MANILA - In 8 years, homegrown food retailer Jollibee Food Corporation is aiming to have the same number of overseas branches as their over a thousand locally-based ones, a key official said during a recent stockholders meeting.

As of end-March, Jollibee operated a total of 1,515 stores nationwide and 306 stores abroad. It also invested half a billion pesos to improve 132 stores in the Philippines and abroad.

Store expansions in recent years have approximated a 60:40 ratio in favor of more Phlippine-based stores. This year, Jollibee is planning to open a total of 186 branches, about the same number it opened last year.

"Hopefully next year, we'll open more stores abroad than in the Philippines," said Jollibee chairman and chief executive officer Tony Tan Caktiong at the sidelines of the company's annual stockholders' meeting on Friday.

This decade has been a busy one for the food retailer, which operates popular brands like burger chain Jollibee, Chinese fastfood restaurant Chowking, pizza chain Greenwich, Red Ribbon bakeshop, and French cafe franchise Delifrance.

From its days as a copycat of global burger chain McDonalds in the 80’s, it has zoomed past competition, achieved a formidable No. 1 position in the local food industry despite propensity of locals for anything American.

After achieving critical mass in the Philippines, the local market has become small for the listed company to keep on posting growth year after year.

In the past years, it has been making its presence in overseas markets, initially following the tens of millions of homesick overseas Filipino workers (OFW) who populated west coast of the United States and Middle Eastern countries. Eventually, it has also entered markets like Vietnam and China that are not exactly typical OFW destinations, but because of these countries growing middle class.

In the process, Jollibee has made its mark as one of the truly homegrown multinational companies.

Local taste

A key to Jollibee’s initial successes in the Philippine market has been its openness to adjust to Filipinos’ taste: It offered sweet-sauced spaghetti and rice-based menu.

Tan Caktion said that while they are actually exporting the Filipino brands in their overseas expansions, the company will not snub what the customers in their stores abroad want.

"We continued to understand and adapt to the local tastes, giving us more chances to serve under a wider variety of food to many other people in many other places. This is in fact the idea behind our theme 'Growing by Adapting the Flavors of the World'," Tan Caktiong said.

He added that Jollibee is continuing to find ways to keep customers coming back to their restaurants as people hold back on spending to make the most out of their hard-earned money.

It seems to be paying off. Despite consumers’ efforts to scrimp, Jollibee reported a net income of P562 million for the first three months of 2009, a 17.2-percent rise from P480 million recorded in the same period last year.

"We'll focus on value and product taste," Tan Caktiong said. "We believe that we can serve better-tasting, better quality food at more affordable prices than what are available out there today."