The Jollibee Group continues to be bullish about the prospects of its coffee shop businesses in the Philippines and overseas, particularly in Vietnam where it still has plans for an initial public offering (IPO) for Superfoods which owns the Highlands Coffee brand.

In an interview, Jollibee Foods Corporation Chief Financial Officer Richard Shin said they currently have about 700 Highlands Coffee stores in Vietnam, its home base, and around 40 stores in the Philippines run by a franchisee.

He said they are still expanding in Vietnam as there is plenty of room to grow even though there are already over 100,000 Vietnamese coffee shops.

However, Shin said they do not have a specific timeframe yet for the IPO noting that, “we're not in a rush. But, at the right time, we believe that this brand can be spun off as a separate, publicly-listed company."

“So that remains as part of our strategy but, again, only at the right valuation that maximizes value for our shareholders, and at the right time as well, because as you can see, we haven't really expanded this brand in too many countries. So therefore, I think there's a few steps ahead of the IPO,” he explained.

Abacus Securities Corporation said that, after Jollibee’s initial disclosure of plans for a Superfoods IPO, “it understandably was put on the backburner during the pandemic.”

It noted that, while systemwide sales of Superfoods was up 7.6 percent in the second quarter of 2023, sales were down 8.2 percent due to heavy competition and macroeconomic headwinds in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Shin said the Jollibee Group is still expanding its coffee shop businesses in the Philippines and is not worried that its several brands will be competing with each other since there is still a lot of room in the local market which has estimated sales of around $2 billion a year.    

He also noted that the Jollibee group will continue to focus on building coffee shops globally for its three brands over the next three to five years despite the growing popularity of coffee-on-the-go kiosks.

“We recognize that consumers want convenience. But they also want to have some sense of brand connection…And we think that investing in what we call the cafe model, the real sit down, has a lot of merit. In particular, places where we're competing against Starbucks,” Shin explained.

He pointed out that, as they expand, “we will continue to be very geographically focused and not to expand too quickly. But we do want to go step by step for all three brands. And leading the way for all three brands is of course Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.”

“So we have Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and I do want to emphasize ‘tea leaf.’ Because that alone is a segment in places like China where it’s a multi-billion dollar segment,” Shin said. 

Aside from CBTL and Highlands Coffee, Jollibee has recently acquired Taiwanese specialty coffee led by bubble tea called MilkSha. It has also announced that it will be adding Common Man Coffee Roaster of Singapore to its portfolio, starting with the Philippines. 

“It is a brand that we currently own through our investment in Titan fund, that managed has multi brands, including Tim Ho Wan,” Shin said. 

He said the Common Man brand will complement the group’s existing brand with its focus on “the more premium barista coffee.”

“So Common Man will be a different expression of coffee. And so therefore, we will not be cannibalizing or competing, if you will, with Highland coffee or CBTL. But in fact, it's a new segment of the larger coffee business. So again, we're very excited that we're testing this out in the Philippines, where we know we have some amazing operators within our company,” he said.

Shin noted that, “it's not going to be a 500, 600-store brand. But it's a wonderful product category. So we're going to be somewhere in that range of still keeping it very boutique, but also accessible to our consumers in particular starting with Metro Manila.”