The Philippine Star

Jollibee completes Coffee Bean purchase

- By IRIS GONZALES

Jollibee Foods Corp. has completed its acquisitio­n of US-based The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf®., its biggest deal so far.

JFC acquired CBTL for $350 million on a debt-free basis with Java Ventures, a USbased wholly owned subsidiary of Super Magnificen­t Coffee Co. Pte. Ltd. (SMCC) Singapore as the acquiring entity.

SMCC Singapore is a subsidiary of Jollibee Worldwide Pte Ltd.

CBTL has business presence in 27 countries and is expected to add 14 percent to JFC’s global system wide sales, 26 percent to its total store network and bring its internatio­nal business’ contributi­on to 36 percent of worldwide sales.

JFC would become an important player in the large, fast growing and profitable coffee business with CBTL now JFC’s second largest business after the Jollibee brand.

This would bring JFC closer to its vision of becoming one of the top five restaurant companies in the world in terms of market capitaliza­tion.

As of Aug. 31, 2019, CBTL had 1,180 outlets, of which 336 are company owned and 844 are franchised.

Of the total, 288 are in the US, 439 in Southeast Asia including 150 in the Philippine­s and other parts of Asia.

JFC operates the largest food service network in the Philippine­s. As of the end of August, it was operating 3,226 restaurant outlets in the country.

These include 1,170 Jollibee branches, 600 Chowking, 283 Greenwich, 487 Red Ribbon, 582 Mang Inasal, 103 Burger King and One Pho24.

Outside the country, it has 1,437 stores, These include 324 Yonghe King (China), 44 Hong Zhuang Yuan (China), eight Dunkin’ Donuts (China), 243 Jollibee which are spread out in Vietnam, Brunei, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, Malaysia, United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Italy, United Kingdom and Guam.

It also has 30 Red Ribbon in the US, 47 Chowking, 355 Highlands Coffee, 34 PHO24, seven Hard Rock Cafe 7 and 345 Smashburge­r 345 stores.

This brings JFC Group’s store network to 4,663 stores around the globe.

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