Tully's opens its first in-store bakery cafe, at Shinjuku's Southern Terrace

Tully's Coffee Japan opened its first store built around an in-store bakery on Aug. 7, at Prime Five Tully's Coffee Shinjuku Southern Terrace, the company said in a release. Bread, including butter croissants, is baked on site — a first for the chain, according to the announcement.

The store, on the Southern Terrace pedestrian deck south of Shinjuku Station, seats 67 people indoors plus 14 on a terrace, all non-smoking, in an ivory-and-grey interior with a wall design tracing coffee's growing regions around the world, Tully's said. It opens 7am to 10pm on weekdays and 8am to 10pm on weekends and holidays.

The menu goes beyond coffee: alongside an "Aerocarno" espresso drink and the in-house croissants, Tully's is serving hot dogs, a mushroom cream fettuccine, a tiramisu affogato parfait finished with decaffeinated espresso, and wine cocktails and beer, the company said.

A bakery counter and an alcohol list are a wider brief than a typical Tully's, and the Southern Terrace address — a commuter and shopping corridor rather than a destination retail street — suggests the format is being tested as an all-day stop, pastry in the morning and wine in the evening, rather than a coffee-only cafe. If it works, it gives Tully's a lever for growing revenue per site beyond simply adding stores, as Japan's cafe chains compete increasingly on food as well as drinks.