HBAF (the “h” is silent)

On our recent trip to Korea we came across a snacking trend that was so gigantic, yet so unique at the same time. This trend is completely about almonds, in particular, flavoured almonds by a company called HBAF. According to their advertising the “h” is silent, if that makes it easier for your to read. I first noticed these almonds on day one of our trip as we had a few hours to wait at the train station in Seoul to head down south to Busan. There was a grocery store in the train station, and we thought it would be a great place to get some snacks and also see what the shopping/food is like in Korea. At the front of the store was a huge display with a giant statue of a cartoon almond greeting everyone who walked in. In this are of the store were hundreds of colourful bags of almonds, with hundreds of strange flavours to choose from. There were also dozens of people loading up on this these nutty treats.

I decided that I should probably try a few flavours. I went for a few of the stranger flavours, as I’m known to do including carrot cake, salted caramel pretzels and salted caramel latte (Allison actually picked that last one). After our shop, we got on our train and headed south to Busan. I opened my first bag of these flavoured almonds and was instantly impressed by the smell coming out of the package. It not only smelled great, but matched the flavour perfectly. Even the almond itself was perfect, fresh and very crunchy. I could see why people were so excited to pick up these nuts, and I thought to myself that I should probably go back to that store on our way home to get some more. Little did I know that there were going to many more opportunities to get some HBAF again in the future.

Our first stop was in Busan, a smaller city in the south of Korea. Within a few days of exploring I quickly realized that HBAF almonds were not going to be hard to find. Every single store had at least a small display for these tasty almonds, some had whole sections dedicated to them. At one point we were walking down a trendy shopping street in Busan and I noticed that they were in the process of building an entire store dedicated to HBAF almonds. It looked like it was going to open soon, and it looked pretty epic. I was a little sad that I wouldn’t be around to see it open, but it really gave me an idea of how popular these almonds were... or so I thought.

After our time in Busan we headed north to Seoul. Our first night we decided to walk to one of the trendy areas of town that also had a night market atmosphere. This is when I realized how popular these nuts really were. Every single shop that sold packaged food (there were a lot) had a huge display of these nuts. As far as visiting a HBAF store, I had a choice of no less than 3, each bigger than the next in this one neighbourhood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any snack have so much publicity and available in so many places in my life. It was like spotting Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, these nuts were just everywhere.

The good thing about the HBAF almonds is they’re really good. The flavours are super creative and the way they make the flavours work is even more ingenious. You could easily try a new flavour every day for a month and not only will you not repeat, but you’ll be amazed how different each flavour is. I’d like to tell you that you shouldn’t miss HBAF if you happen to be visiting Korea, but I feel like you’d have a harder time avoiding them, they’re just everywhere. I just wonder if this trend might make its way outside Korea, I sure hope so because I’m already craving another bag.