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In 1981, McDonald's arrived in Manila with thousands of stores behind it, and a Filipino chain with about two dozen outlets was advised to steer clear of the fight.
Forty-five years later, that chain holds roughly half the country's burger-and-chicken market, McDonald's has under a third, and Jollibee Group runs more than 10,700 stores worldwide.
📊 Snackable Stat — 81%
The Philippines’ share of Jollibee Group’s operating income in 2025
Here’s what you’ll learn:
How Jollibee found a crack in McDonald’s menu and turned it into a decade-long head start
The “Volume” game Jollibee used to win against McDonalds.
How acquisitions and diversification can supercharge international expansions.
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A Giant With One Weakness
McDonald’s arrived in the Philippines in 1981 with the advantages of a global chain: capital, systems and a name everyone knew.
Jollibee had grown out of two ice-cream parlors opened in 1975. They added burgers when customers preferred them. And it was still small. CEO Ernesto Tanmantiong remembers being told that in any country McDonald’s entered, it swallowed its competitors.
Management responded by running a side-by-side comparison of the two companies. According to Tanmantiong, McDonald’s won every category except one: TASTE.
Jollibee was behind on equipment, look and systems but Asian customers always preferred food with more flavor.
They also had another advantage: Menu freedom.
A global chain standardizes its menu to keep quality and costs predictable, which makes it slow to adapt. Tanmantiong says it took McDonald’s roughly a decade to localize, and that gap was Jollibee’s head start
Sweet Spaghetti, Small Stores
Jollibee built its menu around flavors its rival didn't sell. Its Jolly Spaghetti comes in a sweet red sauce with slices of hot dog. The fried chicken, Chickenjoy, started as a locally tuned recipe of the chicken sandwich. Today it accounts for about 30% of orders.
The second decision was about the map and arguably a more important one.
Tanmantiong says that for every large McDonald’s, Jollibee opened about six small stores around it, and that the smaller stores generated more sales per square meter than McDonald’s single location.
It’s important to note that those are management claims, and the company has not published the data behind them. The logic holds up anyway. Small stores cost less to open, so a chain can put more of them closer to more customers.
Thanks to this model, they were able to keep market share from McDonald's.
But a company that dominates its market gains little from expanding locally so it has to grow by acquiring.
Using the profits from the business, Jollibee bought Greenwich Pizza in 1994, Chowking in 2000, Red Ribbon in 2005 and Mang Inasal in 2010. Combined, its brands now make up more than half of the Philippines’ quick-service sector.
Overseas, the company first followed the Filipino diaspora, opening in Taiwan in 1986 and in Daly City, California, in 1998.
Half the Burger Market, Four-Fifths of the Profit
In 2025, system-wide sales rose 16.6% to ₱455.1 billion, and revenue climbed 13.0% to ₱305.1 billion. Operating income rose 19.3% to ₱20.1 billion, a margin of roughly 6.6%, and same-store sales in the Philippines grew 5.2%.
Expansion built on acquisitions and new stores gets paid for well before it pays back. The group ended 2025 with 10,341 stores after opening 1,126 during the year, its most ever.
To be fair, most of those stores are not Jollibees.2,700 were Compose Coffee, an acquisition, and another 1,246 were The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. The flagship Jollibee brand had 1,240 restaurants in the Philippines and 420 abroad in 2024.
The profit mix shows how far the playbook has actually traveled. International operations contributed 19% of operating income in 2025, up from 12.7% a year earlier, and the Philippines supplied 81%.
The Jollibee brand itself looks better. Its U.S. system-wide sales rose 17.3% in 2025, and Tanmantiong claims half of its American customers are not Filipino. That would matter, because the victory over McDonald’s depended on a customer base that already preferred the taste. The overseas test is whether Chickenjoy can win people who did not grow up with it. For now, the Philippines still pays for that experiment.
Key takeaways to consider…
Attack the giant’s weakest category. Jollibee did not try to match McDonald’s on equipment or systems. It built around taste.
Store format can be a competitive weapon. Six small stores around one large one beat McDonald’s on sales per square meter. The physical layout can matter as much as what it sells.
Judge an international expansion by profit mix, not store count. Jollibee Group has 10,341 stores, yet the Philippines still earns 81% of operating income and most overseas stores belong to acquired coffee brands. This allows them to expand carefully and reliably.
🍫 Power Numbers
₱455.1 billion - Jollibee Group's FY2025 system-wide sales, up 16.6% year over year
10,341 - Stores across the Jollibee Group's global network at the end of 2025, following a record 1,126 openings
97% - Share of Jollibee Group's operating profit generated in the Philippines in 2023
50% - Jollibee's estimated share of the Philippine chicken-and-burger market compared with McDonald's 29%
30% - Share of Jollibee orders accounted for by Chickenjoy
2,700 - Compose Coffee stores in March 2025, exceeding the Jollibee brand's restaurant count
For further reading, we recommend:
It was written by our friend Jaka, who also posted a prequel to that issue in Profit Snack in September. In it, he broke down how Skool's founder recognized a massive market opportunity. But his newest issue is all about how the founder optimized Skool for growth, all the way from the first hire, before a single line of code was written. It's a short 4-min read and covers some of the company's biggest needle-movers in partnerships as well as product-led growth.
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