METRO MANILA, Philippines – On August 8, 2014 Jollibee Foods Corporation (PSE: JFC) released an official statement to the Philippine Stock Exchange to address queries coming from investors, investment analysts, and members of the media. For the first seven days of August the company has been unable to serve customers with some items on its menu, including the famous Jollibee Chicken Joy.
This caused widespread alert and panic, as well as suspicion that the company was hit by the recent chicken scandal involving expired meat coming from China. Dubbed the Chicken Joy scandal, netizens went on to use the hashtag #chickensad to express their dismay over the incident.
Below is the full text of the press release.
The Jollibee Group of Companies: availability of products – Philippines
This pertains to the limited availability of products in some restaurant outlets of the Jollibee Group both company-owned and franchised stores, which is being experienced by many customers and discussed in the social media. The limited availability of products has caused the temporary closure of 72 stores of various JFC brands, representing 3.2% of its store network nationwide of 2,244 and the reduction in the menu of many stores. The affected stores are in Metro Manila and nearby cities.
In our estimate, the JFC group has not been able to serve the consumre to the extent of 6% of its normal nationwide sales in the first 7 days of August, 2014. Sales continued to grow for the Jollibee Group in the Philippines with same store sales growth of positive 4.0% in the first seven days of August, 2014 over the same period a year ago. Same store sales growth pertains to restaurants that have been open for at least 15 months. It excludes sales from new stores. Same store sales growth is a very good indicator of the health of the business as it is on a comparable number of base stores.
The Jollibee Group has sufficient raw materials, finished products and production capacity to meet the consumer demand for the entire month of August and for the months ahead …
The Jollibee Group has sufficient raw materials, finished products and production capacity to meet the consumer demand for the entire month of August and for the months ahead, both for local and imported goods, in line with its sales and product supply planning. The products are in the company’s various commissaries, warehouses and logistics center. JFC will also enhance its transportation delivery capability in the months ahead.
The product limitation has been caused by the migration to new systems that started on August 1, 2014, which has resulted in temporary slowdown in sales order taking, product loading and dispatch of transportation. This launch of the new enterprise platform is the largest investment in information technology in JFC’s history amounting to at least half a billion pesos for 2014 alone and involves the central integrating system, store information systems and several other systems. The purpose of this major investment is to prepare JFC for an accelerated business growth in the Philippines and abroad as it pursues its goal to become the largest Asian restaurant company and one of the most successful restaurant companies in the world.
The product limitation has been caused by the migration to new systems …
Jollibee Foods Corporation and its franchisee partners express their apology to their customers for the disappointment and inconvenience caused by not finding their favorite products in the stores or by seeing their nearby stores temporarily closed. The organization is doing its best to restore the availability of all its products to normal levels in the next few days, to reopen temporarily closed stores and to restore its excellent service to its customers.
JFC and its business partners look forward to the restoration of sales growth to higher levels for the remaining weeks of August and the continued strong growth of the Jollibee Group’s business for the entire year of 2014 and in the years ahead, both in the Philippines and abroad.
Jollibee Foods Corporation operates the largest food service network in the Philippines. As of June 30, 2014, it was operating 2,244 restaurant outlets in the country: Jollibee brand 839, Chowking 406, Greenwich 207, Red Ribbon 298, Mang Inasal 456 and Burger King 38. Abroad, it was operating 589 stores: Yonghe King (China) 311, Hong Zhuang Yuan (China) 43, San Pin Wang (China) 44, Jollibee 111 (US 30, Vietnam 49, Brunei 12, Saudi Arabia 10, Qatar 4, Kuwait 3, Hong Kong 1 and Singapore 2), Red Ribbon in the US 31, Chowing 46 (US 19, UAE 20, Qatar 5 and Oman 2), Jinja Bar (US) 3. The JFC Group had a total of 2,833 stores worldwide.
JFC also has a 50% interest in joint ventures for the following stores: Highlands Coffee (Vietnam, Philippines) 78, Pho 24 (Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, HongKong, Macau and Cambodia) 57, and Sabu (China) 12.