Jollibee-less

I've been on my toes waiting for Jollibee to start their operations in the east coast and it finally opened on Valentine's Day 2009.

Hubby and I were supposed to meet with a friend and his gf in NYC yesterday afternoon so we decided to maximize our trip to the city and drop by Woodside (Queens, NY) and have lunch at Jollibee. This was what met us when we got there:



and this line goes all the way to the back and around the corner and continues for a few blocks.



At first, we fell in line. Half an hour later, we've only succeeded in moving a few places forward and this was due to people in front who gave up and left.

I decided to ask around and got to talk to the manager. I was told that it's an average wait of 3 hours to get to the front of the line outside - this is just to get to the door. It does not include the wait time once you get inside because there are still long lines to the cashiers. She says that this is better than the day before because people were waiting 5 to 6 hours then.

We talked to the guy sweeping outside, he's a Jollibee employee. He says that the day before (opening day), they closed at 9pm but accomodated the people who were still in line at that time. They finally finished serving everybody by 3am and the crew were only able to go home by 5am.
Hubby and I left. I wanted to have some chickenjoy BUT not if I had to wait a few hours.

The novelty is bound to wear off after a while and we'll just come back in the future.