BNU, consisting of Dept. of Food Science and Biotechnology seniors Park Woo-hyun, Lee Tae-hoon, and Park Jung-hyun, was selected as one of the top 10 teams at the preliminaries of the Challenge! K-start-up 2017, a government start-up competition hosted by the Ministry of Education in August. Thanks to this achievement, Bugsfood has been selected as a representative of Chungcheong Province to go to the finals. We met and heard from Park Woo-hyun(’12, Dept. of Food Science and Biotechnology) who is the leader of Bugsfood.




1. Please introduce Bugsfood.

  We are a start-up club who wants to make products made of edible insects that consumers can find more easily. The name of our team was literally created by connecting the words ‘bugs’ and ‘food’. I worked as an intern in the Agricultural Technology Center of Chungcheongbuk-do last January. While there, I participated in a project of making a peanut butter with mealworms. At that time, a question arose, “Why should we eat edible insects, which are good for health, with an unhealthier food like peanut butter?” I think if the edible insects are combined with other healthier foods, they can make better synergy. Our start-up club was started with that idea.


2. I heard your goal is commercializing edible insects. Can you explain about your product?

  One of the many and various foods of the future is edible insects, which is ranked at number one. I wondered how we can use these edible insects. Suddenly, I remembered some research that health-conscious people usually eat edible insects. People also tend to prefer nuts, so we thought it would be a good idea to mix nuts with edible insects. Among edible insects, mealworms are well-known to the public and have become popularized. Therefore, we chose mealworms as an ingredient of our product. Mealworms can arouse repulsion in people, so we grinded them and made them in the shape of a cookie, and then we removed the smell of insects by roasting them. In mealworm cookies, we put 5 kinds of dried fruits. This makes people feel less repulsion, and the texture is similar to almonds, so people can easily eat them.


3. Your team was selected as a finalist in Challenge! K-start-up 2017. What is the secret that led Bugsfood to such a good result?

  Many teams in the start-up competition already had their own patent, made test products and established their business plan. Also, most people think that start-up products are simple phone applications or machines. The applications are easily accessible to the public. In comparison with those applications, a food business needs a great deal of money to prepare some ingredients and construct factories. In this competition, there were many projects related with apps rather than teams preparing some products to sell like us. We think this distinction is the reason that we were selected among the top 10 teams in the competition. In addition, edible insects recently have been recognized as food in Korea. We think that fact helped us with our good result.


4. What is the goal of Bugsfood in the future?

  Our short-term goal is to rank among the top 4 teams at the finals of the Challenge! K-start-up 2017 in October. The teams with high rankings in the competition can go to a global camp. There, we want to look around at the current status of edible insects in other countries. Also, the Industry-University Cooperation EXCO will be held at the same place on the same day as the Challenge! K-start-up 2017. Our goal is to raise the status of CBNU while there. Our long-term goal is to popularize many edible insects by making products that are easily accessible. 

By Jo Se-in
si38@cbnu.ac.kr