, fried chickens, baozi, pancakes, and gimbaps since its inception, Hyami Wang's most popular dish is its hamburger, which was sold since the 1950s. According to Bak Geol's 1984 autobiography Man Behind the King, Geol was introduced to a hamburger from a local stand in Anglia during his deployment in the Valeyan War and grew to love the sandwich and wanted to introduce it to the Gyunghwan populace. Hyami Wang's Wangburgers come with a potato roll, a ground beef patty, grilled onions, melted cheese, ketchup, and whole egg mayonnaise. A larger version, called the Wangburger Supreme, comes with all of the listed ingredients with the addition of lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and bacon.

Besides hamburgers, Hyami Wang offers other Gyunghwanized foods from ethnic cuisines such as tacos, Amphian sandwiches, burritos, and fish and chips. New items come on in rotations every few months including alligator sandwiches and spring rolls. Seasonal items are also carried during the holidays such as patbingsu and honey songpyeon during the summer festival and Gyunghwan Thanksgiving respectively.

Advertising
Hyami Wang enjoys a long history of advertising since its inception. In the early days of Hyami Wang, advertisements came mostly through radio waves before televisions were commonplace in Gyunghwan households. From 1958 to 1971, Hyami Wang broadcasted cartoon advertisements featuring King Hyami and his ministers bringing foods to excited children or children playing games with King Hyami and his ministers, advertising itself as being a restaurant for families with young kids.

Since 1972, Dynasty Flavors had shifted towards live action commercials while keeping its focus of being family friendly. 1978 to 1980 was the transition period of advertisements as Hyami Wang begins to focus more on the food quality and diversity of its menu while still branding itself as being for families. Hyami Wang's most popular commercial of the era being the 1979 "You got it" ad where a father has to contend with his family of five undecisive on what to eat (the mother wants stir fry noodles, the eldest son desires fried chicken, the daughter craves kimbap, and the youngest son wants hamburgers). The father goes to multiple restaurants to unsuccessfully ask for a wide range of foods before reaching Hyami Wang where a cheerful employee says "you got it" to every food the father asked for. The advertisement ends with the family happily eating at Hyami Wang with the tagline "What's cooking?". Soon, advertisements begin to focus less on children and more on adults as part of the company's transition of target market with the tagline "Royalty in taste, not the price".

After the restaurant's reimagining, the company changed its marketing in 1981 to 1985 with commercials featuring actor Oh Aseo, who attempted to compare Hyami Wang's new food items to that offered by fast food competitors Bao Hwangje and Aggeo Express to no avail, ending each commercial with the slogan "There's no comparison". After 1985, television advertisements featured minimalistic music that accompanies commercials of individuals talking about and enjoying new menu items from Hyami Wang under the slogan "Where taste is king".

In 1996, Dynasty Flavor shifted marketing by hiring actor Yi Moon-gyu to play the fictional founder and chairman Wang Hya-mi, a no nonsense businessman dedicated to serving quality food at affordable price who just happens to have a large ping-pong like head with minimalistic facial feature (two blue eyes, a black cone noise, and a linear red smile) and a medieval crown on his head. The first ad featuring Wang Hya-mi has him reclaiming his company and blowing up the corporate boardroom with approval from his employee with the campaign "The King is back". Later adverts part of "The King is back" campaign have the mascot being serious about improving the company's image by undertaking questionable methods to reach out to customers (including dropping food from a bomber at a neighborhood that ended with multiple property damage or Wang confronting, and force-feeding a man who called his food trash). The new adverts were met with positive response and received various awards throughout the years.

Commercials since 1996 tend to be humorous and often involve Hya-mi promoting the restaurant's foods or going out in the field getting ideas for new menu items. Some advertisements have him traveling to different countries and interacting with local cuisines to introduce to his business. During the height of pop idol craze coming from Western Escar in the early 2010s, the company made a mock girl group called "Spicy Girls" to promote their line of Mala rice bowls and noodle dishes.