“If you dream big and put your dreams into action you will indefinitely make mistakes.
But don’t be scared to make mistakes just be quick to regain recognize them learn from them as
fast as you can.” This famous line was the secret of Mr. Tony Tan Caktiong’s business success.
Tony Tan Caktiong is Filipino-Chinese businessman whom known to as the founder of the
Jollibee Corporation. His tagline “happy, always smiling bee” remarks the beginning of the world
renown fast-food chain in the Philippines and even in the world.
Tony’s family was not wealthy that’s why they move from Fujian, China to Manila in the
belief that there are greater opportunities in the Philippines. Tony was in 5 th of January 1953 in
Fujian and move in the Philippines when he was still young. His father work as a chef in one of
the temples in Binondo and because of his skillful talent as a chef, his father was entrusted to
manage a restaurant in Davao. Tony’s family move to Davao and because of his dad good talent
his family were able to sent Tony back to Manila to study at University of Santo Tomas and took
Chemical engineering. During his venture in Manila as an engineering student, his class visit the
plant of Magnolia Ice Cream, this visit became memorable for he bumped into a poster
advertisement for franchising ice cream stall for Php 17,500.00. This captured the interest of
Tony to franchise an ice cream stall.
He introduced it to his family and his family supported him, with his family saving of Php
350, 000.00 Tony were able to purchased to franchise and put it up to Cubao and Quiapo. Both
branches were named Cubao Ice Cream House and Quiapo Ice Cream House. These attracts
many people and customer that Tony were able to support his own lifestyle. In the long run his
family went back to Manila and focus on managing Tony’s ice cream houses. In two years,
Tony’s business expanded and add burgers and fried chicken to their menu. And because of
business piled up, he decided to leave the name ice cream house and rebrand his store,
inspired by the bees for being so industrious, he took it and because he has the goal of serving
food for the filipino to make them happy. And many of them call Tony’s food servce as Filipinos
comfort food. The name took place as “jolly” and “bee” and Jollibee was born.
In the year 1978, Jollibee, was formally inaugurated with the concept of serving Filipino
comfort food. During this year a great competition comes in, when McDonald’s enter Philippines
in the 1980 which came into the scene as the major competition of Jollibee. Jollibee was able to
ultimately understand the Filipino market by incorporating Filipino sweet blend in their specialty.
Jollibee continue to prosper over the years, as of now, Jollibee has a market value of 25 million
pesos as a franchise fee. As of now Jollibee Corporation expand a lot more because of merges
done by the businesses such as Greenwich, Chowking, Burger King, Delifrance, Red Ribbon
and Mang Inasal. Tony Tan Caktiong was known to be 2003 fifth richest businessman in the
Philippines according to Forbes magazine. His story of success inspires many entrepreneur to
dream big and create more possibilities. Today Tony’s family savor and harvest the fruit of their
labor form hardships and continue to inspire more business minded individuals and helped
millions of people, students and out of school youth to be employed.
