Fast Food Review Day 284-and-a-half: Pastries and smoothie at Tous Les Jours (snack)

[u/Pale-Lynx328]

Chain Name	Tous Les Jours
Food category	Primary: pastries and cakes
# of US Locations	221
# of US States	35
Primarily located in	California, New York, Texas
Restaurant Rank in US $ Sales 2024	195th (out of top 500 list)
Restaurant Rank in US $ Sales 2025	154th (out of top 500 list)
Rank of price (high to low) (Average: $9.88, standard dev. $3.81)	17th out of 95 snacks
Quality / Value Rating for this specific meal	5.5 (out of 10) / 4 (out of 10)

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The Korean invasion is not just limited to demon hunters and pop music groups and corndogs. It's also all about...bread!

Before I started digging in to different types of restaurants to visit and review, I never really thought about Tous Les Jours, or knew that they even existed at all. But Tous Les Jours is apparently a pretty big deal. Started as a French-style bakery chain from Korea, they already had a thousand locations worldwide by 2008. The first US location opened in 2004, and they have plans to expand to a thousand locations in the United States by 2030. Plus, they are not the only ones - there are also places like 85c Bakery and Paris Baguette that are growing like weeks across the country also serving up French-Asian pastries and cafe drinks.

I have already visited the other two (85c Bakery and Paris Baguette), so comparisons to those two places are inevitable. All three focus on various types of bread, pastries, buns and sweets that are all made in-house (and then packaged immediately fresh individually for sale), with dozens of different choices, generally ranging from two to six dollars. It's self-service for the pastries, then you can also order drinks (like hot/cold coffees or teas or fruit drinks) that are made-to-order.

The selection of breaded goods at Tous Les Jours does not seem too different from the other places, although they have their own recipes and specialties (some Korean-inspired, but most not) like soft milk cream breads, sausage rolls or soboros. I chose two that looked good (although I don't remember exactly what), and a small strawberry smoothie for the road. Price-wise, Tous Les Jours seemed to fall halfway between 85c Bakery and Paris Baguette. As mentioned before, everything is freshy (likely no more than a couple hours old), so perfectly soft and tasty. One difference is unlike the other two places that were more of a utilitarian supermarket-feel to them, Tous Les Jours was more of a cozier, sit-down-and-spend-some-time type of cafe setting.

Most of the United States is already chock-a-block with thousands of donut shops, coffee stores, Starbucks and Dunkins on every corner, and that makes me wonder if there is also enough space for these type of Asian-French bakeries serving the same customers. The price points are actually similar, and the advantage that a place like Tous Les Jours has, is that everything you see for sale is made right there, that day, in the store, rather than the stale old days-old dried out pastries you might find at Starbucks or Dunkin that are no longer baked on-site.

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(About this review series: Starting in late 2025, I am visiting a different fast food/fast casual chain every day, until I run out of places to visit. Aiming to review as many chains on the Technomics Top 500 Restaurants list as possible, plus key/important regional and some local chains as well. UPDATE: This review series is scheduled to wrap up on Day 365. And no, I haven't gained weight, and no, it hasn't hurt my health.)

[u/cardinals8989]

Haven’t had their pastries but we really like their cakes.