Jollibee keen on winning North American market

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June 2, 2025 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — Homegrown fast-food chain Jollibee is confident that it can win the quick service restaurant (QSR) battle in the North American market which is currently dominated by industry giants such as McDonald’s, KFC and Popeyes.

Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) chief financial and risk officer Richard Shin said the group’s flagship Jollibee brand managed to record a 6.4 percent same store sales growth in the first quarter in North America despite a softness in the market’s QSR segment during the period.

“I think we have to be transparent and say that we’re not the biggest player in North America. So some of these big names, like Popeyes, KFCs, have a lot more stores. So when this sort of macro or consumer sentiment softness happens and so on, these larger companies tend to have more challenges,” Shin said.

“For us, we had growth. We had high single digit growth in North America, again, coming from a smaller base,” he said.

Jollibee closed the first quarter with a total of 1,779 stores globally, 1,293 of which are in the Philippines.

In North America, the brand has 104 stores.

Early last year, JFC opened the 100th Jollibee store in North America, located in Strawberry Hill, British Columbia, Canada.

“So yes, North America, we’ve seen very good results. We hope to continue to do this of course, as we get bigger and scale up as well,” Shin said.

“But I think the point here is Jollibee is a brand that’s catching attention, that’s getting some love and we’re getting voted by consumers and other opinion leaders as a really outstanding product. So I think it starts with the taste and the product. Our price positioning is, of course, very good, and it’s just a very lovely brand that people want to get behind. So we’re very blessed with that,” he said.

Shin earlier said that on top of defending its strength in its home country of the Philippines, JFC aims to be able to get a good-sized scale business in the US for both the QSR segment as well as the very large area of beverage, which for the group is coffee and tea.

“The other big brand, of course, is CBTL (The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf). We only have 200 cafes, mostly in California, but we are very actively looking to expand our footprint. So we’re looking at growth again, in both where we are, but also potentially in new states within the US,” Shin said.

“So I guess, the underlying theme for us is such a big QSR market for both food and beverage. In fact, the world’s largest QSR market. And so for us, being relatively small compared to all these big players, we have nowhere else to go but grow,” he said.