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#477 Line Friends Cafe Garosu-gil @ Sinsa, Seoul

Posted by swisscheese on August 31, 2017 in line friends cafe, seoul, soft-serve ice-cream, theme cafe |

As I have already lived in Seoul for a month 4 years ago, I came to Seoul with no expectations this April. I have tried many Caffe Bene outlets at Seoul and those franchised cafes even opened up at Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur  and Singapore. Hello kitty cafes, dog cafes and cat cafes were a huge hype 4 years back. Been there, done that! The funny thing is those themed cafes opened in Bangkok and Singapore after some time as well. I think the only unique theme cafe which I have visited but has not been saturated elsewhere is the wedding cafe named Princess Diary Cafe at Seoul.

So since I was busy in my previous job before the trip, I let my BFF research on all the cute cafes we can visit and one of it was the Line Friends Cafe located at Sinsa.

Line Friends Cafe 
535-15, Sinsa-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea / 서울특별시 강남구 신사동 535-15
+82 2-3448-1764

Ground Floor





Everyone is always admiring the adorable characters of the LINE messaging tools and its stickers. However, what we did not know is that LINE was created due to a disaster response of a 8.9 magnitude earthquake that triggered a 30 foot high tsunami at Japan back in March 2011. This resulted in the phone networks being jammed and thus, people were not able to contact their loved ones. This terrible experience made the engineers of NHN Japan, which is a subsidiary of the South Korean internet company Naver, to launch the LINE Messenger three months later so that people can contact one another by using the data plan to call or text through this messaging tool. It is amazing to know that Facebook took three years to gain 58 million user while LINE had 50 million users within a year.

Basement







With the launch of LINE in June 2011, LINE has come so far from being just a mobile messenger for the Japanese to contact one another by using data instead of the phone networks to a globally known app that enables people to send cute stickers and play popular games such as Tsum  Tsum. To my knowledge, the Taiwanese, Thais and Japanese use the LINE app as their default messaging app.

Now, there are even LINE Friends stores for people to visit, snap shots and purchase items with their favourite LINE characters on it. We should not also forget the LINE theme cafes located in the flagship stores that serve delectable desserts such as macaroons in the form of LINE characters. There are 3 Line Friends flagship stores and 6 Line Friends stores in Korea but the flagship store at Sinsa is the first flagship store and the biggest flagship store in the world. That explains why Vivian selected this store for us to check out.

There are some pointers to note for this flagship store though. Before you enter the store as shown in the very first picture, there maybe queues for one portion of the entrance and no queues for the other side. If you have no interest in taking photo with the 3.2 meters tall Brown the Bear as depicted in the second picture, you can skip lining up and just simply enter the store via the entrance with no lineups. Although I am crazy about anything cute but as I grow up, I stopped purchasing adorable items I do not need. Therefore, I forgot to take pictures of the second floor of the store.

However, do not forget to pay a visit to the basement of the store in order to try the attractive desserts that either come in the shape of the LINE characters or add the LINE characters on it. Since we just had breakfast at Mr. Holmes Bakehouse nearby, we were so full so we could only share the vanilla soft-serve ice-cream, which costs 3,800 won (CAD$4.27 / SGD$4.59 / USD$3.38). Thankfully, the taste of the ice-cream is so light and not too milky to make you puke after consuming it with a heavy meal so all was good! This was the only item we spent on in the store and we walked out empty-handed. I am looking forward to try more food items from the LINE cafes if I have time to pay the other flagship stores a visit during my trip next week.

Opens daily from 10:30am to 9:30pm
Nearest Station: Sinsa via Line 3 (Orange Line)

Thanks to the BFF, I managed to cross this flagship store off my “to-visit-list” and cannot wait to try other food items in the LINE Friends Cafes of other flagship stores in Seoul.

*swisscheese

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