Case Study

Case number:

Case 1

Case Title:

THE JOLLIBEE BUSINESS CONCEPT

I. Time Frame

The history of Jollibee dates backs to 1975, when a Filipino entrepreneur Tony Tan Caktiong (Tony) set up a two-outlet ice cream parlor business in the city of Manila. His father used to operate a kitchen in Fujian (China), which was where Tony’s association with the food business began.

Though the ice cream parlor business was doing well, Tony wanted to do something bigger in the food business, in the form of a fast-food outlet chain. His vision was inspired by the global popularity of companies like McDonald’s (which incidentally was planning to enter the Philippines during that time), Wendy’s and Burger King (these two already had a presence in the Philippines). Deciding against becoming a McDonald’s franchise, Tony established his own chain of seven hamburger outlets in 1978 under the name of Jollibee. In 1979, Tony and his brother went to the US to study the fast-food business. They spent a couple of weeks looking at the kind of equipment used, the retail outlets, the food served and various other things.

Tony decided to copy almost each and every aspect of US fast-food majors, particularly McDonald’s. He said, “From the start, we were willing to copy.” The aim was to avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ and to benefit from tested business practices. In 1978, Tony per-empted McDonald’s entry into the country by establishing Jollibee. Tony was aware that Jollibee could not compete with McDonald’s which had financial muscle and decades of expertise in the business.

“Ordinary people with extraordinary achievement” said by Tony Tan Caktiong, the president of Jollibee Foods Corporation. The company started in 1975 as an ice cream parlor, and now it becomes one of the fast-food major from the Philippines. Jollibee had over 223 outlets across the world with annual sales of $7,778 million (Pesos) dollar by the end of 1997(Bartlett &...