The Philippines loves Jollibee. Overseas Filipinos love it even more

Jollibee employees attend to customers at an outlet in Manila in 2015.

Photo: AFP No fast-food chain has ever meant quite what Jollibee means to Filipinos.

Forget McDonald’s and KFC, Jollibee – with its sweet spaghetti and crispy Chickenjoy – is something else entirely: a cultural anchor for a diaspora scattered across every continent on Earth.

With more than a million Filipinos leaving the Philippines every year in search of greener pastures abroad, the chain has followed them almost everywhere they have gone, building a brand that taps into deep emotions by offering a taste of home.

In the Philippines, where Jollibee operates over 1,000 outlets and is the dominant fast-food chain, it is simply part of the furniture.

Overseas, it is something closer to a lifeline.

Children enjoy Jollibee snacks outside an outlet in Manila with a McDonald’s logo in the background.

Photo: AFP Pia Lingasin knows that feeling well.

She was only 16 when her family traded Manila for California, but in the decades since Jollibee has been a constant reminder of home, offering a taste of the life she left behind. “I didn’t eat a lot of Jollibee growing up,” she said. “But when we migrated, we definitely caught up to the years of not having it.” Now 37, an accountant and a mother of two, Lingasin visits her local Jollibee at least twice a month.

The order never changes much: Chickenjoy, Jolly Spaghetti, a pineapple quencher, a peach mango pie.

But the ritual has taken on new meaning as her children – aged six and eight, both born and raised in the United States – have come to see the chain as their own entry point into a culture they know mostly through stories.

Jollibee, with its crispy Chickenjoy and sweet spaghetti, has become a cultural anchor for many Filipinos overseas.

Photo: Instagram/jollibee “It was something they learned early on that was distinctly Filipino,” Lingasin said. “When we mention we want ‘Filipino food’, they’d sometimes mention Jollibee as the answer!

They know that their non-Filipino friends may not have any idea what Jollibee is, so they talk to them about it.” For her children, she added, the fast-food brand had become “their Filipino story to share while they themselves are learning about their own culture”.

It is a sentiment shared by many Filipinos living overseas, who number more than 4 million in the US alone.

For them, Jollibee is part eatery, part cultural embassy and part time machine.

Danica Wilson, 41, grew up in Isabela, a provi

原文链接: 南华早报