BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The COVID-19 outbreak is a sharp reminder that pandemics, like other

rarely occurring catastrophes, have happened in the past and will continue to
happen in the future. Even if we cannot prevent dangerous viruses from
emerging, we should prepare to dampen their effects on society. The current
outbreak has had severe economic consequences across the globe, and it does
not look like any country will be unaffected. This not only has consequences for
the economy; all of society is affected, which has led to dramatic changes in how
businesses act and consumers behave. This special issue is a global effort to
address some of the pandemic-related issues affecting society. There are
different industry sectors such as retail, tourism, industry etc., changes in
consumer behavior and businesses, ethical issues, and aspects related to
employees and leadership.
Homegrown fast-food giant Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) is shelling out P7
billion to embark on a “significant” global business restructuring to cope with what
could be a prolonged fallout from the new coronavirus disease pandemic.
As Asia’s most valuable restaurant chain braces for poor earnings
performance this year, it intends to streamline nonperforming stores and beef up
delivery, takeout and drive-through services across its businesses around the
world, especially in its largest markets which is the Philippines, China and North
America.
The expense provision for this transformation, which assumes that the
world will not quickly revert to the pre-COVID19 pandemic period will be set up in
the second quarter of 2020 and will be incurred mostly within the year.
JFC chair Tony Tan Caktiong said that with this global transformation, JFC
aimed to emerge in 2021 as an “even stronger business and organization”
The COVID-19 pandemic caused the temporary closure of a high number
of stores and dramatically reduced or eliminated dine-in sales at its restaurants,
starting in China in February, and the rest of the business in March, leading to
poor first quarter sales and profit performance.
According to Baysa, they are taking this opportunity to implement truly
major changes in 2020 so that JFC will start 2021 in a much stronger position in
terms of business model, operating efficiency, profitability and organization
strength, so that the corporation will then resume strong and consistent profitable
growth for the years ahead.
The planned changes will include the rationalization of the number of
restaurants within certain geography or area, the rationalization of resources
deployed in the restaurants, implementation of safety and social distancing
protocol in the dining area, investment in digital commerce and technology,
increase in the capacity for delivery-to-home and to-office, takeout and drive
through, installation of mobile applications to facilitate food ordering and
payment, establishment of “cloud kitchen” or unmarked delivery outlets with no
dine-in facility located in discreet, low rent sites and the rationalization of
production and distribution facilities. The changes will also include the
transformation of support and management groups in the field and in the offices.
JFC chief executive officer Ernesto Tanmantiong said that throughout
JFC’s journey from a single store business in the Philippines into a multinational
multibrand company, the group had always achieved improvement in the
effectiveness of the organization from deliberate changes in its operations.
He also said that it is again the time to embark on another business and
organization transformation in response to changing consumer behavior caused
by the COVID-19 pandemic.
While operating costs are significantly being reduced at all levels, such as
stores, commissaries, support services and main offices in all regions in the
world, the group expects to continue to open new stores on a very selective basis
for the balance of 2020. It expects to open a worldwide total of 171 company-
owned new stores and renovate 96 existing stores this 2020.
It also aims to secure for its future stores excellent locations that will
become available due to weak economic environment.
Since Jollibee Foods Corp. (JCF) has been known as the Asia’s most
valuable fast-food chain and as it experienced downfall due to pandemic the
researchers decided to conduct a research that aims to understand how JCF
cope up during this complicated times and situation. The corporation proves that
failure doesn’t stop the business to operate, it’s what makes the business keep
going and used is as stepping stone to climb out of their troubles by redesigning
the business structure to adapt the changed consumer behaviour and emerge as
a stronger business and organization in the future.
This research also aims to give knowledge and awareness to current and
aspiring entrepreneurs on how to overcome and prepare for situations like this,
which can be helpful in managing the business wisely and efficiently.
REFERENCES:
Donthu N., & Gustafsson A., (September 2020), Effects of COVID-19 on
business and research, Journal of Business Research, Volume 117, pages 284-
289,https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0148296320303830?
fbclid=IwAR1NTQffQSLcP5wT-aSzkHrZsGDgLRG4G-
qA5fL3d6fNsQmScIcEFwBIdtk
Abadilla D., (May 23, 2020), Jollibee embarks on Global Business Restructuring,
https://business.inquirer.net/298017/jollibee-embarks-on-global-business-
restructuring?
fbclid=IwAR0MYCHI43J7Gkh2djCYEkrpchJLwLmJq9mzNhg6T24_B8VL_b5_zm
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