Jollibee expects rapid growth in China operation

After dominating the local fast-food restaurant market for the last few decades, homegrown Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) now wants to replicate the same success in China—now emerging as the world’s largest economic power.

JFC chairman Tony Tan Caktiong said the group was drawing up plans to tap new markets in the Asia-Pacific region such as Indonesia, with the Philippine market already nearing its saturation point.

“China is doing very well for us. We have 300 stores. Still, for that size of market, it’s still very small,” he said. “We expect China [operations] to grow 40 percent this year alone.”

“We’d like to open even more as we go along. As long as we offer the same principle of serving good food and good value, customers will come. We’ll keep pushing growth in China,” he told reporters.

Jollibee operates in China under two brands—Yonghe King and Hong Zhuang—both specializing in Chinese cuisine. Last year, the company also announced it was taking a majority stake in the firm that owned Chinese fast-food noodle chain San Pin Wang.

Last week, the company announced that it would open 90 new store locations in China—the group’s biggest expansion plan in that country in a single year.

“The rapid expansion this year will be supported by more than P5 billion [$112 million] in funds,” JFC said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

Tan Caktiong said the company would open even more stores in the coming years. “We’d like to have more stores because the demand is always there,” he said, noting that the challenge for the company would be to train more people and expand its internal capacity to support the growth.

Aside from China, JFC also operates in Brunei, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. The company also has a presence in several Filipino-American communities in the United States.

About a third of JFC’s revenues come from its overseas operations. “We’d like that to be up to 50 percent in the next five to seven years,” Tan Caktiong said.

JFC ended 2010 with 2,316 stores around the world, up 23 percent from the year before. Its end-2010 profit hit P3.2 billion, up 20.5 percent from 2009.