Let’s deal with the name first, because I need you to sit with it the way I did. The store is called 노노샵 — No No Shop. Its entire branding is “no no.” And somehow I walked out having said yes to more things than I planned for. Feels like it should be a breach of contract somewhere.
Here’s the actual context: 줄리앙 put this store on my radar in the first place. He’s a zero-waste activist and broadcaster I’ve followed for a while. This wasn’t some new location that had just opened. I’d already been once before, last summer, during a Seoul tap water promotion campaign I was part of.
I still think about how good that store felt in the middle of summer. Bright, easy, the kind of place that makes you want to linger past your actual errand.
So this time wasn’t about anything being new. I just wanted to go back and poke around again. And since my lunch box situation needed an upgrade anyway, it made sense to combine the two. Go hang out, buy a sturdier lunch box while I’m at it.
I brought my boyfriend along. Yes, boyfriend at the time — this was before he was my husband. Keep up.
That was the plan: browse for fun, walk out with one (1) lunch box. The plan did not survive contact with the store.
The part where the store turns out to have a whole personality
The thing that got me immediately is that this isn’t just a shop. It sells a genuinely wide range of vegan food products, and runs a café in the same space. I didn’t expect that combination to work as well as it does. You browse shelves of plant-based groceries, then sit down twenty feet away with a coffee. It’s like the store couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a pantry or a hangout spot, and just said “why not both.”
And I mean genuinely wide-ranging — tempeh chips, oat milk cartons stacked like a small fortress, coconut whipping cream, organic crackers, natural wine. Not a sad little “vegan corner” with three sad items. An actual wall of it.
Then there’s a whole freezer case of vegan meat substitutes. One of the brands has simply named itself WeMeat. Either the most honest or the most confusing branding decision I’ve seen all year — possibly both. Vegan fried “shrimp,” fish cake slices, tofu tenders dressed up as fried chicken. An entire frozen aisle, committed to the bit.
Where No No Shop’s Name Finally Makes Sense
Near the register, there’s a bottle-cap sorting station — caps separated by color into little bins: white, yellow, green, purple. Next to it, a sign explains exactly how to recycle a lid properly. And right beside that, a second sign just says, flatly: WE’RE NOT COLLECT. Underneath it sits a small pile of the specific plastic bits they won’t take.
Which, finally, is where the name earns its keep. No No Shop says yes to almost everything, except for the handful of things it very specifically will not touch. That’s the most honest branding in the entire building.
Then there’s the refill section, which is where I lost a little more time than intended. Gravity dispensers doled out five different pasta shapes by the gram. Bins of grains and legumes lined one side. A whole wall of empty jars sat ready to take home instead of buying new ones.
Somewhere in that section I also picked up a handful of dried Vietnamese chili peppers, refill-style — no packaging, just scoop what you need. For once, I want to be genuinely enthusiastic instead of ironic about this. Those chilies turned out to be one of the most useful things I’ve brought home in a while. They’ve gone into stir-fries and soups, basically anything that needed a kick, on a near-weekly basis since.
And a whole shelf for the “I should really replace this sponge” guilt
There’s also a corner just for eco household goods — natural loofahs, solid dish soap bars, ribbed silicone scrubbers. Plus a basket of reusable rubber gloves, in colors that felt more decisive than my actual gloves at home.
I did not buy anything from this section. I want that on the record, mostly because I know myself. If I’d picked up even one loofah, I’d currently be writing a very different, much longer post.
And then, over in the eco kitchenware corner
This was supposed to be a quick errand for a sturdier lunch box. Instead I found myself standing in front of the Stojo Collapsible Bowls — two colors, dusty pink and sage green. Reading the label on the bottom like it owed me money.
That part deserves its own post, honestly. What happened next at No No Shop involved a sticker I studied like a legal document, and a water test I performed in front of a very patient employee. Also a decision about buying not one but two of these — one I need to properly explain. That’s next.
#nonoshop #yongsan #veganfood #zerowastekorea #refillstation #ecofriendlykitchen #koreandailylife #greenishaloe #storevisit #plasticfreeliving #veganpantry