Trust Us

About Trust Us

Trust Us Co., Ltd., established in January 2013 by CEO Jeong-Beomjin, operates as a key player in South Korea's online-to-offline (O2O) food-tech market. The company was founded with the vision of merging reliable offline content with online platforms, initially focusing on the restaurant industry. Jeong-Beomjin, a KAIST Life Science graduate who was on leave from Hanyang University's medical school, developed a curiosity for the food service industry after observing the rapid growth of franchise coffee shops. This interest led him to spend about six months interviewing restaurant owners and chefs, gathering insights that would become foundational to the company's services.

The core of the company's business is the integrated restaurant platform 'Poing' (포잉). This service functions as a dual-sided platform. For consumers, Poing is a mobile and web application that offers curated recommendations and reservation services for premium restaurants. The platform distinguishes itself by emphasizing "human curation," where a dedicated content team personally visits and evaluates restaurants to ensure high-quality recommendations. This approach aims to provide a trustworthy dining guide for users. For restaurant businesses, Trust Us provides a comprehensive 'Poing Membership' service. This B2B solution offers a suite of services to solve operational needs, including a reservation management system, marketing support through photo and video packages, and even assistance with sourcing supplies like menu printing and kitchen equipment. The business model is not based on advertising or booking fees but on providing these value-added operational solutions to restaurant partners.

Significant milestones for Trust Us include the acquisition of the restaurant reservation app 'Yeyakwang Poing' in December 2013, which was subsequently revamped into the current Poing service. The company has successfully attracted substantial investment, including a Series B funding round of 9 billion KRW in January 2017 from investors like Naver and DT&INvestment, and an additional 3.5 billion KRW in late 2017 from KDB Bank and Global Brain, bringing its total accumulated funding to around 13 billion KRW. These investments have fueled the expansion of the Poing platform, which by late 2017 featured approximately 3,800 curated restaurants and had processed over 220,000 reservations.