Transforming Food Business: CJ Freshway’s AI-Driven O2O Solutions Unveiled at Food Solution Fair 2026

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As AI-powered online-to-offline food businesses become the industry’s hottest topic, CJ Freshway unveiled its roadmap for the future. From ingredient distribution to marketing, the food-and-beverage world is rapidly shifting toward data- and platform-driven models.

CJ Freshway hosted the Food Solution Fair 2026 at the Yangjae aT Center on the 18th. Running through the 19th, the event highlights the company’s broad B2B offerings—covering raw materials, food products, distribution, kitchenless concepts, and marketing—tailored for small-business owners, franchise headquarters, and F&B professionals.

Lee Geon-il, CEO of CJ Freshway, said the fair offers a clear view of an innovation model that pairs the company’s logistics infrastructure with its digital platform strengths. He added that CJ Freshway will work with a range of market players to refine a customer-first distribution ecosystem and continue strengthening its role as a food-business partner.

The show put the online ingredients open market Sikbom front and center. Sikbom operates on the Marketboro platform, which CJ Freshway invested in last month; roughly 250,000 restaurant-owner members can now purchase about 200,000 products from some 4,000 distributors.

CJ Freshway plans to fuse Sikbom’s massive platform data with its cold chain and nationwide logistics network. The goal is to drive O2O (online-to-offline) digital innovation starting at the distribution level. By leveraging demand analysis, customer and market trend indicators, trade-area types, business categories, and purchasing patterns, the company will offer optimized product searches and simplified ordering to boost operational efficiency for everyone from independent shop owners to large operators.

CJ Freshway also emphasized AI-driven solutions. It showcased MenuMate, which helps dietitians design meal plans, and the Simple Order Assistant, which streamlines ordering for restaurant operators. MenuMate analyzes roughly 600,000 menu entries to assemble meal plans and generate images based on a chosen main dish. For example, selecting yubu udon produced a meal set including katsuobushi broth, tteokbokki, and chonggak kimchi. The tool is currently a prototype in internal use, with plans to roll it out to Freshway store dietitians in Q3.

The menu-based Simple Order Assistant runs as a chatbot. When connected, it lists the items needed for the yubu udon menu—such as fish cakes, shredded seaweed, crown daisy, and fresh udon noodles—along with unit prices. Users can chat with the bot to tweak orders, swapping in bestsellers, past purchases, recent hits, or lowest-price options to create a tailored selection. CJ Freshway plans to integrate the assistant into its client ordering mall, OnlyOneFoodNet.

Kim Jong-ho, head of digital innovation at CJ Freshway, said AI’s potential in the food industry is huge—not just for menu planning but also for ingredient sourcing and product development. He noted that integrating AI agents with search engines could evolve these tools into hyper-personalized, hyper-scaled solutions.

CJ Freshway also offered platform-based solutions and consulting. Through its Solution Lab platform, clients can access about 100 consulting services from CJ Freshway and partner firms, covering ingredients, menus, space design, hygiene consulting, and marketing.

By Da-eun Jeong