I Tried Working In a Fast Food Restaurant

Key Points:

• A personal journey working at Jollibee, a top fast-food restaurant.
• Experience learning the ropes from ordering to cooking.
• A challenge to meet Jollibee's gold standard with each dish.
• The final surprise of a franchise invitation after meeting the standards.

For years, I've been at war with fast food.
These are billion dollar corporations that I've always felt like weren't giving us what we deserve.
But I don't know what it's like to work behind the counter.
Today that all changes.
I'm actually going to be working at what I consider to be the best fast food restaurant in America, Jollibee.
They've won many of our challenges, and we're right next to their headquarters.
Obviously, my years of fine dining experience will help me. Right.

I'll be taking orders, working the fryer, and handling everything in between, all while the head chef of Jollibee North America puts me through a day of intense training.
And he is gonna make this easy for me because after my lessons, my name really is on the line as my cooking will be judged by one of the Internet's harshest critics.
Will I meet my beloved Jollibee's gold standard or will I flop?

It all starts here at the register.
I'm here with my friend Russell. He's gonna walk me through how to run this thing.
You take your orders over here.
Chicken tenders, your chicken sandwiches.
God, there's so many buttons.

I'm like, okay, so walk me through an order then.
Customer orders chicken joy with two sides and a drink.
Pick two piece chicken they want, price, finished order, and then the total while I’m out.
And go ahead and tap their card.

Okay. First of all, I've never worked front of house, and I've never worked a kiosk like this.
Should be interesting.
I can smile for giving that jolly spirit to them.
Show us your jolly spirit.
You wanna see my jolly spirit?

All trained up, ready to go.
And I got thrown in the deep end right away.
Oh, hello, Jolly. Morning.
How are you?
What can I get for you today?

Of course, it's a bucket meal. Deal.
All right, here we go.
We gotta start off strong. Do we?
Okay.
Okay. Already messed up a little bit.
The start I was hoping for, but we're trying.

I'm new here.
I'm learning today.
Absolutely.
Panicking, of course.
My first order is gigantic.
Will that complete order?

Yes. Lovely.
We'll let you know right up there when it's done.
So you got a tray over here, tells you what the order is.
Oh, my God.
I've never used one of these before.

Think as if you're the person eating it.
Right. You want to make sure you're putting in the fries in there and in the bag.
Little extra, little extra mashed potato.
Very good.
What does it say next?
Pineapple quencher.

Put ice up to the Jollibee's hat.
The Jollibee hat is a good unit of measurement.
A little more.
Little more, yeah.
Fries, mashed potato, pineapple quencher, bottled water.
We're good to go.

Can do 120.
You can also deliver it to them however you want to do it.
But of course, I had to go above and beyond and spread that jolly spirit.
Table service.
Table service. Go.
Here's your order. Please enjoy.

We got some extra plates and napkins for you.
Thank you for coming.
Yeah, we'd love to see you again.
All right. Great job.
Again. Register complete.
Now on to our next challenge.

I've never seen one of these up close before. Feel official.
Holding it.
Am. Am I popping?
All right. Same exact procedure of how we did it in the counter.
Normally, two people out here, one person takes the order and one person assembles the order.
So today we'll probably do a little bit of everything.
Sounds good.

Yeah, sounds.
Or maybe you can multitask, right?
I will try.
It's time for my first customer.
Oh, God, I'm nervous.
There's a car.

Hi, Jolly. Morning.
What can I get for you?
I would like to order 10 pieces Chicken Joy spicy.
How many pieces?
10 pieces.
10 pieces. Got it.
Three orders of pineapple punch.
Three orders of pineapple punch. No problem.

Hi, Jolly. Morning.
Cash your card.
Ask her.
How's your day going?
How's your day going?
Busy day.
And then we've got to get our order pulled together.

I don't know what I'm doing at all.
Chicken first dressing.
You got your next part coming up.
Okay.
Oh, God.
Joyful greeting. Strong.

Okay, come on.
Here we go.
I've got your... I don't know.
Here's your drink, your food.
Drive safe.
Enjoy your order.

Thank you.
Have a jolly day.
Have a jolly day. Very good job.
All right. I was good.
That was brutal.
Car.

Oh, God.
Hi, Jolly. Morning.
What can I get for you?
Sorry, I'm new here.
Look, I'm hustling, trying to just keep up.
It's much harder than it looks.

Of course you want to thank him for his patience, right?
Cause I'm slow today, guys.
Thank you for your patience.
I appreciate it.
I'm learning today.
Have a jolly morning and drive safe.

Great job.
I did it, guys.
Oh, my God.
Front of house. Done and dusted.
I'll be honest, that pushed me way outside my comfort zone with it being front of house.

But this next task should be familiar.
Actually cooking.
But then again, I've never done it in a fast food kitchen.
So I'm set up to make three things: the chicken sandwiches, burgers, and finally my all-time favorite fast food fried chicken.
The coveted chicken joy.

For years I've been trying to get a behind-the-scenes look on how they make it so gosh darn good.
And I'm finally almost there.
But first, a big challenge awaits me.
I need to get Jollibee and Chef Don's gold standard stamp of approval on the chicken sandwiches, then the burger.
Before I can even get near the chicken joy, it's a mountain I'm prepared to climb.

Time to put my skills to the test.
So I'm not gonna show you at all, but I'm just gonna tell you and we're gonna follow along.
We'll start with the buns.
Brioche are on the bottom.
Grab a good brioche.
Something nice and round.
Crown goes away from you.
Heel goes towards you down in the toaster oven.

So this way.
Drop.
There you go.
Grab a fillet.
Wow.
Oh my gosh.
So crisp.

Our dress station.
Oh, wow. Bun's already done.
Grab the umami mayo.
This guy here?
Yep.
Okay, Got it.
One shot on each.

Okay.
Oh, wow. It comes out trifecta.
This is why you guys saw stuff so well.
Look at that.
Filet goes on, crown goes on.
Chicken sandwich wrapper.

Oh my God.
It's so hard to grab with these gloves.
Original sandwich facing up on the packaging.
So you got original chicken sandwich so that faces away from you.
Oh, okay.
In the middle, flip forward from the bottom and then flip over and you fold the corners in nice tight package and then under.
Perfect.
Look at that dude.
So much chicken in here.

Can't even keep it round.
Next we are doing the spicy deluxe brioche bun on the bottom toward in a away like this.
Grab your pan, get a fillet.
Sriracha and bottom.
Okay.
Beautiful two piece jalapenos.
Filets on top, perfectly centered.

Then it's tomato lettuce.
So the restaurant's still running right now, by the way.
I'm in everyone's way.
God, this is so hard to get with these gloves.
I ended up getting two spicy chicken sandwiches up here.
Deluxe.
Sorry, deluxe.
Spicy, yes.

There's four.
Oh my God.
This goes centered.
Okay.
Bottom we gotta fold one only.
You grab two, you gotta only fold one package.
Oh, God.
So fold up, up.
Why am I having so much trouble with it?

Okay, one up.
Come on, Josh.
Then the next one.
I want it to look good.
The coordination is crazy.
Done this way.
And then fold it under.
Not great.
So a little messy.

We're gonna have to work on your saucy hands.
That's not quite gold.
Okay.
Okay. We'll do this one again.
We'll do this one again.

Not quite cutting it.
Fair play.
Now it's time for my gold standard test.
No help from Chef Dion at all.
I'm gonna be hands off.
Now buns in.

Trying to make it easier on myself with a more even patty.
Crazy fast, honestly.
Sriracha on bottom bun.
Throw it on your jalapenos.
Chicken fillet, tomatoes topped up with lettuce.
And crown your king.
We need to nail it this time.
All done in record time.

But did I do it right?
Gold standards.
Okay.
Thank God you've met the gold standard for chicken sandwiches.
Let's move on to burgers.

Next we're gonna do our cheeseburgers.
You guys just updated this.
This is like a brand new.
It's a classic burger bun in the middle.
These are butter toasts.
So roll it on the butter roller, both sides.

Got it.
There.
Go.
I love the butter roller.
I've used one of these before, actually.
Grab your meat.
Got it.

Oh, wow.
Okay, to hit consistency, everything is on a timer.
We're gonna hit the timer, and we'll know when to flip.
Butter the grill.
Okay, beef down.
Now we're gonna season on the bun.

We're gonna start constructing.
We're gonna grab our dressing on the crown only.
Draw a W with your ketchup.
A W.
Yeah.
Rick.
Oh, that's a pretty good W, dude.
W.
Three rings of onions.
Three pickles.

Okay.
All right.
Then we turn back to our beef.
You're gonna flip it.
When it beads, it flips.
There you go.
Beautiful.
Cheese on top.

This was a pretty decent marg.
It's not bad.
Not bad.
I'm not mad.
Thermometer.
You want it fully cooked?
Give her a little flip.
Boom. Boom.

All right.
And this is the cheese.
So this one right here.
All right.
Yeah, that's a good looking burger.
I actually really want to eat that.
Now that I've walked you through it, I'm gonna see if we can make a burger on your own.

Just so you know, we will be judging you on how much of that sear you keep on that burger.
Right, Right.
That's very fair.
I think you should.
First a bun, obviously.
Butter.
Boom.
Toast that.

So butter it generously.
Go here.
Get our patty.
Hey, gloves.
Toasted buns.
Top bun.
Ketchup.
Okay.
Three onion rings.

Your pickles.
Waiting for it to loosen.
All right, flip.
Yeah.
All right, we got it.
Cheese temp check.
Okay, burner over.
Cheeseburger.
Okay.
Cheeseburger.
We think, right?

What are we thinking?
That looked like beautiful Maillard fully covered.
You've hit the gold standard on this one.
Let's move on to Chicken Joy.
This.
This is it.
This is the one.
This is the one that's won all the challenges.
I finally get to know how it's made.

All right, we're finally here.
Finally.
I think my chicken's great.
I make great fried chicken.
I'm not gonna lie.
But there's something about the chicken joy that I'm always like, what am I not doing?
So hopefully I'll learn that.

It's in the breading.
It's in the tumbling.
And we're gonna show you today.
Start breading.
Tumble.
Be aggressive at it.
You want minute.
You want to just fold it over itself like.
Yeah, yeah.
Aggressive tumble.
No bald spots.
Wonderful.

I'm, like, nervous.
I cannot put out bad chicken here.
And then we're gonna alternate thigh and leg.
You can fit all of them on the rack.
You got it.
You got it.
All right.
Thigh, leg.
And is it cool if they touch a little bit?
Yep.
Okay, thigh.

We go down here.
Leg, thigh, leg, leg.
I didn't know you were hand-breading all this.
Like, you guys are cooking real fried chicken.
This isn't any different than it would be in a restaurant.
I a non-fast food restaurant.
Gotta be alternating.
Got leg next to leg.
Oh.

And I have thigh next to thigh, so.
Oh, got it.
Got it.
And thigh will go here.
Look.
This might look easy, but with the amount of chicken tetris we're playing here, a lot of mistakes could happen.
All right, I think you're missing a piece.
Search your breading.

All right, Grab more piece.
You can fit one more piece in there on the bottom row.
There's an intricate science to max this out.
No.
Then we have thigh next to thigh, though.
In between these two legs, you can fit one more piece.
All right, go with that.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's drop it.

So this is a pressure fryer.
We use pressure fryers for all our chicken joy.
It retains that moisture and gives it that glassy crisp.
We're gonna slide the rack into the third one down right here.
That one is stuck.
Got it.

Okay.
Take that one down and put it on the level right above.
Pull down.
Yep.
Yeah.
Put some muscle into it until it clicks up.
Okay.
And then pull it forward.
So pull it forward and then down again.

So.
All right, so we close it.
It's cooking.
Then you press start.
You already pressed it for me.
I press it for you.
Okay.
Thank you.
So we wait.
And now we find out if I did it right.
And after a small slumber, it was time to see my hopefully perfect chicken joy.

Wow.
Chicken joy.
It's looking good, dude.
But it's not over yet.
There's still one more crucial step before it's judged against Jollibee gold standard.
My favorite part, get to put the spicy flags on.
You put one on everything, on every one.
I want, like, 100 of these for my house flags in chicken joy complete time for the gold standard judgment.

Let's take a look at our breading.
All right.
Beautifully craggly.
Beautifully craggly.
We got bald spots here.
We can do with more breading here.
This one here, we gotta, like, unfold the skin a little bit more, make sure that it's covered.
Josh, unfortunately, you did not pass.
Let's go do it again.

Okay, I got second time.
A strong one.
All right, Josh, second time round.
Let's see how you did.
Crispy, crispy, crispy.
100% gold standard.
Let's go.
Dude.
You've nailed the gold standard on each item individually.

Now let's see how you handle a full order under pressure for a live customer.
Agle Joshua Jolly. Morning.
I'm Roger here.
How are you?
Good, good.
You're working at Jollibee now.
Hit like and subs.
Watch his video.
YouTube not going so well.
Uncle Roger, you finally start cooking again on your second channel.

It's true.
Trying to steal Filipino recipe.
Don't let him steal your chicken joy recipe.
Uncle Roger.

Want to order a few things?
Give me one chicken joy spicy, spicy deluxe chicken sandwich, and one Angus cheeseburger.
Okay.
Will that complete your order?
Yeah, that would be all.
But Uncle Roger want you to cook it for me.
Uncle Joshua.
I can do that.

Yeah.
I thought you hide one of your cameras in the cupboard and open.
All right, the challenge has been issued and I trained for this.
According to Chef Dian, I have eight minutes to get this whole order out.
Not only do I need to hit the Jollibee gold standard, but I'm gonna need to hit Uncle Roger's.
Let's begin.

Okay, so it's an Angus burger, Angus cheeseburger, and a spicy deluxe, which of course has all the stuff.
So we have two different buns for the Angus burger.
These are two top buns.
All right, so burger, go over here.
First, we're gonna butter.

All right, we're gonna come over here.
This is for our burger.
And this is for our chicken sandwich.
So the burger gets...
I don't even remember what sauce.
Ketchup, three onions, three pickles.
Okay, it's time to flip.

No, it's not.
Okay.
And then the chicken gets the spicy on both sides.
I don't know how that happened.
Okay.
And then it's a spicy deluxe, so it gets the jalapenos.
And then I don't have to flip.

You have a little bit of time.
Oh my.
Like this for the chicken.
Pick one of these guys here.
Coming over here.
Flip.

Look at that dude.
Little Maillard.
Okay, come back over here.
Chicken going on lettuce.
Okay.
Okay.
Now we're gonna assemble these.
I was rolling, but my old enemy came back for me.

I'm gonna have to hide this over here.
Okay, so we have our burger.
This is an Angus cheeseburger.
Okay.
Cheeseburger.
And then our chicken sandwich.
I told you these paper things were gonna kill me, Vic.
I was losing crucial time here.

Spicy gou.
Okay.
Okay.
Time.
How are we doing?
Well, we still need the chicken in the front.
Oh God.
We still need in the front.
Okay.
Okay.

So pull a tray to your chicken.
Six piece bucket.
Yep.
Okay.
Six.
Okay.
And then we have a lid.
Okay.
Lid on gravy.
Large.
Got it.
Time.
We did it.
We did it.

Okay.
We barely made it.
But we made it.
We hit the Jollibee chicken standard.
But can we hit Uncle Roger's?
Here's your meal.
Hope you enjoy.

Fuio.
Thank you, Uncle Josh.
Gonna start with the Angus cheeseburger.
Of course, you didn't know Jollibee got cheeseburger now.
Nice.
Great start.
But I need to hit a perfect three out of three here.

Spicy chicken deluxe sandwich.
Fuio.
Nice and saucy.
Look at this.
This is the only vegetable you can find in this restaurant.
That's why Uncle Roger likes this place.
Good also.

Free air.
The sauce got nice flavor.
See, it's dripping out so good.
Last but not least, the spicy chicken joy.
Oh, look at this.
Hear how crunchy it is?
It all comes down to this.
It's really good for you.

Oh, what are you doing here?
Go back to work.
Is it your break time?
Uncle Roger.
Feel bad I didn’t tip you, Uncle Joshua.
I think you need to cook here more.
Everything's so good.

Yeah.
This week you're gonna sound like marketing sponsorship.
But actually genuinely everything very good.
Okay, so it turns out not all fast food restaurants are created equal.
I didn't realize this much work went into it.
Maybe this will teach you a little lesson.
Taught me one.

Always remember all the people that it takes to make this come together.
Sure, I can do it.
But it's not as easy as it looks.
But my day wasn't over yet.
Jollibee had one more surprise for me.

Now that you've hit gold standards on all of our products,
we here at Jollibee feel confident to extend an invitation for you to apply for franchises.
Let's go.
Yes.
Yes.

Wow.
Is that actually real?
Just to be clear, it's an invitation to apply.
Then we'll go through the proper processes, then subscribe by love.