In the wise words of Britney Spears on “Break the Ice,” it’s been a while.
Last week, I corresponded with the Jollibee spokesperson, whose patience I have tested again and again for the past eight months now. Time sure flies. (I mean, that Britney song is 18 years old!) And, like clockwork, there’s still no official opening date for the Market Street Jollibee, but she offered a tantalizing non-statement statement: “The store is making progress,” she said in an email.
PROGRESS! We have PROGRESS!
It feels like I’m getting Charlie Brown’d every time I write one of these Jollibee Watch columns, which is why I haven’t published one in nearly six months. That’s been the line for as long as we’ve been keeping tabs on the Jollibee, which has now been under construction since the slow-and-then-fast downfall of the nearby San Francisco Centre. But wouldn’t you know it, we have real proof of PROGRESS — and an honest-to-goodness conversation with a Jollibee staffer inside the premises.
As first spotted by the intrepid TikTok user @ducinsf earlier this week, there has been motion inside the storefront since the last Jollibee Watch. He peered through the tarp-covered looking glass, and saw cash registers, light fixtures, and a nearly completed interior. In other words, PROGRESS.
I had to see it for myself.
Lo and behold: This small act of trespass was a success. A sign posted outside read: “INTERVIEW GOING ON PLEASE KNOCK.” I didn’t knock (much to my editor’s consternation), but I did my best to sneak a photo or two of the interior. Before I could get an HD shot, a gray-haired man, presumably a manager of the regional varietal, opened the door.
"Are you here for an interview?" he asked me.
I identified myself as a reporter. He misheard me, and for a split second, I was about to enter the next phase of my life as a Jollibee employee, which, given the state of journalism in 2026, might be PROGRESS.
I repeated myself, and he understood.
He closed the door curtly, before I could snag a better photo of the interior or ask him when the store would finally, finally open.
I can tell you this: the inside is nearly complete. There are a handful of four-tops, the cash registers are installed, and there was even another Jollibee employee decked out in the requisite red, seated to interview prospective employees. So much PROGRESS.
If hiring goes smoothly, one can hope that they’ll open within a couple of months.
Hopefully, the grand opening comes sooner than that, but in the meantime I can take solace in the fact that the Jollibee in Alameda delivers to my neck of the woods now — and the chicken-and-spaghetti combo is still good even when it’s lukewarm. Perfect? No, but it is PROGRESS.
