What the chicken order screen is asking you to choose

Right now

1. 1In the cart, keep the alcohol below the food total. If it goes over, the shop is supposed to be unable to take the order.
2. 2Scroll to the bottom of the checkout screen for the delivery fee and the minimum order. The price next to the menu item is the chicken alone.
3. 3If there is alcohol in the order, have your ID ready to show at the door. A physical Alien Registration Card (ARC) or passport is enough.

What to have ready

• Physical ID: When beer comes with the order, the rider checks your age. Show the card itself, not a photo of it.
• A delivery app account tied to a Korean phone number: Signing up and verifying were covered in the delivery guide. This one assumes you already have an account.
• Wet wipes or something to clean your hands: Bone-in chicken is eaten by hand. A plastic glove or two comes in the box, but not many.
• A picnic mat, if you are heading to the Hangang: Shade tents have set zones and hours. A mat is fine anywhere, any time.

Phrases you can copy and paste

Step by step

1. 1
   ‹›1 / 4

   Turn the four options on screen into the scene of eating them

   Tap a menu item and an options window opens. The first choice is bone-in or boneless. Bone-in is a whole chicken chopped into pieces and fried, held in the hand and pulled apart. Boneless is only the meat, taken off the bone before frying, and eaten with chopsticks or a toothpick. The extra work puts a premium on boneless. On BBQ's official price list the Golden Olive chicken is 23,000 won and the boneless version of the same item is 25,000 won. The second is half and half, one chicken split between two flavours. Half plain fried and half sauce-coated is the most common pairing. On the same list, Golden Olive on one side and sauce on the other is 24,000 won, so 1,000 won more than a single flavour. The third is the half chicken, there for anyone who finds a whole bird too much for one person. The price is not exactly half. A Golden Olive half chicken is 12,500 won, which is 1,000 won above half the whole. The fourth is pickled radish, white radish cut into cubes and pickled sweet and sour, there to wash the grease off your palate. One tub usually comes as standard, and more is an add-on in the options.

2. 2

   The price is added in four separate places

   On the checkout screen, more lines appear under the chicken. The delivery fee is a figure each shop sets and posts to the app, so the same item from the same brand differs by shop and by app, and some shops change it with distance and time of day. The minimum order is a floor below which the order button will not press. A whole chicken usually clears it, but a half chicken or sides alone can fall short. Then there is the split between the app delivering on the shop's behalf and the shop delivering itself. The same shop can appear as two listings for that reason, with two different delivery fees. So to compare the cost of chicken, read the last line of the checkout screen rather than the number beside the menu item. The brand's own app or a phone order can price differently from the delivery apps, so once you have a brand you order often, it is worth opening its official price list once. The BBQ prices above were read from the official mobile price list on 6 September 2026, and the per-shop delivery fee is not on that list.

3. 3

   The conditions for adding beer are written in a tax notice

   Korea blocks the sale of alcohol by mail order as a rule, and the one exception is a restaurant delivering it alongside food. The basis is Article 3-2 of National Tax Service Notice No. 2024-41, the Notice delegating orders on the mail-order sale of alcoholic beverages (주류의 통신판매에 관한 명령위임 고시). The article lets a food business that takes orders by phone or mobile app and delivers alcohol with food it cooked itself sell without the approval of the district tax office head, but limits it to alcohol whose sale price is 50% or less of the total for that one order. On the order screen it reads like this: the drinks cannot cost more than the food, and drinks cannot be ordered on their own. The guidance Yogiyo issued to shop owners says the same. No alcohol-only orders, only finished products such as bottled soju and bottled beer, and nothing the shop made or mixed itself can be delivered. So there is nothing odd about a chicken shop menu with no highball on it. The app usually blocks the order at checkout when the alcohol goes over, but getting through does not make the condition disappear. It binds the seller, and you are not the one who gets punished, but it helps to know before ordering that this notice has been the rule in force since 1 January 2025.

4. 4

   Showing ID at the door has nothing to do with being foreign

   Article 28(4) of the Youth Protection Act (청소년 보호법) puts a duty on anyone selling alcohol to check the buyer's age and identity. That duty carries through to the rider, so an order with beer in it means an ID request at the door. The age at which you can buy alcohol is not counted by exact birthday. Article 2 of the same Act defines a youth as anyone under 19, while excluding anyone who has reached 1 January of the year they turn 19. That means you can buy from 1 January of that year regardless of your birthday, and in 2026 it means anyone born in 2007 or earlier. An Alien Registration Card (ARC), a passport or a Korean driving licence all work, as long as it is the physical card. If the order is chicken only, nobody asks for ID. Do not count on contactless delivery, the note asking the rider to leave it at the door, when there is alcohol in the order. The person who has to check your age has to see your face.

5. 5

   At a Hangang park, collect at the delivery zone and eat on your mat

   Having chicken delivered to a Hangang park is legal, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government's official FAQ explains how. Ttukseom and Yeouido Hangang Parks have delivery zones so that delivery motorbikes stay out of the park itself. Ttukseom has two, in front of the Ttukseom access gate and in front of the Ttukseom information centre. Yeouido has three, in front of parking lot 2, in front of the Yeouido access gate, and beside the entrance to Mulbit Square (물빛광장). Put that spot in the address field, collect the food at the zone, and carry it to where you are sitting. What is banned here is not the food but fire and tents. Article 17 of the Seoul Metropolitan Government Framework Ordinance on the Preservation and Use of Hangang Parks (서울특별시 한강공원 보전 및 이용에 관한 기본 조례) prohibits camping and cooking outside designated areas, with fines of 1,000,000 won for a first offence, 2,000,000 won for a second and 3,000,000 won for a third. Delivered chicken is not cooking, but lighting a burner to warm it up is. Shade tents may be pitched only in the fifteen designated zones, and the permitted season in 2026 runs from 1 March to 30 November. The limit is a four-person tent of roughly 2 m by 2 m. Permitted hours are 09:00 to 19:00 from March to May and from September to November, and 09:00 to 20:00 from June to August, except that from 1 September to 30 November 2026 the closing hour is temporarily extended to 22:00. A mat is fine in any season, at any hour, anywhere. Drinking itself is not on the banned list, but drunken behaviour that bothers other people carries a 70,000 won fine, and leaving without clearing your rubbish carries 100,000 won. The city runs a delivery service in stainless steel reusable containers at Yeouido and Ttukseom, so if the app shows a reusable container option, choosing it means less rubbish to carry out.

6. 6
   

   There is chicken without delivery too

   Most chicken shops are not delivery-only kitchens but places with tables. Eat in and there is no delivery fee, there is draught beer, and the drinks can cost more than the food without any problem. The mail-order rule attaches to delivery, not to alcohol sold inside the shop. Places like this are called hof (호프), and if that word is on the sign, it is somewhere to sit down with chicken and beer. Pickup sits between delivery and eating in. Both the brand apps and the delivery apps have a button to choose delivery or pickup, and choosing pickup drops the delivery fee. Buying alcohol to carry out with the chicken, though, is a face-to-face sale in the shop, so your ID gets checked all the same. The options narrow at night. Closing times differ from shop to shop, and the hours shown in the app can differ from when the shop actually stops taking orders, so late in the evening check first for the open marker beside the shop's name and the estimated delivery time. None of the official material this guide checked gives a standard closing time for chicken shops. The shop sets it.

The Korean words

후라이드hurai-deu, plain fried chicken

The basic chicken, fried with no sauce on it. No sauce means no coating, not no flavour.

양념치킨yangnyeom chikin, sauce-coated fried chicken

Chicken coated after frying in a sweet and spicy red sauce.

순살sunsal, boneless

Only the meat, taken off the bone before frying. Costs more than bone-in.

반반banban, half and half

One chicken split between two flavours. Half plain fried and half sauce is the common pairing.

반마리banmari, half a chicken

Half of one chicken. Not exactly half the price, but a little more.

치킨무chikinmu, pickled radish cubes

Sweet and sour pickled radish. Comes as standard, and more is an add-on in the options.

치맥chimaek, chicken and beer

Chicken and beer, the two words joined. On a delivery order the alcohol cannot cost more than the food.

호프hopeu, beer pub

A place selling draught beer and food to go with it. If the word is on the sign, you can sit down there for chicken and beer.

배달팁baedaltip, delivery fee

The delivery charge a shop sets and posts to the app. It is called a tip, but it is a fee, not optional.

Easy to miss

• ·Comparing orders by the price beside the menu item gives the wrong answer. The delivery fee and the minimum order are added separately at the end of checkout, and the same shop sets different figures on different apps.
• ·Put in enough bottles of beer to push the alcohol over the price of the chicken and the order is no longer a delivery the notice allows. Checkout blocking it, or the shop cancelling, is the normal outcome, so add food or take out drinks.
• ·Writing leave it at the door on an order with alcohol does not spare the rider from checking your face and ID. Age verification is a legal duty on the seller and a delivery note cannot skip it.
• ·Take out a burner or a grill at a Hangang park and it counts as cooking, even next to delivered chicken. Camping and cooking outside designated areas carry a 1,000,000 won fine for a first offence.
• ·Leaving a shade tent up past the permitted hours is a violation. From September to November 2026 the hour to take it down yourself is 22:00. A mat is still fine after that.
• ·A half chicken is not half the price of a whole one. On BBQ's price list, ordering it twice costs 2,000 won more than a whole chicken.

You can skip this if

• If you plan to sit inside and eat with draught beer, the alcohol ratio and the ID check at the door do not apply. Your age is checked once, at the table.
• If you plan to eat the chicken at home with convenience store beer, buy the beer separately at the convenience store. The cap on alcohol in a delivery order applies only to delivery.
• If you are on a riverbank outside Seoul or in a park in another city, the fine table in the Hangang park ordinance does not apply there. Check that local government's park rules separately.

Where this comes from

• Notice delegating orders on the mail-order sale of alcoholic beverages (주류의 통신판매에 관한 명령위임 고시, National Tax Service Notice No. 2024-41, Korean Law Information Center)
• Youth Protection Act (청소년 보호법, Korean Law Information Center)
• Prohibited acts and fines in Hangang parks (Seoul Metropolitan Government Future Hangang Headquarters, 미래한강본부)
• Permitted zones for shade tents in Hangang parks, 2026.3 to 2026.11 (Seoul Metropolitan Government Future Hangang Headquarters, 미래한강본부)
• Can I have chicken or pizza delivered to the Hangang? FAQ (Seoul Metropolitan Government Future Hangang Headquarters, 미래한강본부)
• Hangang delivery food now comes in reusable containers (Seoul Metropolitan Government Climate and Environment Headquarters, 기후환경본부)
• BBQ menu price list (Genesis BBQ, 제너시스비비큐, private company)
• Selling alcohol: the rules to remember (Yogiyo guide for shop owners, private company)