WhereIsAtlas · Jollibee
What Happened to Jollibee?
How a family ice cream parlour in Quezon City became the chain that beat McDonald's in the Philippines — and then went global.
Jollibee began in 1975 as an ice cream parlour in Cubao and grew into the Philippines' dominant fast-food chain by cooking for Filipino tastes instead of importing someone else's menu. Today it is the flagship of Jollibee Foods Corporation, a global operator that reached 109 North American stores in 2026 — while trimming expansion and closing underperforming restaurants at home and abroad.
Two ice cream parlours in Cubao
Jollibee began in 1975 with two ice cream parlours in Cubao, Quezon City, opened by Tony Tan Caktiong and his family. It was a small, unglamorous business in a market where the international chains had not yet fully arrived, and it was not obviously the beginning of anything historic.
The beginning of the story is what customers did next. People kept ordering hot food — sandwiches, noodles, burgers — more than they ordered ice cream. Rather than defend the original concept, the family changed it, and in 1978 the business was incorporated as Jollibee Foods Corporation with a fast-food menu at its centre.
The pivot to fried chicken
Jollibee's menu was built for the people eating it. Where the global template pushed a standard burger, Jollibee served rice with its fried chicken, seasoned the spaghetti sweet the way Filipino families actually made it, and put a burger called the Champ on the menu to compete head-on with the biggest names in the business. Chickenjoy — crispy fried chicken with gravy and rice — became the item the chain is known by.
The bee mascot, the red-and-yellow stores and the deliberately family-friendly tone did the rest. Jollibee was not a copy of an American restaurant; it was a Filipino restaurant that happened to be a fast-food chain, and that distinction is the reason it survived.
Beating McDonald's at home
When McDonald's entered the Philippines in the early 1980s, the conventional expectation was that the local chain would be squeezed out. Instead, Jollibee fought and won. It expanded aggressively, used its understanding of local taste and pricing to hold its ground, and by the 1990s had established itself as the country's leading fast-food brand — a victory that has become a standard business-school case study in how local rivals can beat global giants on their own turf.
Jollibee listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange in 1993, which gave it the capital to grow both at home and abroad, and the chain became a national institution: the place where Filipino families celebrate birthdays, and a brand that shows up in the country's pop culture as reliably as its fried chicken.
Going international
Jollibee's first moves overseas followed the Filipino diaspora, whose appetite for home made the brand a natural export — stores in the United States, the Middle East and across Southeast Asia served communities who already knew the menu. Its first United States restaurant opened in California in the late 1990s.
The export then began to broaden. Non-Filipino customers turned up for the fried chicken and the novelty of sweet spaghetti, and the chain's growth in North America accelerated: by May 2026 Jollibee had reached 109 restaurants across the continent, opening its third Manhattan location in Midtown. The brand that once had to prove itself against foreign competition in Manila is now the foreign competition.
The empire beyond the bee
The bigger story is the parent company. Jollibee Foods Corporation bought its way into new categories and geographies: Chowking, Greenwich, Red Ribbon and Mang Inasal in the Philippines, Highlands Coffee in Vietnam, stakes in Smashburger and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in the United States, Milksha in Taiwan, Tim Ho Wan dim sum and, in 2024, a majority stake in South Korea's Compose Coffee.
That portfolio made Jollibee Foods Corporation one of Asia's largest restaurant groups — and it made the company's fortunes depend on far more than a bee mascot. Founder Tony Tan Caktiong remains chairman, and the group's global scale is now the basis of its next plan.
Growing up: the 2026 reset
Growth has brought growing pains. In 2026 the group cut its store-expansion and capital-spending targets and closed a reported 207 restaurants, as cost-of-living pressure and softer consumer spending made some outlets unviable. In the same year it set out to list its international business in Hong Kong — a spin-off that would separate the group's overseas empire from its Philippine heartland.
Read together, those two moves are the same story: Jollibee has become large enough that it can no longer grow simply by adding stores, and must choose where to concentrate. Even so, the brand reported record quarterly results in 2026, with international sales doing much of the work.
Where Jollibee is now
Jollibee is active, expanding and profitable, but no longer a purely Philippine story. Its stores in the Philippines remain the foundation, it is the country's dominant fast-food chain, and Chickenjoy is as close to a national dish as a commercial recipe gets. Abroad, the chain has 109 North American restaurants and a growing presence in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The next chapter is corporate rather than culinary: a Hong Kong listing for the international business, a leaner expansion plan and a focus on the markets where the bee already sells. Jollibee's rise was built on the simple insight that a chain which cooks for its own customers can beat one that does not — and it is now testing whether that insight travels.
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Sources
- Jollibee - Wikipedia — Wikipedia (2026-09-15)
- History and Milestones — Jollibee Group (2026-09-15)
- About Jollibee — Jollibee Philippines (2026-09-15)
- Jollibee chain reaches 109 stores in North America — Philippine Daily Inquirer (2026-09-15)
- Jollibee closes 207 restaurants, cuts expansion — TheStreet (2026-09-15)