CU puts eight new snacks on shelves this week, led by a chimaek festival chicken winner

CU's weekly new-product post this time comes with a warning built into the headline: dessert is one category where the chain's mascot, Mimi, shows no mercy. The August 24 Instagram reel frames Mimi's review segment as brutally honest, then runs down eight items hitting stores this week, spanning fruit-forward desserts, a savory chicken dish, and a spicy rice cake stir-fry. Prices range from 2,000 won for a PBICK hazelnut choco pretzel up to 6,500 won for Chimaek Avo Truffle Chicken. In between sit a tomato macaron and matching tomato cream bread (3,600 and 3,500 won), a waffle cream sandwich (4,300 won), a fully topped mala bunmoja stir-fry (4,900 won), and two Greek peach items — a macaron and a mochi roll — priced at 2,500 and 3,900 won.

The chicken item is the one with a documented backstory. A separate ZDNet Korea report on the same day says CU is rolling out Avo Truffle Chicken nationwide as the winning recipe from the 2026 Daegu Chimaek Festival's new-menu competition, an annual event the outlet describes as drawing roughly a million visitors. That gives the product a different origin story than the rest of the lineup: rather than an in-house or licensed-brand item, it started as a festival submission before CU turned it into a packaged convenience-store product. Convenience chains in Korea have leaned on this kind of pipeline before — pulling in outside chefs, students, or competition winners to keep weekly rotations from feeling repetitive — and pairing that with mascot-led video content is part of how CU keeps its Instagram audience checking in every week rather than only when a viral item drops.

Two participation windows are open around this post. The comment event asks followers to name which new item they're most excited about, with a follow of CU's official Instagram required to qualify. That runs from August 24 through August 31, with five winners drawn for a 5,000-won CU mobile gift certificate each, announced individually by DM on September 7. Separately, CU is pointing viewers to a YouTube-based watch event called "August's Mimi's Mimi (美味)" — a pun pairing the mascot's name with the Korean word for delicious — where participation can earn a Mimi-autographed polaroid. Neither the reel nor the accompanying materials specify how the YouTube event's entry works beyond watching the channel's content, so readers looking to join that piece should check CU's YouTube page directly for entry steps.

For now, what's confirmed is the lineup, the prices, and the contest mechanics above. Shoppers curious about the Avo Truffle Chicken specifically can look for it as part of CU's broader national rollout rather than a one-store or limited-region test, per the ZDNet Korea report, while the rest of the week's items are presented as standard new-arrival stock without any noted regional limits.