The size of South Korea's restaurant industry stood at 192 trillion won ($16.9 billion) as of 2015, official data showed Sunday.

According to the latest findings by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the local market was comprised of a 82 trillion-won food processing sector and a 108 trillion-won eatery business, with some 660,000 restaurants and eateries in the country. The numbers are a gain of 0.9 percent from the year before.

The figures translate into one eatery for every 78 people in the country of over 51 million.

Average growth in the food processing business reached 6.8 percent annually, while that of restaurants was 8.9 percent. These gains far outpaced gross domestic product growth of more than 3 percent in the cited year.
 

The ministry's findings then showed that compared with 2005, when there were 530,000 establishments, numbers surged 24 percent in the decade. The restaurant and food production business had a workforce of around 1.95 million, making it the largest employer in the service sector.

"The overall size and growth reflects the spike in one-person households, which tend to eat out more, and the spike in small franchises operations," the authority said.

Despite the size of the sectors, data showed that of all restaurants in the country, 86.5 percent hired fewer than five people, making them very small in size, and more vulnerable than big firms in terms of withstanding external shock.

By sector, traditional Korean food eateries were the most popular at 304,000, with cafes and businesses that serve non-alcoholic beverages coming in second at 59,000. This was followed by small cafes that served "gimbap" -- a popular Korean-style roll in sheets of dried seaweed -- and fried chicken joints.

The ministry said among food processors, those that reported sales exceeding 1 trillion won in the cited year reached 21, up from a mere four firms 10 years earlier.

Of companies checked, CJ CheilJedang Corp. was the largest, with sale hitting 4.9 trillion won. (Yonhap)