Jollibee embarks on aggressive expansion overseas

Fast food giant Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) has embarked on an aggressive expansion overseas, saying its operations remain strong despite the global economic downturn.

JFC has just opened a store in Queens, New York last February–its first outlet in the East Coast of US–and now sets sights on other populous cities.

The company is opening 12 more stores in Asia and the Middle East this year, of which four will be in Saudi Arabia, four in Vietnam, two in Dubai and one each in Qatar and Brunei. Macau is also another site that JFC is looking at.

In the US, the food firm eyes to open seven new stores before the end of 2010. These stores will be situated in San Diego, Rosemead and New West Covina in South California, Village Square and Colonnade in Las Vegas, and Concorde Seafood City in North Carolina.

“We envision that by the year 2020, Jollibee will already have 4,000 stores, 75 percent of which are outside the Philippines,” Dennis Flores, JFC vice president for international operations, said in a statement.

Flores said JFC continues to enjoy strong demand from Filipinos who are based overseas.

“If you look at the Middle East, there’s a lot of unfulfilled demand for Jollibee stores,” he explained. “If you go to Doha where there are 200,000 Filipinos, two stores are definitely not enough. Dubai has almost 300,000 Filipinos. So the way we’re looking at 2009, there will still be unfulfilled demands in these markets.”

Last year, JFC’s foreign operations accounted for already 16 percent of its system-wide sales. Its chairman Tony Tan Caktiong said, “our aim is to derive at least half of our revenues from outside the Philippines at some point in the future, both from organic growth and acquisitions.”

JFC was operating a total of 1,515 stores in the country and 289 abroad at end-2008. –abs-cbnNEWS.com