Jollibee to put up 100 new stores in China

Fast-food giant Jollibee Foods Corp. plans to set up 100 new stores across China this year under various brands, in a bid to sustain the double-digit growth of its business in Asia’s largest economy.

In an ING-Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines CFO Forum, Jollibee chief finance officer Ysmael Baysa said the group’s business in China was growing at 30 percent a year and now accounted for 11 percent of worldwide sales.

As of end-June, Jollibee had 368 stores in China across its three brands Yonghe King, Hong Zhuang Yuan and San Pin Wang.

“We are in 22 cities and six provinces,” said Baysa, who was the ING-Finex “CFO of the Year” in 2010.

Jollibee has also teamed up with Taiwan’s leading restaurant operator Wowprime Corp. to own and operate a hot pot dining chain in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. This joint-venture deal added a fourth restaurant brand in China: 12 Sabu brand.

To support its restaurant chain in China, Baysa said that the Jollibee group had established a central commissary or common food production hub in China.

Baysa also said that Yonghe King, the group’s flagship brand in China, had been named for the second straight year as the No. 1 “most recognized non-Western restaurant in the whole of China,” based on a reputable brand power survey.

But despite the Jollibee group’s headway in China achieved through the acquisition of Chinese brands, Baysa said the group’s business in that large market was still in its infancy.

Asked whether the tension between the Philippine and China in Scarborough Shoal was affecting Jollibee’s business in the mainland, Baysa said: “Our experience in China is that the government has been very supportive of our ventures.”

Baysa explained that Jollibee had entered the Chinese market via three acquisitions of homegrown brands and this would not have been possible without the Chinese government’s support.

“In all of those cases, we didn’t encounter barriers to those ventures. Our relationship with government agencies in China is very positive,” he said.

At the end of the day, he said he was confident the Philippines and China would be able to resolve their territorial issues.—Doris C. Dumlao