Fast food chain McDonald’s has opened a pilot standalone café in Paris that serves a range including macarons and muffins, but no burgers.

The trial McCafé, in Rue Rambuteau near Les Halles opened at the end of August.

The new café serves coffee, croissants, brioches, cupcakes, club sandwiches and bagels, but burgers and fries are absent from the menu.

A spokeswoman for McDonald’s in France told British Baker: “The experiment has just begun; it is too early to formalise a balance sheet or anticipate deploying this test.”

McDonald’s launched its McCafé brand in 2003, opening standalone cafés in countries including America and New Zealand.

The McCafé concept came to the UK in 2012, but as a brand within existing McDonald’s stores not as a standalone concept.

At the moment, there are still no standalone McCafé outlets in this country, although a range of McCafé coffees and snacks including iced frappés and iced fruit smoothies are sold.

Meanwhile, in the UK, McDonald’s is spending £500m on rolling out tablets across its UK restaurants by 2018, giving customers the chance to play games, check Facebook or browse the web while they eat.

The tablets, from Samsung and other providers, are currently in place in 400 sites and conversions are taking place at the rate of one a day, a spokeswoman told British Baker.