Jollibee Foods Corporation (JFC) is seeking to grow its presence in the United States through the expansion of its flagship Jollibee, which is aimed at the fried chicken market, while continuing to develop its Mexican food brand Tortazo.

In a media briefing, Jollibee Chief Finance Officer Richard Shin said they are planning to enter 30 major US cities where competing fried chicken brands such as Popeyes and Kentucky Fried Chicken have already established their presence.

“The 30 cities that we’ve identified, we’ve also identified where we have stores and where we have white space… So we’ll start to fill in those 30 locations because they had the highest disposable income as a percentage spent on our segment,” he said.

Jollibee currently has 100 stores in North America of which 72 stores are in the US and 28 in Canada. “So that’s our footprint today. We are in 14 states… From 14 states, the opportunity really is to expand to other states that we currently are not in,” Shin said.

Meanwhile, Jollibee is not giving up on its 52.6 percent-owned fast casual Mexican restaurant Tortazo, despite suffering losses in the last four years.

Shin explained that, “In the US, one out of 10 restaurant dollar goes to Mexican cuisine. The number one and number three beer brands in America are Mexican brands. So your average Americans, whether they be Latinos, or African Americans or Asian Americans, or European Americans really craves good quality Mexican cuisine.”

“Tortazo gives us a very interesting opportunity to really study that category more specifically in the US, because US is one of our three geographic pillars. So China, US, Philippines. So that's why we do invest in a brand like Tortazo to continue to our participation in it. And also continue to understand the category better because, in the future, there could be an opportunity there,” he added.

Tortazo, a joint-venture between Jollibee and US chef Rick Bayless, posted a loss of P168.68 million last year, up from P164.87 million the prior year. Since being incorporated in 2018 under Tortazo, LLC, where Jollibee initially had a 47 percent stake, Tortazo only reported profits the first two years of its operation — P24.9 million in 2019 and P34.72 million in 2018.

In 2020, the high of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tortazo posted a P34.7 million loss, which grew to P135.02 million in 2021.

Jollibee initially invested $12.6 million in Tortazo, and then infused an additional $2.2 million in July 2020 and $3.5 million in July of last year which resulted in the firm gaining a controlling 52.6 percent stake.

Tortazo owns and operates two stores in the US and three licensed Tortas Frontera stores.