Dining and Entertainment Districts

[jbkayaker12]

Originally Posted by amigo32

hahahahaha! look what mcdo, kenny rogers roasters, KFC are doing. Pinoy style na sila dito. May rice na sila, Mcdo may spaghetti... KFC dati bun lang ngayon may rice na rin.

McDonalds in the Philippines is 100% locally owned and no longer part of the original Mcdonalds chain. The local owners had bought out the American partners in the Philippine Mcdonalds chain.

[612bv3]

Originally Posted by JoeyIncali

Why go to Jollibee when you can go to a local turo-turo?

Agree, I don't even understand why there's a Jollibee in North America. There are many independently owned Filipino restaurants here that they can go to. If they want fast-food, there are plenty of McDo, BK, KFC, etc. here. Unless they can offer something that other fast-food restaurants don't, I can't see them surviving for very long here.

[InformaticIAN]

There's a Jollibee being built in Saudi Arabia (dunno exactly if its in riyadh) but for unkown reason they closed...yung franchiser ng Jolibee SA, sila rin yung may ari ng Jolibee sa Tayuman at Pasig simbahan. In fairness, sa Jollibee ko lang natikman ang pinaka masarap ng Spaghetti so far.

[kennethologist]

it's a big WHY NOT... but jollibee needs to be adaptive (as said before) to wherever it goes in the globe while offering true filipino taste. IMO they should start offering world known filipino recipes muna here to establish the filipino flavor around the world thus creating a sole identity for the bee. kase the problem with jollibee bakit hindi sila makapenetrate outside is their stuck with what they have in the philippines. and you know what they have here? sweetened versions of american favorites. (spaghetti, burger, chicken...) there are not alot of items in their menu that we can call TRULY Filipino.

[MainDiish]

exactly, even Wendy's in Japan, I heard that they are adding sushi in the menu because majority of people likes sushi with wasabe. Same thing with Jollibee if they want to be successive they should blend in with the crowd..

[Æsahættr]

Oh god this is making me hungry.

I love Jollibee's spaghetti!

[Louman]

Originally Posted by 612bv3

Agree, I don't even understand why there's a Jollibee in North America. There are many independently owned Filipino restaurants here that they can go to. If they want fast-food, there are plenty of McDo, BK, KFC, etc. here. Unless they can offer something that other fast-food restaurants don't, I can't see them surviving for very long here.

When you walk in a Jollibee outside of the Philippines, it's like being back in Pinas again. haha.. Plus, you can brag that Jollibee is kicking Mcdonald's ass in the Phlippines and the only local fast food restaurant chain in the world to do it.

[Siopao]

Originally Posted by lotrfan55345

Oh god this is making me hungry.

I love Jollibee's spaghetti!

I miss Jollibee! I hope they gonna make a franchise here in Toronto

[Aragon]

Originally Posted by InformaticIAN

There's a Jollibee being built in Saudi Arabia (dunno exactly if its in riyadh) but for unkown reason they closed...yung franchiser ng Jolibee SA, sila rin yung may ari ng Jolibee sa Tayuman at Pasig simbahan. In fairness, sa Jollibee ko lang natikman ang pinaka masarap ng Spaghetti so far.

a kilala ko yung may-ari ng jollibee tayuman a.....it's a partnership or something

[Siopao]

Jollibee stings McDonald's in Philippines

By Carlos H. Conde International Herald Tribune

TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2005


MANILA Sometime in the late 1970s, Tony Tan Caktiong, the owner of a small ice cream parlor in a lower- middle-class neighborhood here, learned that an American hamburger chain was coming to invade the Philippines.

Worried that his store, which had just started selling burgers, might get floored by the new competition, Tan Caktiong, a Filipino of Chinese descent, took a leaf from the Chinese military tactician Sun Tzu: he flew to the United States to know his future enemy.

When he returned to the Philippines a few weeks later, Tan Caktiong brought with him an arsenal of ideas on how to fortify his store, called Jollibee, to face the newcomer.

What followed was a classic tale of survival that quickly became a Filipino legend that is now being retold in the country's business schools, often with a tinge of nationalistic pride directed against the U.S. burger chain in question, McDonald's.

Tan Caktiong had no choice but to reinvent Jollibee.

"He was told that either he sold Jollibee to McDonald's or be its franchise holder here. 'They will eat you alive,' his friends told him," said John Victor Tence, vice president for corporate and human resources of Jollibee Foods.

Described by friends as self-effacing and frugal but determined, Tan Caktiong told his friends, "I have a third choice: I can fight McDonald's."

And fight he did, using as weapons the very things that made McDonald's successful: the mascot, the colorful uniforms of the crew, their cheerful greetings, French fries, fried chicken and a burger aimed at Filipino tastes and priced much lower.

"He brought the standards of Jollibee notches higher, at least on par with McDonald's, by basically copying what McDonald's was doing," Tence said.

By the time McDonald's put up its first store here, in 1981, it no longer offered anything new. Jollibee, meanwhile, was already prepared, having opened nine branches and started an aggressive marketing campaign. Jollibee entered the list of the top 1,000 corporations in the Philippines that same year. By 1984, it was in the Top 500 list and dominated the local fast-food market.

The Philippines, The Economist magazine wrote in 2002, "is a huge embarrassment to McDonald's," citing a Taylor Nelson Sofres study showing that Jollibee was the "most often visited" fast-food restaurant in the country.

Jollibee had grown so big and confident that, in 1986, it opened its first store overseas, in Taiwan. It was a sign of things to come. In 1998, Jollibee would encroach on McDonald's home territory, opening its first U.S. store in Daly City, California, which has a large Filipino population.

Today, Jollibee has more than 500 stores in the Philippines and 25 in other countries, selling more than half a million burgers every day. McDonald's has about 250 outlets in the Philippines, according to Cerwin Eviota, a public relations consultant for the chain.

Aside from the United States and Taiwan, Jollibee also has stores in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Saipan and Brunei, as well as in Vietnam, where sales grew 46 percent in the first quarter of 2004.

Jollibee Foods also embarked on an ambitious expansion program domestically and overseas, and not just for its flagship stores.

It bought Chowking, a popular Filipino fast-food chain that sells mainly Chinese food; it is now the dominant Chinese fast-food chain in the Philippines and has even entered the Indonesian market. Jollibee also acquired the local franchise for Delifrance, a French café and bakery chain.

It also bought Greenwich, a small pizza chain that has grown larger in the Philippines than another American giant, Pizza Hut. And it acquired Yonghe King, a fast-food chain in China. All in all, Jollibee Foods has 1,186 stores in nine countries, including 120 in China.

Jollibee is now the largest Filipino food company, with sales of 21.7 billion pesos, or $397 million, in 2004, up 13.7 percent from a year earlier. Sales in the first quarter of 2005 were up almost 20 percent.

Yonghe King sales in China grew 27 percent in the first quarter. All its other stores are doing well, with Delifrance increasing its sales by almost 32 percent in the first quarter of 2005.

The value of Jollibee stock has grown 28 percent since last year, and it was the best-performing domestic stock on the Philippine stock exchange.

Jollibee's business, said Jose Vistan of AB Capital Securities, "will be driven primarily by their expansion in other countries like China and the robust domestic market." Vistan forecasts Jollibee's profit for 2005 at 1.83 billion pesos, a jump of 21 percent from last year.

According to company officials and food experts, Jollibee owes its success to the fact that it respects local tastes. Unlike McDonald's, which was constrained by its obligation to remain faithful to its core products, Jollibee was flexible.

Gene Gonzalez, a restaurateur and food consultant who runs the Center for Asian Culinary Studies based in Manila, said Jollibee adjusted its burger to taste like the meatballs that Filipinos like eating. "Unlike Americans, Filipinos do not like pure beef patties, which can be bland. They like their burgers to taste like meatballs, which are stronger-flavored, with flavor extenders - spices, garlic, onion, celery," he said.

It helped that Jollibee makes sweet spaghetti, which is a turnoff to foreigners but loved by Filipinos, particularly children. It also offers Filipino fare like palabok - vermicelli noodles topped with sauce and fish flakes - and arroz caldo - rice porridge with chicken bits.

"These did not taste fast-foody at all," Gonzalez said. "The Jollibee palabok is decent palabok." Jollibee, he said, has a "good understanding of Filipino culture and taste."

Tence said that as the company expanded to more countries, it would use the same model.

"Initially, our thrust was to target Filipinos overseas, but we learned that targeting Filipinos was simply not enough," he said.

Then there is the culture factor. As part of its strategy to counter the Western image of McDonald's, Jollibee's marketing campaign promoted Filipino values like respect for elders, patriotism and loyalty to the family.

"Jollibee had this big marketing campaign that appealed to Filipino sentiment," Gonzalez said. Instead of running ads in English, as McDonald's did, Jollibee ran ads in Tagalog, the Filipino language.

It may be hard for McDonald's to match that, but it is certainly trying. This year, the McDonald's Philippine franchise became 100 percent Filipino-owned, which gave its owners some flexibility. George Yang, the Filipino-Chinese chairman of Golden Arches Development, the local McDonald's franchisee, now has taken a leaf from Tan Caktiong's book.

Yang said that his full acquisition of the franchise here would enable McDonald's to "give our customers even more by being more sensitive and responsive to their changing tastes and wants and by adding a local flavor to our product range."

MANILA Sometime in the late 1970s, Tony Tan Caktiong, the owner of a small ice cream parlor in a lower- middle-class neighborhood here, learned that an American hamburger chain was coming to invade the Philippines.

Worried that his store, which had just started selling burgers, might get floored by the new competition, Tan Caktiong, a Filipino of Chinese descent, took a leaf from the Chinese military tactician Sun Tzu: he flew to the United States to know his future enemy.

When he returned to the Philippines a few weeks later, Tan Caktiong brought with him an arsenal of ideas on how to fortify his store, called Jollibee, to face the newcomer.

What followed was a classic tale of survival that quickly became a Filipino legend that is now being retold in the country's business schools, often with a tinge of nationalistic pride directed against the U.S. burger chain in question, McDonald's.

Tan Caktiong had no choice but to reinvent Jollibee.

"He was told that either he sold Jollibee to McDonald's or be its franchise holder here. 'They will eat you alive,' his friends told him," said John Victor Tence, vice president for corporate and human resources of Jollibee Foods.

Described by friends as self-effacing and frugal but determined, Tan Caktiong told his friends, "I have a third choice: I can fight McDonald's."

And fight he did, using as weapons the very things that made McDonald's successful: the mascot, the colorful uniforms of the crew, their cheerful greetings, French fries, fried chicken and a burger aimed at Filipino tastes and priced much lower.

"He brought the standards of Jollibee notches higher, at least on par with McDonald's, by basically copying what McDonald's was doing," Tence said.

By the time McDonald's put up its first store here, in 1981, it no longer offered anything new. Jollibee, meanwhile, was already prepared, having opened nine branches and started an aggressive marketing campaign. Jollibee entered the list of the top 1,000 corporations in the Philippines that same year. By 1984, it was in the Top 500 list and dominated the local fast-food market.

The Philippines, The Economist magazine wrote in 2002, "is a huge embarrassment to McDonald's," citing a Taylor Nelson Sofres study showing that Jollibee was the "most often visited" fast-food restaurant in the country.

Jollibee had grown so big and confident that, in 1986, it opened its first store overseas, in Taiwan. It was a sign of things to come. In 1998, Jollibee would encroach on McDonald's home territory, opening its first U.S. store in Daly City, California, which has a large Filipino population.

Today, Jollibee has more than 500 stores in the Philippines and 25 in other countries, selling more than half a million burgers every day. McDonald's has about 250 outlets in the Philippines, according to Cerwin Eviota, a public relations consultant for the chain.

Aside from the United States and Taiwan, Jollibee also has stores in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Saipan and Brunei, as well as in Vietnam, where sales grew 46 percent in the first quarter of 2004.

Jollibee Foods also embarked on an ambitious expansion program domestically and overseas, and not just for its flagship stores.

It bought Chowking, a popular Filipino fast-food chain that sells mainly Chinese food; it is now the dominant Chinese fast-food chain in the Philippines and has even entered the Indonesian market. Jollibee also acquired the local franchise for Delifrance, a French café and bakery chain.

It also bought Greenwich, a small pizza chain that has grown larger in the Philippines than another American giant, Pizza Hut. And it acquired Yonghe King, a fast-food chain in China. All in all, Jollibee Foods has 1,186 stores in nine countries, including 120 in China.

Jollibee is now the largest Filipino food company, with sales of 21.7 billion pesos, or $397 million, in 2004, up 13.7 percent from a year earlier. Sales in the first quarter of 2005 were up almost 20 percent.

Yonghe King sales in China grew 27 percent in the first quarter. All its other stores are doing well, with Delifrance increasing its sales by almost 32 percent in the first quarter of 2005.

The value of Jollibee stock has grown 28 percent since last year, and it was the best-performing domestic stock on the Philippine stock exchange.

Jollibee's business, said Jose Vistan of AB Capital Securities, "will be driven primarily by their expansion in other countries like China and the robust domestic market." Vistan forecasts Jollibee's profit for 2005 at 1.83 billion pesos, a jump of 21 percent from last year.

According to company officials and food experts, Jollibee owes its success to the fact that it respects local tastes. Unlike McDonald's, which was constrained by its obligation to remain faithful to its core products, Jollibee was flexible.

Gene Gonzalez, a restaurateur and food consultant who runs the Center for Asian Culinary Studies based in Manila, said Jollibee adjusted its burger to taste like the meatballs that Filipinos like eating. "Unlike Americans, Filipinos do not like pure beef patties, which can be bland. They like their burgers to taste like meatballs, which are stronger-flavored, with flavor extenders - spices, garlic, onion, celery," he said.

It helped that Jollibee makes sweet spaghetti, which is a turnoff to foreigners but loved by Filipinos, particularly children. It also offers Filipino fare like palabok - vermicelli noodles topped with sauce and fish flakes - and arroz caldo - rice porridge with chicken bits.

"These did not taste fast-foody at all," Gonzalez said. "The Jollibee palabok is decent palabok." Jollibee, he said, has a "good understanding of Filipino culture and taste."

Tence said that as the company expanded to more countries, it would use the same model.

"Initially, our thrust was to target Filipinos overseas, but we learned that targeting Filipinos was simply not enough," he said.

Then there is the culture factor. As part of its strategy to counter the Western image of McDonald's, Jollibee's marketing campaign promoted Filipino values like respect for elders, patriotism and loyalty to the family.

"Jollibee had this big marketing campaign that appealed to Filipino sentiment," Gonzalez said. Instead of running ads in English, as McDonald's did, Jollibee ran ads in Tagalog, the Filipino language.

It may be hard for McDonald's to match that, but it is certainly trying. This year, the McDonald's Philippine franchise became 100 percent Filipino-owned, which gave its owners some flexibility. George Yang, the Filipino-Chinese chairman of Golden Arches Development, the local McDonald's franchisee, now has taken a leaf from Tan Caktiong's book.

Yang said that his full acquisition of the franchise here would enable McDonald's to "give our customers even more by being more sensitive and responsive to their changing tastes and wants and by adding a local flavor to our product range."

MANILA Sometime in the late 1970s, Tony Tan Caktiong, the owner of a small ice cream parlor in a lower- middle-class neighborhood here, learned that an American hamburger chain was coming to invade the Philippines.

Worried that his store, which had just started selling burgers, might get floored by the new competition, Tan Caktiong, a Filipino of Chinese descent, took a leaf from the Chinese military tactician Sun Tzu: he flew to the United States to know his future enemy.

When he returned to the Philippines a few weeks later, Tan Caktiong brought with him an arsenal of ideas on how to fortify his store, called Jollibee, to face the newcomer.

What followed was a classic tale of survival that quickly became a Filipino legend that is now being retold in the country's business schools, often with a tinge of nationalistic pride directed against the U.S. burger chain in question, McDonald's.

Tan Caktiong had no choice but to reinvent Jollibee.

"He was told that either he sold Jollibee to McDonald's or be its franchise holder here. 'They will eat you alive,' his friends told him," said John Victor Tence, vice president for corporate and human resources of Jollibee Foods.

Described by friends as self-effacing and frugal but determined, Tan Caktiong told his friends, "I have a third choice: I can fight McDonald's."

And fight he did, using as weapons the very things that made McDonald's successful: the mascot, the colorful uniforms of the crew, their cheerful greetings, French fries, fried chicken and a burger aimed at Filipino tastes and priced much lower.

"He brought the standards of Jollibee notches higher, at least on par with McDonald's, by basically copying what McDonald's was doing," Tence said.

By the time McDonald's put up its first store here, in 1981, it no longer offered anything new. Jollibee, meanwhile, was already prepared, having opened nine branches and started an aggressive marketing campaign. Jollibee entered the list of the top 1,000 corporations in the Philippines that same year. By 1984, it was in the Top 500 list and dominated the local fast-food market.

The Philippines, The Economist magazine wrote in 2002, "is a huge embarrassment to McDonald's," citing a Taylor Nelson Sofres study showing that Jollibee was the "most often visited" fast-food restaurant in the country.

Jollibee had grown so big and confident that, in 1986, it opened its first store overseas, in Taiwan. It was a sign of things to come. In 1998, Jollibee would encroach on McDonald's home territory, opening its first U.S. store in Daly City, California, which has a large Filipino population.

Today, Jollibee has more than 500 stores in the Philippines and 25 in other countries, selling more than half a million burgers every day. McDonald's has about 250 outlets in the Philippines, according to Cerwin Eviota, a public relations consultant for the chain.

Aside from the United States and Taiwan, Jollibee also has stores in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Saipan and Brunei, as well as in Vietnam, where sales grew 46 percent in the first quarter of 2004.

Jollibee Foods also embarked on an ambitious expansion program domestically and overseas, and not just for its flagship stores.

It bought Chowking, a popular Filipino fast-food chain that sells mainly Chinese food; it is now the dominant Chinese fast-food chain in the Philippines and has even entered the Indonesian market. Jollibee also acquired the local franchise for Delifrance, a French café and bakery chain.

It also bought Greenwich, a small pizza chain that has grown larger in the Philippines than another American giant, Pizza Hut. And it acquired Yonghe King, a fast-food chain in China. All in all, Jollibee Foods has 1,186 stores in nine countries, including 120 in China.

Jollibee is now the largest Filipino food company, with sales of 21.7 billion pesos, or $397 million, in 2004, up 13.7 percent from a year earlier. Sales in the first quarter of 2005 were up almost 20 percent.

Yonghe King sales in China grew 27 percent in the first quarter. All its other stores are doing well, with Delifrance increasing its sales by almost 32 percent in the first quarter of 2005.

The value of Jollibee stock has grown 28 percent since last year, and it was the best-performing domestic stock on the Philippine stock exchange.

Jollibee's business, said Jose Vistan of AB Capital Securities, "will be driven primarily by their expansion in other countries like China and the robust domestic market." Vistan forecasts Jollibee's profit for 2005 at 1.83 billion pesos, a jump of 21 percent from last year.

According to company officials and food experts, Jollibee owes its success to the fact that it respects local tastes. Unlike McDonald's, which was constrained by its obligation to remain faithful to its core products, Jollibee was flexible.

Gene Gonzalez, a restaurateur and food consultant who runs the Center for Asian Culinary Studies based in Manila, said Jollibee adjusted its burger to taste like the meatballs that Filipinos like eating. "Unlike Americans, Filipinos do not like pure beef patties, which can be bland. They like their burgers to taste like meatballs, which are stronger-flavored, with flavor extenders - spices, garlic, onion, celery," he said.

It helped that Jollibee makes sweet spaghetti, which is a turnoff to foreigners but loved by Filipinos, particularly children. It also offers Filipino fare like palabok - vermicelli noodles topped with sauce and fish flakes - and arroz caldo - rice porridge with chicken bits.

"These did not taste fast-foody at all," Gonzalez said. "The Jollibee palabok is decent palabok." Jollibee, he said, has a "good understanding of Filipino culture and taste."

Tence said that as the company expanded to more countries, it would use the same model.

"Initially, our thrust was to target Filipinos overseas, but we learned that targeting Filipinos was simply not enough," he said.

Then there is the culture factor. As part of its strategy to counter the Western image of McDonald's, Jollibee's marketing campaign promoted Filipino values like respect for elders, patriotism and loyalty to the family.

"Jollibee had this big marketing campaign that appealed to Filipino sentiment," Gonzalez said. Instead of running ads in English, as McDonald's did, Jollibee ran ads in Tagalog, the Filipino language.

It may be hard for McDonald's to match that, but it is certainly trying. This year, the McDonald's Philippine franchise became 100 percent Filipino-owned, which gave its owners some flexibility. George Yang, the Filipino-Chinese chairman of Golden Arches Development, the local McDonald's franchisee, now has taken a leaf from Tan Caktiong's book.

Yang said that his full acquisition of the franchise here would enable McDonald's to "give our customers even more by being more sensitive and responsive to their changing tastes and wants and by adding a local flavor to our product range."

MANILA Sometime in the late 1970s, Tony Tan Caktiong, the owner of a small ice cream parlor in a lower- middle-class neighborhood here, learned that an American hamburger chain was coming to invade the Philippines.

Worried that his store, which had just started selling burgers, might get floored by the new competition, Tan Caktiong, a Filipino of Chinese descent, took a leaf from the Chinese military tactician Sun Tzu: he flew to the United States to know his future enemy.

When he returned to the Philippines a few weeks later, Tan Caktiong brought with him an arsenal of ideas on how to fortify his store, called Jollibee, to face the newcomer.

What followed was a classic tale of survival that quickly became a Filipino legend that is now being retold in the country's business schools, often with a tinge of nationalistic pride directed against the U.S. burger chain in question, McDonald's.

Tan Caktiong had no choice but to reinvent Jollibee.

"He was told that either he sold Jollibee to McDonald's or be its franchise holder here. 'They will eat you alive,' his friends told him," said John Victor Tence, vice president for corporate and human resources of Jollibee Foods.

Described by friends as self-effacing and frugal but determined, Tan Caktiong told his friends, "I have a third choice: I can fight McDonald's."

And fight he did, using as weapons the very things that made McDonald's successful: the mascot, the colorful uniforms of the crew, their cheerful greetings, French fries, fried chicken and a burger aimed at Filipino tastes and priced much lower.

"He brought the standards of Jollibee notches higher, at least on par with McDonald's, by basically copying what McDonald's was doing," Tence said.

By the time McDonald's put up its first store here, in 1981, it no longer offered anything new. Jollibee, meanwhile, was already prepared, having opened nine branches and started an aggressive marketing campaign. Jollibee entered the list of the top 1,000 corporations in the Philippines that same year. By 1984, it was in the Top 500 list and dominated the local fast-food market.

The Philippines, The Economist magazine wrote in 2002, "is a huge embarrassment to McDonald's," citing a Taylor Nelson Sofres study showing that Jollibee was the "most often visited" fast-food restaurant in the country.

Jollibee had grown so big and confident that, in 1986, it opened its first store overseas, in Taiwan. It was a sign of things to come. In 1998, Jollibee would encroach on McDonald's home territory, opening its first U.S. store in Daly City, California, which has a large Filipino population.

Today, Jollibee has more than 500 stores in the Philippines and 25 in other countries, selling more than half a million burgers every day. McDonald's has about 250 outlets in the Philippines, according to Cerwin Eviota, a public relations consultant for the chain.

Aside from the United States and Taiwan, Jollibee also has stores in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Saipan and Brunei, as well as in Vietnam, where sales grew 46 percent in the first quarter of 2004.

Jollibee Foods also embarked on an ambitious expansion program domestically and overseas, and not just for its flagship stores.

It bought Chowking, a popular Filipino fast-food chain that sells mainly Chinese food; it is now the dominant Chinese fast-food chain in the Philippines and has even entered the Indonesian market. Jollibee also acquired the local franchise for Delifrance, a French café and bakery chain.

It also bought Greenwich, a small pizza chain that has grown larger in the Philippines than another American giant, Pizza Hut. And it acquired Yonghe King, a fast-food chain in China. All in all, Jollibee Foods has 1,186 stores in nine countries, including 120 in China.

Jollibee is now the largest Filipino food company, with sales of 21.7 billion pesos, or $397 million, in 2004, up 13.7 percent from a year earlier. Sales in the first quarter of 2005 were up almost 20 percent.

Yonghe King sales in China grew 27 percent in the first quarter. All its other stores are doing well, with Delifrance increasing its sales by almost 32 percent in the first quarter of 2005.

The value of Jollibee stock has grown 28 percent since last year, and it was the best-performing domestic stock on the Philippine stock exchange.

Jollibee's business, said Jose Vistan of AB Capital Securities, "will be driven primarily by their expansion in other countries like China and the robust domestic market." Vistan forecasts Jollibee's profit for 2005 at 1.83 billion pesos, a jump of 21 percent from last year.

According to company officials and food experts, Jollibee owes its success to the fact that it respects local tastes. Unlike McDonald's, which was constrained by its obligation to remain faithful to its core products, Jollibee was flexible.

Gene Gonzalez, a restaurateur and food consultant who runs the Center for Asian Culinary Studies based in Manila, said Jollibee adjusted its burger to taste like the meatballs that Filipinos like eating. "Unlike Americans, Filipinos do not like pure beef patties, which can be bland. They like their burgers to taste like meatballs, which are stronger-flavored, with flavor extenders - spices, garlic, onion, celery," he said.

It helped that Jollibee makes sweet spaghetti, which is a turnoff to foreigners but loved by Filipinos, particularly children. It also offers Filipino fare like palabok - vermicelli noodles topped with sauce and fish flakes - and arroz caldo - rice porridge with chicken bits.

"These did not taste fast-foody at all," Gonzalez said. "The Jollibee palabok is decent palabok." Jollibee, he said, has a "good understanding of Filipino culture and taste."

Tence said that as the company expanded to more countries, it would use the same model.

"Initially, our thrust was to target Filipinos overseas, but we learned that targeting Filipinos was simply not enough," he said.

Then there is the culture factor. As part of its strategy to counter the Western image of McDonald's, Jollibee's marketing campaign promoted Filipino values like respect for elders, patriotism and loyalty to the family.

"Jollibee had this big marketing campaign that appealed to Filipino sentiment," Gonzalez said. Instead of running ads in English, as McDonald's did, Jollibee ran ads in Tagalog, the Filipino language.

It may be hard for McDonald's to match that, but it is certainly trying. This year, the McDonald's Philippine franchise became 100 percent Filipino-owned, which gave its owners some flexibility. George Yang, the Filipino-Chinese chairman of Golden Arches Development, the local McDonald's franchisee, now has taken a leaf from Tan Caktiong's book.

Yang said that his full acquisition of the franchise here would enable McDonald's to "give our customers even more by being more sensitive and responsive to their changing tastes and wants and by adding a local flavor to our product range."

[renell]

Sorry mate, I don't know how else besides being bored that I could read that article.

Back to the question: They've already started to expand, but it hasn't been as successful in California as I thought it would be, given the number of Filipinos there. How many are there? In ratio to the Filipinos in Cali?

They will find it to hit the European market, simply because fast-food isn't highly regarded there.

[Siopao]

I dont expect anyone to want to.. sorry I coudve put it much shorter ..

[weirdo]

maiksi lang naman siya. naulit ulit lang. paki edit na lang siopao.

[Lili]

I remember there was a time that the better-tasting hamburger in the Philippines was Tropical Hut. Is there still Tropical Hut? Also, there was a time before that Jollibee was rumored to have used cultured worms as extenders (wormburger) but the taste became awful. They also used camote for fries. With the coming of McDo, Jollibees food products actually started to taste better.

That's why competition is good because it pushes the companies to produce better products and goods.

[Thunderflip]

I think it is time that Jollibee should expand throughout the world.
This fastfood giant is a bestseller in the country, why can't it make it big abroad too? Expanding a firm internatinally is the whole sense of industrializing. If they are aiming for non-Filipino masses, why not put up chains in Vietnam, China and india? I am sure it will make it big there. If they want to start in developed nations, I hope Jollibee meets the strict health and quality standards. The question of food, it is nice patriotizing local food but I think it would also be a good idea to try to fit in to the country's of their chains. For example, Jolibbee Sushi in Japan and Korea, Jollibee Curry in India and Pakistan, Jollibee chnitzel in Germany. When Jollibee becomes ahuge money earner, it will contribute a lot to the economy, just think of the money it will bring to the Philippine stock markets. Actually there are many Filipino firms that could make it big if they just try. I was actually also thinking of SM and other Philippine firms going global.

[tyronne]

what Jollibee is trying to do is Niche Marketing and they have done a great job so far. expanding abroad is not that easy. you have to have a strategy and what jollibee did is to cater to markets where there's a large concentration of filipinos. that explains why they built their international branches in Guam, Daly City, Vallejo, Brunei, HK, etc. in the first place because many filipinos live/work there. attracting the mainstream customers is just an added bonus.

i don't see Jollibee to change tactics in the short-term; in the long run, maybe. for now, i believe they're better off serving their specific target market and just improve their product's quality.

by the way, do jollibees in pinas have Ginataan, Arroz Caldo, Halo-Halo and Pearl Coolers, too? coz the one in Daly City has those.

[612bv3]

Originally Posted by Siopao

I dont expect anyone to want to.. sorry I coudve put it much shorter ..

You could make it shorter by deleting parts of it, if you look closely, the article repeats itself 3 times.

[Lili]

I'd like to see Red Ribbon expand here but it may be farfetched. I love their pastries. I have not tasted anything close to it even in Italian pastry shops and hotels.

[612bv3]

Originally Posted by tyronne

by the way, do jollibees in pinas have Ginataan, Arroz Caldo, Halo-Halo and Pearl Coolers, too? coz the one in Daly City has those.

The Pearl Coolers are great, I love them.

Do you know what happened to the Jolibee in San Francisco? It suddenly disappeared.

[tyronne]

@612: yeah i feel bad that they closed it. now i have to go to Daly City if i want jollibee. i guess it wasn't doing well. even their japanese fastfood stores Tomi's Teriyaki near Union Square closed. i guess the newly opened San Jose Jollibee will make up for it.

@ate lili: we have red ribbon over here i like their ensemada.