CJ Foodville goes global from in-flight meals to Starbucks bread

CJ Foodville Co., a South Korean food company, is deepening its presence in Southeast Asia with premium bakery products, catering to airplane passengers and Starbucks customers across Indonesia.

It supplies 200,000 loaves of bread each month under its bakery brand, Tous Les Jours, to Indonesia’s flag carrier Garuda Indonesia for 13 domestic routes.

To suit their tastes, CJ Foodvill has developed four types of roti — bulgogi, cheese, chocolate and chicken teriyaki — exclusively for Garuda Indonesia. Bulgogi is a traditional Korean marinated beef dish.

CJ Foodville is also one of the bread suppliers for some 600 Starbucks stores across Indonesia. It regularly offers eight items, including croissants, cinnamon rolls and roti buns, to the US café chain.

Thanks to its sales to Garuda Indonesia and Starbucks, CJ Foodville's business-to-business (B2B) sales in the country jumped 45% on-year in 2024.

Tous Les Jours operates stores in nine overseas markets, including the US, Canada, Singapore and Cambodia.

HIGH-END PRODUCTS

CJ Foodvill’s premium strategy targeting high-end consumers has proved successful.

“Tous les Jours has established a reputation as an upscale bakery in Asia and other overseas markets,” said an executive at CJ Foodville. “Our premium strategy has made it easier to expand in the B2B market, and strong B2B performance is creating a virtuous cycle by driving positive responses from individual consumers.”

IN VIETNAM

CJ Foodville is also performing well in Vietnam’s B2B market, supplying croissants, egg tarts and pies to local retailers such as Mini Go!

Unlike local bakeries that sell factory-made products, Tous Les Jours stores provide freshly baked goods. In 2024, its B2B sales in Vietnam soared 73% from a year earlier.

IN MALAYSIA

Buoyed by robust growth in Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia, CJ Foodville has returned to Malaysia after an eight-year absence.

On June 4, it opened Tous Les Jours-Sunway Pyramid in Malaysia under a master franchise agreement with Stream Empire Holdings. It marks its first bakery store in the country since exiting the market in 2017.

To bolster its premium image, the store is located in Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall, one of Malaysia's top three shopping centers.

“The store is designed as a premium bakery café that emphasizes Tous Les Jours’ fresh, healthy and high-quality products,” said a CJ Foodvill official. 

To appeal to high-income consumers, the café features bright and modern interiors with beige wood finishes.

With its focus on premium baked goods, prices aren’t cheap. A red bean bun sells for 5.9 ringgit ($1.60), while a No. 1 Strawberry Merry Queen cake costs 119 ringgit ($37).

Its second Tous Les Jours is set to open this month at Sunway Velocity Mall in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

“We’ll bring the premiumization know-how we gained in Indonesia to Malaysia,” said the CJ Foodvill official.

It operates a plant in Bekasi, Indonesia and will leverage the halal-certified bakery facility to maximize management and logistics efficiency in Malaysia.

The number of its overseas stores rose to 560 as of the end of February, compared with 296 in 2020. 

Write to Jong-Seo Park at cosmos@hankyung.com
 


Yeonhee Kim edited this article.