TOUS les JOURS, the CJ Foodville-owned Korean bakery café chain with more than 200 U.S. locations, has secured the official bakery café sponsorship of BTS THE CITY ARIRANG NEW YORK, activating four metro-area cafés as fan destinations from July 24 through August 9. The move positions retail café visits as cultural events, deploying limited-edition product, branded merchandise, and digital engagement tools simultaneously across brick-and-mortar locations.

The activation spans Dumbo (Brooklyn), Flushing (Queens), American Dream Mall (East Rutherford, NJ), and Madison Square Park (Manhattan) — a deliberate geographic spread that targets Korean-American community hubs, high-density tourist corridors, and a major mixed-use retail center. Each location features the exclusive BTS THE CITY ARIRANG Cake alongside fan-favorite SKUs including Caramel Apple Pie, Red Bean Bread, Kimchi Croquette, and Iced Ube Latte. Four pop-up events running July 29–August 1 layer complimentary sampling and exclusive giveaways on top of the in-store program.

The Sponsorship Architecture

The strategic engine here is the Weverse Stamp Rally at the Madison Square Park café, where guests scan QR codes to collect digital stamps through August 3. Weverse is HYBE's fan community platform, giving TOUS les JOURS a direct data-capture bridge into BTS's ARMY fanbase — an audience that indexes extremely high on brand loyalty and experiential spending. For operators watching earned-media ROI on event sponsorships, this kind of digital-physical integration is the mechanism that converts foot traffic into a measurable CRM asset.

The brand also anchors the official three-day ARMY 'MADANG' fan experience at the Korean Cultural Center New York (August 1–3), where it controls the food-and-beverage footprint entirely. Spin-wheel prizes, sticker giveaways, slap bracelets, and cake sampling put the product in hand at a moment of peak emotional engagement — a sampling strategy that food and beverage brands in experiential have been scaling hard since 2023.

What Operators Should Take Away

Max Gallegos, Chief Marketing Officer of TOUS les JOURS, framed the partnership as cultural alignment rather than trend-chasing: "Korean culture is not a trend for us. It is at the heart of our food, our hospitality, and the experiences we create every day." That distinction matters for brand-launch and sponsorship strategy — operators who own a genuine cultural credential can enter major IP partnerships at a sponsorship tier that pure-play American chains cannot credibly occupy.

For regional bakery, QSR, and specialty café operators evaluating event sponsorship as a brand-launch or growth channel, the TOUS les JOURS model illustrates a few things worth noting. First, geographic targeting within a single metro — rather than a national activation — concentrates spend, foot traffic, and press in the markets that matter most to the brand's core customer. Second, merchandise with qualifying purchases extends the average ticket and creates a scarcity dynamic that drives visit urgency. Third, an IP partnership with a globally recognized entertainment property instantly elevates the brand's media surface area well beyond what paid advertising alone could achieve in a 17-day window.

With the broader Hallyu (Korean Wave) continuing to drive consumer interest in Korean food, beverage, and culture across North American markets, this sponsorship also signals that Korean-inspired foodservice brands are moving from niche novelty to mainstream event-marketing players. Operators in adjacent categories — bubble tea, ramen, soju bars, Korean fried chicken — should be watching the sponsorship tier TOUS les JOURS is now occupying.

Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.