CJ Foodville has served up two Tous Les Jours cafes in Chongqing with plans to expand further into China, particularly targeting inland cities.
The Korean group is using Chongqing to move outward after opening stores in major hubs such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. It also has outlets in Tianjin, Weihai and Suzhou.
Tous Les Jours China is operated as both direct ownership and master franchise. Under a master franchise arrangement, the company gets fees and royalties in return for allowing the franchisee to use its brand.
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Regions where the latter business model is implemented include Sichuan, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, Shandong, Hebei, Guizhou, and Jilin, as well as the Xinjiang territory.
Tous Les Jours is planning a quick rollout across China’s west over the next three years, adding to the 140 stores it had in China as of the end of December last year.
“With the opening of the Chongqing location, we are set to move into the western part of China,” said CJ Foodville in a statement.
“In order to achieve the goal of opening more than 1,000 stores in China by 2020, we will open at least 100 stores within this year.”
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Back in July 2016, CJ Foodville CEO, Jung Moon-mok announced at a press conference that his firm could become bigger than McDonald’s and Starbucks.
“We will be able to exceed McDonald’s, Starbucks and other multinational food and beverage companies if we successfully execute our expansion plans,” he said.
Currently, the Korean company runs 288 stores under four brands ― Bibigo, TwoSome Coffee, Tous Les Jour and VIPS ― in ten foreign markets. Domestically, it has about 2,300 stores under 12 brands. In 2015, CJ Foodville earned 1.3 trillion won in sales. It generated 11 percent of its sales outside Korea but plans to increase the ratio to 52 percent by 2020.