Jollibee Foods: to sell Delifrance cafe chain

Manila / PH. (div) Jollibee Foods Corporation is selling its French cafe business to a newly formed unit of listed Euro-Med Laboratories Philippines Inc., seeking to focus on larger quick-service restaurants. In a disclosure Jollibee Foods said that the «wholly owned subsidiary Fresh N´ Famous Foods Inc. … entered into an agreement to sell assets of its Delifrance business unit to CaféFrance Corporation». The sale and purchase of assets is expected to be completed on December 31, with the purchase price estimated at 100 million PHP to be paid in cash. Health care products company Euro-Med Laboratories formed CafeFrance in August. Under the deal, Fresh N´ Famous Foods will terminate its franchise agreement with Delifrance Asia Limited on December 31. According to the release the deal is part of Jollibee Foods´ intention to concentrate its resources in building larger quick-service restaurant businesses». The fast food giant acquired the Delifrance franchise, an international pizza-pasta and French cafe-bakery, in 1995. Jollibee operates the largest quick-service restaurant network in the Philippines with a total of 1’582 stores to date. There are 702 Jollibee stores nationwide, 406 Chowking Chinese restaurants, 221 Greenwich pizza houses, 215 Red Ribbon bakeries, 23 Delifrance outlets and 15 Manong Pepe restaurants.