Chowking may expand in the US and Middle East

Chowking Food Corp., a unit of listed food giant Jollibee Foods Corp., may put up more stores here and abroad. More fast-food stores will allow the food company to continue sales growth and tap the Filipino market abroad, the firm’s top executive said on Wednesday. "We still see a lot of potential in the Philippines and we will continue to build [stores] in the Philippines," Chowking Food President Erwin M. Elechicon said in a briefing. "We build at a rate of two a month or so [locally]," Elechicon said. Last week, Chowking Food opened its Session Road branch in Baguio City — its 400th store in the country. It also has 16 stores in the US and 14 in the Middle East. Chowking will focus on Filipino workers in Middle Eastern areas such as Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. "We are trying to understand what the impact of the crisis is in the United States but inevitably, we will be opening new stores, maybe one [or] two in the Middle East," Elechicon said. Overseas branches account for less than a tenth of revenues of the Chowking Food group, which was bought by Jollibee Foods, the country’s largest fast-food company, in 2000. "The focus of expansion [abroad] would be in places [such as] Abu Dhabi," he said. Last month, the food company opened its first store in Doha, Qatar. Chowking may also open stores in Rome, Barcelona and Milan, where there are Filipino communities. It takes about P12-P15 million to put up a Chowking store locally. Chowking Food’s best-selling products in the Philippines are the halo-halo dessert and chicken lauriat. Elechicon said the opening of new stores in the US hinged on the expansion of its franchisee, the California-based Seafood City Supermarket. "2009, in terms of sales and profit, was [the] highest," Elechicon said, without giving details. He added that revenues would still likely grow this year. Shares of Jollibee Foods, whose net profits went up by more than a tenth to P2.66 billion last year, were unchanged at P58.50 each. — Neil Jerome C. Morales, BusinessWorld