<h1>Christmas: A Sweet Miracle That Becomes a Job for Someone</h1>

Screenshot of the HISBEANS café official website introduction page (Source: HISBEANS / Hyanggi Naeneun Saramdeul official homepage)

 If you walk through the streets of South Korea in December, you are more likely to encounter people carrying cakes than the scent of roasted turkey or gingerbread cookies. In Korea, Christmas is often described as a “cake war,” a season when the consumption of cakes and bakery products peaks dramatically.

 

While sparkling lights, warm carols, and flashy bakery advertisements fill the streets, there are also bakeries quietly working behind the scenes—places where bread and cookies are made far from the spotlight.

 

Some of these bakeries are social economy enterprises. They do more than bake and sell warm, fragrant bread. Through the act of baking, they sustain communities of employment. Like any other bakery, they pour care and craftsmanship into their products, but they also bake values into every loaf and cookie, creating a quiet yet powerful social impact.

 

In this post, I’d like to introduce a few small social economy enterprises that continue to bake through the Christmas season.

 

🍪Durihana Daul: Café Daul

 

Durihana Daul is a social enterprise that employs people with developmental disabilities, operating both a bakery and a café known as Café Daul. Its mission is to support people with developmental disabilities in living and working alongside non-disabled people as part of their local community.

 

Café Daul offers a variety of coffee and beverages, along with bread baked in-house. The bread and coffee are gently sweet, comforting, and easy for anyone to enjoy.

 

I’ve personally stopped by Café Daul several times when I happened to be nearby. The café has a warm, welcoming atmosphere, and the bread and drinks are genuinely good. Even after a filling meal, I found myself reaching for another piece of bread more than once. :)

 

🍵Hyanggi Naeneun Saramdeul: HISBEANS

 

Last year, a friend gifted me a box of cookies and encouraged me to try them. The cookies had a chewy texture rather than a crisp one, and they paired beautifully with coffee. I remember wondering, “Where are these cookies from?” and looking them up afterward.

 

They turned out to be from HISBEANS, a coffee brand operated by the social enterprise Hyanggi Naeneun Saramdeul. In addition to coffee, they also sell baked goods such as cookies.

 

Hyanggi Naeneun Saramdeul was founded to create jobs for people with disabilities. Through HISBEANS, the organization trains and employs people with disabilities as coffee professionals, supporting stable and meaningful employment. The company works to break down barriers between disabled and non-disabled workers, fostering an environment where people can work together naturally and happily in everyday life.

 

🍩Mindalpaengi Social Cooperative: Happy Bakery

 

Mindalpaengi Social Cooperative is a social cooperative that produces fragrant bread and cookies. Through its bakery, Happy Bakery, people with developmental disabilities directly bake and sell bread and cookies, while gaining access to sustainable employment.

 

The cooperative strives to view those who are often marginalized with an ordinary yet warm and respectful perspective, seeking to live together as a community. With that spirit, they continue to bake comforting, wholesome bread every day.

 

🎄The Miracle of Christmas

 

In Korea, there are many more social economy enterprises beyond the three introduced here—organizations that generate both value and profit in their own ways. Their daily routines of kneading dough, letting it rise, and baking it in the oven remind us that enjoying bread and cookies does not have to be a once-a-year Christmas event.

 

For these enterprises, baking is not charity or a campaign. It is an everyday economic activity that creates jobs and sustains communities. Depending on which bread or cookies we choose, our purchase might quietly become a small miracle that helps someone carry on into another year.