The humble beginning for Tony

In the Philippines, the term fast food is just about linked with the Jollibee brand.  It took more than just one man for it to become that way, but all it took to start was a man name Tony Tan Caktiong.  The humble beginning for Tony was working with his pa to operate a kitchen in Fujian, China.  In 1975, Tony commenced his entreprenuerial journey with simply two two ice cream parlors in Cubao, Quezon city. 

in spite of his success with the ice cream parlors, Tony failed to stop there.  He looked around the planet and saw the kind of success chains like McDonalds were having.  Instead of opening a franchise for an existing junk food chain like Burger King or Wendy’s, he decided to grow with the opening of his very own chain of hamburger-serving fast food restaurants named Jollibee in 1978. 

Since McDonald’s hadn’t yet entered into the Philippines, Tony capitalized on this fact by establishing his brand among the Filipino people.  Instead of making an attempt to find out everything from nothing, Tony journeyed to the US to learn the tricks of the trade from the already established chains like McDonalds.  By implementing these tried and tested business practices back in the Phlippines, Tony’s tough work started to repay when his business started to quickly expand.  The division of Jollibee Philippines really attempts to serve the specific wishes of the Filipino folk and its culture by focusing its product development as well as its promoting and advertsing to target the unique and standard Filipino family. 

Today Tony Tan Caktiong serves as a success story and an inspiration for entreprenuers around the world.  This was solified in 2004 when Tony was voted the businessman of the Year by Ernst & Young.  The chairman of Ernst and Young, James S.  Turley asserted,’These awards are about celebrating global entrepreneurship and the will to repeatedly innovate and expand.  Tony’s story is a very inspiring one, on both these counts.  We are happy he has been selected to receive this year’s award.’.

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