DESPITE coming from a region full of celebrated cuisines, the food of the Philippines has a grim reputation among foreigners. Among its delicacies is the balut—a duck egg containing a two-week-old embryo, which is eaten straight from the shell. A more representative picture of local tastes is painted by the menu of Jollibee, a fast-food chain that peddles sugary burgers, noodles and fried chicken.

At home, Jollibee is much loved and highly profitable. But its attempts to conquer foreign markets have had only modest success. After decades of trying, the Jollibee chain has only 133 foreign branches (compared with 890 back home), catering mainly to clusters of expat Filipinos in places such as the Gulf and California.

Jollibee’s roots lie in a pair of ice-cream parlours opened in 1975 by Tony Tan Caktiong, the company’s founder and chairman. At home Mr Tan and his burger joints are feted for having survived the arrival of McDonald’s, which entered the Philippines in 1981. Today Jollibee far outsells its great rival there. It catered better to the whims of locals, who prefer dishes such as Jollibee Spaghetti—an odd Bolognese mixed with chopped frankfurters—to Western chains’ more savoury offerings. And it has marketed itself cannily as a family firm and a store of national pride.

Over the years Jollibee Foods, the parent company, has expanded to include restaurants run under a handful of other brands, including Chowking (which sells Chinese-style dishes) and the local Burger King franchise. Since 2010 the parent’s sales and net profits have increased by around 70%, to 118 billion pesos ($2.5 billion) and 5.4 billion pesos respectively, as the growth of Filipino call-centres and other outsourcing businesses has boosted overall consumer spending. The parent group’s total number of outlets has grown to more than 3,000 (of which 630 are abroad). The firm still has a lot of room to expand in fast-growing provinces beyond the densely populated main island of Luzon, which is home to only about half the country’s 100m people.

However, Mr Tan has long aspired to make Jollibee Foods a global champion. His current target is for the company’s foreign revenues eventually to be half of the total, up from less than one-quarter now. Managers talk of it becoming one of the world’s five most valuable fast-food operators. There are still substantial pockets of expats unable to feast on an Amazing Aloha Champ Burger (a bacon-cheeseburger with a wodge of pineapple), and in 2016 the company will open new branches of its eponymous chain in places such as Britain, Italy and Canada to reach them. But the company has gradually come round to the view that to reach its goal, it needs to buy foreign restaurant chains with menus better suited to the tastes of non-Filipinos.

A trio of chains acquired since 2004, offering Chinese cuisine, have given Jollibee Foods a sizeable foothold in mainland China. They now generate about 12% of its sales, though collectively they have taken a decade to turn consistently profitable. In January 2015 the company announced that it was part of a joint venture which plans to bring at least 1,400 branches of Dunkin’ Donuts to China in the next two decades, which will mean tussling with such fellow invaders as Starbucks and Costa Coffee.

America is the next frontier. In October Jollibee Foods said it would fork out a little under $100m—its biggest investment to date—for a 40% stake in Smashburger, an American “fast-casual” burger joint. That should allow it to benefit from America’s increasing fondness for slightly finer on-the-go nosh, which is shaking McDonald’s grip on its home market. Mr Tan said in November that he was looking for one or two further foreign acquisitions of the same size or bigger.

There is no guarantee that venturing into new markets with unfamiliar menus will succeed any better than its forays under its own brand. In America as in China, the market for all sorts of low-cost dining is getting ever more competitive. It will be vital to avoid unforced errors such as Jollibee’s shambolic overhaul of its IT systems in 2014, which briefly closed more than 70 of its branches and which is still weighing on its performance.

Some analysts back home are, however, confident it is up to the task. Creating a national brand in the Philippines, a disparate archipelago with distinct local cultures, will have been good practice for venturing abroad, reckons Ghia Yuson of First Metro Securities, a stockbroker in Manila. She thinks the relentless market research which has kept Jollibee in tune with Filipino food fads will also serve it well overseas. Furthermore, its strategy seems to be to buy food chains that are already well established and have capable managers, rather than buying weaker businesses and attempting to turn them around.

Several other cash-rich Philippine firms, such as Universal Robina, a food manufacturer, and Emperador, a distiller, are now spreading their wings across South-East Asia, says Hazel Tañedo of CLSA, another broker. But none has made so direct a beeline for the world’s biggest markets. If Jollibee’s American venture succeeds and its profits in China keep growing, it should boost ambition among other Filipino firms, even if it doesn’t change foreigners’ minds about the country’s cuisine.