We Put a Self-Service Ramen Lab in Abuja
Inspired by Korean convenience-store culture. Reimagined in Abuja.
If you've spent enough time watching Korean convenience-store videos, you probably know the ritual. Pick your ramen. Add what you want. Take it to the machine. Make it yourself. We loved the simplicity of it. Then we started wondering what that experience could look like here.
Seoul energy. Abuja experiment.
We weren't trying to reinvent ramen. We wanted to bring a little of the self-service culture we'd seen in Korea into a completely different setting and build our own experience around it. So in early 2025, inside the old Boba Chummy in Abuja, the Ramen Lab opened. A ramen library. Self-service cooking machines. Toppings. DIY combinations. And customers in control of their own bowls.
The interesting part wasn't the machine. It was turning making your ramen into part of going out.
Abuja, 2026.
At first, people watched. Some asked for help. Some understood immediately. Some watched the person beside them before trying. Then something interesting happened. It started becoming normal. A familiar piece of Korean convenience culture had found a very different home in Abuja. And we gave it our own Chummy spin. The Lab is still evolving.
