January 13, 2025 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — Homegrown fast-food giant Jollibee plans to scale up its presence in the US, a market which the company sees as very important to its expansion drive.
Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) chief financial and risk officer Richard Shin said the company would continue to bolster its US presence through its flagship Jollibee brand.
“We’re very happy with the Jollibee brand’s growth in the US so we’ll continue to build out for that momentum,” he said.
Jollibee has 102 stores in North America as of September 2024.
Its North America network consists of 74 stores in the US and 28 in Canada.
“If you step back and look at the QSR (quick-service restaurants) category, as well as the very large area of beverage which is for us coffee and tea, if you look at these categories, one of the key must-wins in addition to defending our strength in our home country of the Philippines is really to be able to get a good-sized scale business in the US,” Shin said.
“And the reason I say that is when you look at the top five whom we look at daily, four out of the five are US-listed companies and the fifth one is Canada-listed but more or less a US brand. So I think it’s very clear in our industry that’s the place we need to devote some more energy and resources to which we are doing currently,” he said.
JFC opened the 100th Jollibee store in North America early last year, located in Strawberry Hill, British Columbia, Canada.
In June last year, Jollibee opened its first branch in Seattle, the brand’s third store in Washington State.
Jollibee earlier said it looks forward to entering new markets as it continues its expansion across North America.
Shin also previously said the company has identified the 30 top cities in the US for fried chicken using data that other major QSRs use as potential sites for new store expansion.
As it continues to penetrate big markets, the Jollibee Group is optimistic on seeing a growth trajectory in the next five years.
JFC has set a strategic roadmap for the next five years as part of its vision to become among the top five restaurant companies in the world.
The group is also aiming to triple its value in terms of net income attributable to equity holders of the parent company in five years.
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