Jollibee Foods Corp., the largest Asian food service company, said it plans to open its first stores in Canada and Europe and add more outlets in the United States next year.
Jollibee Group president Jose Miñana said in a recent interview the company was set to open a store in Winnipeg, Canada before the end of 2016 and another outlet in Ontario in 2017.
Miñana said the fastfood giant was also set to open an outlet in Florida, a store in Chicago and another in New York.
He said the company was starting to plant the seeds that would enable it to accelerate expansion in North America by 2018.
“We have just scratched the surface in the US because there are 3.4 million Filipinos in the US and we are only in 10 states for far. So definitely, there are a lot of opportunities there,” Miñana said.
The company is also opening a Jollibee store in Italy, which would be the group’s first store in Europe.
“We are targeting between 2017 to 2018 in Europe,” Miñana said.
Jollibee group earlier identified the Philippines, China and the US as the major markets for expansion and acquisitions.
Jollbee Group had a total of 3,236 stores worldwide as of end-October.
Jollibee operates the largest food service network in the Philippines with 2,565 restaurant outlets in the country. Jollibee brand 954 stores; Chowking, 465; Greenwich, 241; Red Ribbon, 385; Mang lnasal, 453; and Burger King 67.
It is also operating 671 stores overseas. Yonghe King (China) has 316 stores; Hong Zhuang Yuan (China) 42; San Pin Wang (China), 68; Dunkin’ Donuts (China) 8; Jollibee 157 (US 34, Vietnam 80, Brunei 14, Saudi Arabia 10, Qatar 4, Kuwait 4, Hong Kong 2, Singapore 4, Bahrain 1 and UAE 4); Red Ribbon in the US with 33; Chowking 44 (US 16, UAE 19, Qatar 4, Oman 2, Kuwait 2 and Saudi Arabia 1) and Jinja Bar (US) 3.
Jollibee reported a 6.1-percent increase in net income inched to P1.33 billion in the third quarter from P1.25 billion posted in the same period a year ago.
System-wide sales grew 12.4 percent in the third quarter to P36.32 billion from P32.3 billion in the third quarter of 2015.
