The restaurant holding of Timur Dmitriev and Mikhail Sokolov plans to launch five new restaurants this year in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Among the new openings will be establishments of predominantly chain concepts - ITALY restaurants and Belgian gastronomic pubs.
"Now we have two main areas of work: we want to open more and more restaurants of chain concepts - ITALY and Belgian gastronomic pubs. They are loved by both us and our guests, and we see great potential in them. The second direction is the creation of new concepts, because the market has its own trends, guests need more and more different gastronomic experiences, and this is the most important thing that we can give them - new tastes, "the Italy Group is convinced.
More Italy and Belgium
As Timur Dmitriev and Mikhail Sokolov told DP, now the Italy Group is actively looking for new premises, but finding something worthwhile is not so easy, the company admits. "It is impossible to say that there are more free good premises. Good premises are 99% occupied and bring good income to their owners," Italy Group explains.
The restaurateurs plan this year to build one ITALY restaurant and another Belgian gastropub in Moscow. As for the home region, the company also plans to develop in St. Petersburg and is looking for premises for another restaurant and a Belgian pub; the latter may appear in the Petrogradsky district. As the restaurateurs explained, which of their brands Italy Group will choose to expand the Belgian concepts is still unclear, the name for the new pubs in Moscow and St. Petersburg has not yet been determined.
Average checks in these establishments can be estimated at 1.2 thousand and 1.6 thousand rubles, respectively. Italy Group restaurants occupy areas from 150 to 500 m2, and on average, from 100 thousand to 150 thousand rubles per 1 m2 is spent on the creation of one institution.
New Approach
In addition to the planned four restaurants, Timur Dmitriev and Mikhail Sokolov are opening a new Belgian gastronomic pub, Gent, in the Fort Tower business center on Moskovsky Prospekt in June. As a basis, restaurateurs will take the experience gained in other Italy Group pubs (Bruxelles, Brugge and Waterloo). "The new establishment will have a similar gastronomy, which goes well with beer, the range of which will be very wide here. If we are talking about pub gastronomy, we do not mean croutons and cheese balls, for us it's octopus, lamb, cod soup, all kinds of complex snacks like tartare. In addition, special emphasis will be placed on smoked dishes and steaks - several types of them will be presented here," says Timur Dmitriev.
Outside of the Italy Group concepts and holding, restaurateurs, inspired by a gastronomic trip to Tbilisi, opened a Georgian cuisine restaurant "Chemi" in April. Timur Dmitriev and Mikhail Sokolov's partner in this project was Georgy Dartsmelia (the founder of the Bolshoybar coffee bar). "Chemi is another Georgian cuisine, another restaurant format. There are no plastic vines and other attributes of classic Georgian restaurants. This is a modern interior and modern cuisine - the one that is eaten in Georgia right now, "- describes Mikhail Sokolov. The area of \u200b\u200bChemi" is 300 m2.
Healthy food and mono-products
The first restaurant of the Italy Group holding was launched in St. Petersburg in 2010. Now the group unites 15 restaurants in St. Petersburg and Moscow, among them Italy pasta bars, Belgian pubs Bruxelles, Waterloo and Brugge. Last year, Timur Dmitriev and Mikhail Sokolov invested in the Yami Yami food delivery service, and also took over the APRES SKI restaurant and cafe in the resort.
The owners of the restaurant holding have launched a new food delivery project. Together with partners, Timur Dmitriev and Mikhail Sokolov invested about 70 million rubles in the creation of Yami Yami. Nikolay Davydov and Evgeny Vereshchagin became the co-founders and managers of the business (New Technologies LLC). Restaurateurs are known in the market for the project of a noodle shop with the same name Yami Yami and the development of a delivery service for Food Retail Group restaurants from scratch.
Italy Group has been developing in St. Petersburg since 2010. Now the holding of Timur Dmitriev and Mikhail Sokolov reads 13 restaurants, this year the first establishment of restaurateurs opened in Moscow. The Italy Group itself also has food delivery, this is the premium service "Italy Home". "This service works quite well, but after working for a certain time, Timur and Mikhail realized that it was wrong to develop this direction on the basis of restaurants, since the delivery business is very specific - in terms of product, packaging, serving, therefore it requires management of specialists in this area", - explains Nikolai Davydov, co-owner and CEO of Yami Yami. In March of this year, the partners agreed on a new joint project in a promising segment, and already in October the first orders were made by St. Petersburg residents.
Embrace the city
To organize the delivery, a room was rented on the territory of the Pozitron plant, where a production area of 300 m2 was located. At this site, chefs are engaged in the creation of semi-finished products and preparations for final dishes, at three more pre-cooking workshops (their area is 100-200 m2), which are located in different parts of the city, pizza, sushi, wok and other dishes take their final form, are packed and sent client. According to the idea of Nikolai Davydov, the number of pre-cooking shops should reach at least nine, and then delivery will be available to residents of all districts of St. Petersburg. It was not easy for businessmen to find such sites, according to them, there are not enough premises in the city suitable for food production. The capacities of the production site are designed for a monthly turnover of 150 million rubles per month.
The company's fleet currently consists of 20 cars, in the future there will be about 80. The waiting time for an order is now about an hour, but the expansion of the fleet will reduce it to 45 minutes. "According to a number of surveys, the main criterion for choosing a delivery for people is the speed and waiting time for an order, a product, a service goes by the wayside," Nikolai Davydov admits.
Investments are planned to be recouped in 3 years of work, the company's planned revenue is 50 million rubles per month. Of the total investment of 70 million rubles, half of the funds were disbursed, most of which went to businessmen to purchase equipment and develop IT solutions. Even now, the client can find out the delivery time in advance by entering his address on the website, in the near future he will be able to track the path of the car with his order. In the future, the owners of Yami Yami will install surveillance cameras in the production so that customers can monitor the preparation of their food through the site.
Now the menu of the service consists of 90 items, in addition to top pizzas, sushi and wok, it includes hot dishes from king crab, octopus, tartar, black sushi, a line of non-standard drinks and other concepts. The menu was developed by brand chef Sergey Lazarev (Park Giuseppe restaurant,) and technologist Olga Kudyan (,). Yami Yami works in the middle price segment, the average check is estimated at 1100 rubles.
The market is condensing
The food delivery market has become very competitive over the past few years, but quality offers are scarce.
“It should be taken into account that delivery is a completely different business, it is very different from a restaurant business, so it will not be easy to combine them,” warns the head of the MyZhenaty restaurant. According to him, catering operators should not be afraid of the development of the delivery market - restaurateurs primarily sell the atmosphere, therefore they do not consider such services to be their competitors.
The volume of the ready-made food delivery market in St. Petersburg is estimated by Yami Yami at 10 billion rubles, according to the co-founder of the ZakaZaka service Ruslan Gafurov, this figure is slightly less - 7.5-8 billion rubles. Despite the crisis, according to Nikolai Davydov, the demand for such services is not falling and the market is growing, new players are actively emerging. “We see in the sushi delivery market that small services that offer, for example, large portions, are gradually taking away the share of large players, but in return they save on everything else,” says CEO Yami Yami.
Ruslan Gafurov also speaks about the growth of the market since the beginning of the year, in his opinion, the population has recovered from the shock, business owners have adapted the menu, suppliers have been able to stabilize their prices, all this partially contributed to the recovery of the market. “The key role here is played by the fact that the prices for meals delivered did not increase in proportion to the products in stores. The consumer began to closely monitor his wallet and rightly noticed that in some cases ordering food is more profitable than going to the store,” Ruslan is sure Gafurov.
Spoiled holiday
Sit back, readers, a fascinating story awaits you about the experience of visiting the Italy restaurant on Bolshoy Prospekt.
It all started with the fact that on February 2 I decided to go to an abstract view restaurant in St. Petersburg for St. Valentine's Day. I used the search engine and chose Italy on the Bolshoi, especially since my girlfriend has long wanted to go to another restaurant of the same chain. Everything is standard - I called to book a table and made an emphasis on the fact that I want a seat next to the window, if the view allows. Two weeks before the date, this was unlikely to be a problem, and the girl on the phone convincingly answered “Yes, of course we will make a note!”.
On February 13, realizing the general workload of restaurants during this period, I decided to call myself and clarify whether my table reservation was still valid and whether everything was fine with the seats by the window. I was again assured that the reservation was checked and a gorgeous view was waiting for me.
On February 14 in the evening at the indicated time, when I arrived at the restaurant, I found that all the seats by the windows were occupied. My first thought was that there was also a second hall, and when the second hall was not found, I had already decided that we would be seated with a couple at a six-seater table. But everything turned out to be simpler - we were simply seated against the wall, near the passage from the kitchen overlooking a large mirror. To my reasonable question that a mistake had crept in somewhere and I called TWICE to book a table by the window with a beautiful view, the girl at the reception began to fumble in the tablet. And then it turned out that exactly two Dmitrys booked a table for 20.00, and employees ask the guests for mobile phone numbers “for show”.
My blood boiled and only the presence of my companion restrained my emotions. Of course, the administrator immediately ran up to us, offered drinks at the expense of the establishment and assured us that as soon as a table by the window was free, we would be transplanted.
Drinks were brought, we made an order, which was brought quickly enough, taking into account the peak load of the kitchen at that moment. Here I want to thank the kitchen staff - all the dishes and drinks were really tasty. Closer to ordering dessert, I noticed that one of the tables near the window was free, and asked one of the girls, who seemed to be no longer a waiter, but not yet an administrator, to transfer us, as previously promised. The girl disappeared somewhere, under the pretext of finding out if there was a reservation on that table. Five seven minutes later, images of violent activity came and with a sad look said that there was a reservation on the table for 22 hours, despite the fact that before that time there were still 50 minutes left and obviously we would not drink tea for so long. At the same time, this table was occupied by other guests who had obviously just arrived at the restaurant. Of course, no one was going to transfer us anywhere from the very beginning, it was just necessary to reduce the “heat of passions”.
The dessert was delicious and it was time to leave the establishment that ruined all the plans for that evening. The entire restaurant team already at 10 pm was photographed on Instax by a local mime and entertained themselves with standard gossip, and as soon as the guests in the form of me and my companion began to move from the table towards the wardrobe under the prompter whisper of the administrator “Goodbye! Goodbye!" a dozen people around the counter began to break into smiles and “all_good_goodbye.”
This is such a visit. There is only one conclusion. If you book a table at this restaurant, be prepared to be "dumped", so try to book at the same time a place in other establishments nearby so that you do not have to endure such an attitude. Perhaps it will seem to someone that an elephant is swollen out of a fly, but it was on that day that an important event was planned, and it was in the restaurant, which suggested some privacy and a certain atmosphere. Because of one ridiculous incident, the whole plan went down the drain.
The St. Petersburg restaurant group Italy Group opens two new restaurants in St. Petersburg in April, thus increasing the network to seven outlets. In addition, in 2015-2016 the company intends to enter the Moscow market. Experts believe that opening restaurants in such an unpredictable period is quite risky.
The Italy Group, which has been operating on the St. Petersburg market for four years, includes five establishments: Itali South, Itali West, Itali Bottega, Itali Fratelli ( Italian food), as well as the gastronomic pub "Bruges" (Belgian cuisine). The company said that two new establishments with a Belgian focus will be opened in April. The establishments will be called "Birreria" (on Vladimirsky Prospekt) and "Brussels" (on Vosstaniya Street).
The number of seats in the establishments is different: in Italian it varies from 45 to 250 seats, in the new restaurants there will be 130 seats (in Birreria) and 120 (in Brussels).
The restaurant group is owned by Mikhail Sokolov, Igor Sokolov and Timur Dmitreev.
The company refused to name the annual turnover, but noted that investments in the opening of new points will amount to 100 thousand rubles per square meter. m, while the optimal area of restaurants is 400 sq. m.
Timur Dmitreev said that the company plans to enter the Moscow market in 2015-2016.
According to the co-owner of the restaurant group Stroganoff Group Leonid Garbar, in restaurant business the situation is bleak. "Now, while talking with you, I went into a restaurant on the corner of Nevsky and Konyushennaya. Only two tables are occupied here, despite the fact that the time is four in the afternoon. In Moscow, with filling at this time, everything is different. Petersburgers are only interested in the price of dishes However, it is worth noting that such Belgian cuisine projects as Brasserie Creek and Trappist are quite successful, so I do not exclude that the new project of Itali Group will also find its admirers, although I am not personally acquainted with the owners of this group,” says Mr. Garbar.
According to the director of the London-based consulting agency Syndicated Brands and restaurant market expert Sergei Slavinsky, Belgian cuisine is more complicated than French cuisine, for example. "The more interesting, more complex the cuisine, the more expensive it is. Due to the high cost, the demand for Belgian cuisine is not very high, and it is worth noting that due to undeveloped taste buds for many consumers who prefer, say, pizza, this cuisine may seem insipid. Yes, and open now restaurants are quite risky due to the unstable geopolitical and economic situation. On the other hand, opening in a "troubled" time will give a win in the long term, "says Mr. Slavinsky.
Italy-group was created by Probka Family natives Mikhail Sokolov and Timur Dmitriev. The first worked there as a brand chef, the second - in a managerial position. Their first restaurant with the logical name Italy opened in the spring of 2010 and made a splash not only on the Petrograd side, where it is still located, but throughout the city.
It is not surprising that over time, a branch of a successful restaurant appeared in St. Petersburg -, the first restaurant received an ending. In an effort to consolidate the popularity of their establishments and at the same time reach a new level, in the summer of 2013 Timur and Mikhail opened Brugge, the flagship of a new direction for the restaurant group. Having competently placed emphasis on Flemish specialties and a huge selection of beer, the restaurateurs again found themselves in the kings.
Then he followed with a similar theme, but already on the Uprising, and which tried to combine both Italy-group formats - Belgian and Italian. The latest discoveries of Mikhail and Timur belong more to the secular segment - already closed and luxury ones have become more fashion projects than really popular ones. However, it is more interesting to observe the development of Italy-group - one of the most high-profile and eminent chain projects of the city.
