🍗 The man behind Jollibee’s global appetite
Ernesto Tanmantiong is the founder and chairman of Jollibee Group, one of Asia’s most ambitious restaurant empires. What started as a small ice-cream parlour in the Philippines has grown into a global F&B powerhouse with 10,000+ stores across 33 countries.
Why he matters:
Tanmantiong built Jollibee by doing what global fast-food giants rarely dared — embracing local taste and culture instead of copying Western formulas.
Sweet-style spaghetti and the cult-favourite Chickenjoy helped Jollibee beat McDonald’s on its home turf, before taking Filipino flavours to the world.
His playbook proved that going global doesn’t mean losing your identity.
Today, he oversees a diverse portfolio including Jollibee, Chowking, Mang Inasal, Smashburger, and Tim Ho Wan, and has an estimated net worth of over $2 billion.
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