"Biography"
Activity
IN restaurant business for over 13 years now. Prior to that, he was engaged in the sale of products from Europe, since 1995 he introduced new European clothing brands to the St. Petersburg market. In 2003, he decided to start a restaurant business with partners.
"News"
Catering operators for VIP guests at the World Cup became known
The Organizing Committee of the World Cup has chosen suppliers of restaurant services for guests of the VIP and VVIP zones in stadiums hosting matches. Guests of the organizing committee and delegations are invited to these places.
Arena Foods organizes catering at stadiums in Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Samara and at the Spartak Stadium in Moscow. The same company is responsible for the food of the fans. Catering is part of the group of companies "Shokoladnitsa" Alexey Kolobov.
Named the company that will feed VIPs and fans at the World Cup in Yekaterinburg
Catering for fans and VIPs at the World Cup matches in Yekaterinburg will be provided by the Arena Foods company, which is part of Alexei Kolobov's Shokoladnitsa group of companies. This was announced by the General Director of the Organizing Committee of the 2018 World Cup Alexei Sorokin.
Arena Foods will feed VIPs (seats by invitation for guests of the organizing committee and delegations) in Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Moscow, as well as fans at all stadiums, Kommersant writes. In addition to this company, restaurant services will be provided by Novikov Catering (in Moscow and Sochi) and Ginza Project (Petersburg). The Fusion Group (which was the catering operator at the Sochi Olympics) will serve dear guests in Rostov, Kaliningrad, Volgograd and Saransk.
Ginza co-founder Vadim Lapin won a lawsuit against restaurateur Vladimir Spirin
Co-founder and co-owner of the Ginza Project Vadim Lapin won a lawsuit against restaurateur Vladimir Spirin. The latter tried to prove fictitious transactions for the sale of Ginza Project of his shares in the restaurants "On the River" and SunDay.
The restaurateur Vladimir Spirin, who tried to sue the shares in the Na Rechke and SunDay restaurants sold by Ginza Project in 2013, lost the appeal. On Wednesday, representatives of Ginza reported this, this information was confirmed by the second party.
Ginza Project invests 750 million rubles. to the grocery chain
The All Foods chain of grocery stores, which is part of the Ginza Project restaurant holding, will increase by an order of magnitude within three years. In a crisis, Russians are more likely to save on going to restaurants than on food purchases
The Ginza Project restaurant holding will open 30 All Foods grocery stores in the next three years in Russian cities with a population of over one million, Dmitry Sergeev, founder and senior partner of the holding, told RBC. Investments in one store amount to about 25 million rubles, some will involve third-party investors, he noted. Thus, in total, 750 million rubles will be spent on opening the network.
Co-owner of Ginza Project will help bankers assess risks
Vadim Lapin, co-owner of the restaurant holding Ginza Project, joined the board of directors of Sauber Bank. In this post, Lapin replaced the general director of Printing House Printing Irina Ruden, the press center of the financial organization reported.
According to the bank's shareholder Alexei Smolyanov, the change was made in order to increase the efficiency of solving new problems. Vadim Lapin will oversee risk assessment and remuneration issues.
He has such establishments as Ginza, Marie Vanna, Terrassa and Tiffany's cafe in St. Petersburg, Blackberry, Prada cafe and Sorry, babushka in Moscow, and Los Dados, opened by Lapin in New York, entered the top ten best Mexican restaurants in America . This fall, he not only presents new projects - "Tsar" and family Italian restaurant Francesco is in its hometown, but is also planning a restaurant expansion in London.
What is your education?
I am an economist, I graduated from Inzhekon. The time when I was studying was turbulent - it was difficult to understand what professions would be in demand. I considered economic education to be universal. Among my teachers, by the way, was Anatoly Chubais, he taught us the subject "Research and Development," explained the algorithm for writing a scientific paper. Even then it was clear that Chubais looked at the economy more broadly than all the others who grew up under socialism. I believe that during perestroika, he, Yegor Gaidar and another group of politicians put the country on the right track. Of course, something could have been done less painfully for the population, but you know how things are going with us. I am sure that Chubais will still be appreciated in the future, although now he is not popular among the people. I was very lucky to have studied with such a progressive teacher.
How did you get into the restaurant business?
Like everyone else, by chance, on the advice of his friend Dima Sergeev, a businessman from Moscow. A huge number of sushi bars opened there, and he advised me to do the same place here. Just at that time, my other friends, who own a fitness center, wanted to open a health food restaurant next door. And in our country, for some reason, only sushi is associated with healthy food. This is how Ginza was born.
Do you know how to cook yourself?
Certainly. I can make borscht, ear, mushroom soup, and by all the rules. I lived in a very hospitable family, many guests came to us on holidays, and I always helped my mother buy food at the market, cook, I knew how to make any salad. We had our signature recipes left over from my grandmother: Napoleon, sour cream. Grandma's pies are generally the most vivid memory from my childhood. They were absolutely amazing, just melted in your mouth! Now pies according to this recipe are baked at the Marie Vanna restaurant.
There are not many restaurateurs in the city. Are you competing?
Once upon a time we all said: we are not competitors, the more good restaurants, all the better. But now the rivalry is already felt, everyone is trying to become the first. Nevertheless, I have excellent relations with restaurateurs Edik Muradyan, Aram Mnatsakanov, Lenya Garbar, Vova Lvovsky, Zhenya Prigogine. We have known each other for a long time, these are my friends for life.
From the outside it seems that your business is developing steadily and without excesses. But surely you had to deal with unforeseen circumstances?
A couple of years ago, a fire broke out at the Ginza restaurant. That evening, the VIA Gra group performed there. When the girls performed the final song, the curtain caught fire. It was spectacular - the guests decided that they were seeing the culmination of the program. The next morning, when the news of the fire spread throughout the city, many came to look at the ashes, but only the terrace burned down, the restaurant worked as if nothing had happened. Friends then asked for a long time if they had a dream about all this.
Most people in the restaurant are relaxing, you are both relaxing and working. How do you spend your leisure time?
To be honest, even at my leisure I am drawn to restaurants. I don’t like to look into my establishments with friends: there you really feel like at work, you notice shortcomings, you start to get nervous; your friends are also nervous that you don't pay enough attention to them. Therefore, if we want to communicate and chat, we go to “foreign” places where they do not know us. In addition, I love sports and travel. Recently I went in for boxing for the sake of aerobic exercise - I really liked it, it turned out to be such an intellectual sport! The English were not stupid. Even purely technically, hitting another person's face is very difficult, almost like in swordsmanship. In addition, there is a very intense load: forty minutes in boxing is like two hours in fitness.
You travel a lot. Which country do you like the most?
In Italy. Italians are very similar to Russians both in temperament and mentality. For example, the concept of “friend” is always higher than the concept of “duty”. They are less harmful than other Europeans, less nationalistic than the French and Germans. In Italy, I do not feel like a foreigner, I breathe easily and freely there.
Some businessmen say that every five to ten years it is necessary to change the scope of business so that it is not boring. Have you ever wanted to do something fundamentally new?
When you realize that you have achieved everything you could, perhaps it is worth moving in a different direction. But if you see an unplowed field in front of you, it's too early to do it. The restaurant market in Russia is still in its infancy, so there is still a lot to be done and redone. I have very big plans for the next five to ten years.
Even during an interview, Vadim Lapin cannot sit still: it seems that he is constantly scanning what is happening in the restaurant hall with his eyes. “Christina,” he shouts, breaking away from his seat and rushing to the hostess, “meet the guests yourself! Security should not be visible. If they stand at the door, they will go home!”
We are sitting in Behemoth, one of the restaurants of the Ginza Project group in St. Petersburg, opposite the Kazan Cathedral. Until recently, there was another of their establishments, Tiffany cafe, which was conceived as an edgy place - Lapin and his partner Dmitry Sergeev even bought Audrey Hepburn's dress from Breakfast at Tiffany's for $ 1 million at Sotheby's to exhibit in the hall. The restaurant itself cost a comparable amount, but gradually the noise around it faded away, and Lapin and Sergeyev changed the format and sign. Who is not afraid to experiment!
Their holding now includes 25 restaurants in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov and New York, in addition to this there is a network of 36 inexpensive cafes"Japosha". The group's turnover in 2007 amounted to $70 million, Lapin does not name the revenue for 2008, but he assures that it has grown significantly due to the doubling of the number of restaurants. “Ginza is now in the black,” says Andrey Petrakov, managing partner of Restaurant Consulting. “Because it can afford active development even now.”
25 diverse restaurants with their own signs - a very high result in Russian business. More than Ginza, the number of author's establishments is managed only by the legend of the Russian restaurant business Arkady Novikov (38 restaurants), but he has been on the market since the early 1990s, and Lapin and Sergeev entered the industry only five years ago and, unlike a professional chef Novikov, they used to go to restaurants only as visitors. How do they manage to overtake professional restaurateurs?
Shoemaker and land trader bet on sushi
Lapin made his first money in the production of shoes. Then he began to import it from Italy, and at the same time opened a couple of designer clothing stores in the center of St. Petersburg. “I went to exhibitions, shows, shows,” the businessman recalls. “The world opened up to me.” In 2003, his friend Dmitry Sergeev, who made his fortune trading land and moved to Moscow, discovered that the sushi bar boom was continuing in the capital. He invited Lapin to take up a new business. He refused until his St. Petersburg friends, who had opened an expensive sports complex on the Petrograd side, asked to find a person who could arrange a Japanese restaurant for them. Lapin decided not to refuse. “I said we know such a person,” he says. Chef Sergei Khan (now he is the head of all Ginza Project chefs) was bought in Kyiv, where he was going to move after working in several sushi establishments in Moscow, the rest of the staff was recruited through recruiters.
The creation of the first restaurant (he gave the name to the entire group) cost the partners $600,000 - a small amount by today's standards. “We promoted it for a long time,” recalls Lapin, “and then we made a summer veranda, the first in St. Petersburg, we began to hold parties there “like in Moscow” - and the restaurant paid off.”
Using Ginza as an example of a new business, the partners began to open five restaurants a year - that is, an establishment worth $ 2-3 million every two months. Where did they find money, premises and ideas? In fact, they were selling their ability to run the restaurant business to investors with the means and connections.
St. Petersburg began the conquest of Moscow through a karaoke club
One of these investors is Mikhail Bazhenov, co-owner of the Adamant holding in St. Petersburg. Dozens of shopping centers and the production of building materials bring the main share of Adamant's 700 million (in dollars) revenue, but Bazhenov invests free funds in the restaurant business.
“Do you live in Moscow? Do you know Gelsomino? - asks Bazhenov, sitting comfortably in the armchair of his office, overlooking the Griboedov Canal with huge windows. Who doesn't know Gelsomino? In this karaoke club on Petrovka, an order for one song costs 600 rubles, but professional backing vocalists will sing along with you. Here spent time - at least a couple of years ago - Moscow celebrities and noisily rested Paris Hilton. “At this place was our restaurant Taboo with a partner,” says Bazhenov. - We decided to redo something, talked with Moscow producers. And Moscow producers are very difficult guys to talk to ... And we invited Ginza.
Lapin and Sergeev became co-investors (their shares were not disclosed) and began to build a new institution in place of Taboo - their first Moscow project. “In St. Petersburg, people go to restaurants more on Friday and Saturday,” Lapin wonders. - And in Moscow, it seems, it happens every day. Here is television, awards, shows, around which there are many celebrities with exorbitant fees. The karaoke club paid off in three years. Soon, Ginza, with the money of Bazhenov and his partners in Adamant, began to open one restaurant after another: Blackberry in Moscow, Mamalyga, Charlottekafe and Begemot in St. Petersburg.
“We manage and co-invest,” Lapin reveals the scheme of his work. “After deducting expenses from income, profit is formed, part of which goes to pay for the services of the management company, the rest is distributed among the founders in proportion to the share of participation.” In some projects, Ginza acts only as a management company, but more often participates in investments.
Restaurants pay off in three years
How much do restaurateurs earn? The revenue of author's restaurants (that is, without Yaposha) in the Ginza Project is, according to experts interviewed by Forbes, about $ 80 million a year. According to Denis Yakhno, head of the Mood + consulting company, management companies in the restaurant business can receive about 30% of the profit. With a 30% pre-crisis profitability of establishments, Lapin and Sergeev's income from management alone could reach $7–8 million a year.
Third-party investors are also not left behind. “The estimated payback period is three years,” explains Lapin. Before the crisis, on average, it took two to achieve it. At least one more partner of Ginza - the director of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art Vasily Tsereteli - is satisfied with the work of restaurateurs: "They know the public that loves them, and they are trying for it." The Tsereteli family owned a restaurant Argentine cuisine La Parila in Gagarinsky Lane in Moscow. “Everything was done there to ensure that the restaurant was successful, but it was not,” Tsereteli says emotionally. “And then we became friends with Ginza.” Lapin and Sergeev converted the establishment into a restaurant Georgian cuisine"Elarji". “I myself saw how one of them came to a restaurant and spent several hours explaining how paper should be in the toilet, like a towel, what music and air would be like,” says Mikhail Bazhenov from Adamant.
Restaurant managers are trained not only by the owners - some of them, according to Lapin, go through the tough Yaposhi school, where it is customary to save every penny, before getting the reins of the author's restaurant.
Renaming Yaposhka to Yaposha cost $2 million
The network of cheap Japanese restaurants Lapin and Sergeev began to create immediately after the opening of the first Ginza restaurant, which justified their expectation of a sushi boom in Russia. Dmitry Sergeev came up with the name "Yaposhka" and the concept of "sushi-anti-sushi" - for those who are afraid raw fish and algae, in Yaposhka they offered borscht and Olivier salad. In 2006, when Yaposhki began to open, it seemed that there was no place for new establishments: Yakitoria and Planet Sushi worked in Moscow, and the Eurasia network of 30 establishments worked in St. Petersburg. But in three years, Yaposhka has come close to its competitors: it has 36 restaurants, 19 of them in Moscow. In the process of expansion, the network changed its sign from "Yaposhka" to "Yaposha" - according to some sources, this happened at the request of the Japanese embassy, according to others, the owners themselves decided that the politically incorrect name carries risks with rapid expansion. The name change cost $2 million.
The network of sushi bars also developed with the money of third-party investors - in 2007, Lapin and Sergeev agreed with the Trust bank controlled by Ilya Yurov. According to Andrey Petrakov from Restaurant Consulting, the opening of a chain cafe with an area of 300 sq. m with an average check as in Yaposha can now cost $600,000–700,000. Based on this, the volume of investments in Yaposha can be estimated at $20–25 million. Last year, the network turnover amounted to about $70 million. experts are not taken.
Having appeared in Moscow, "Yaposha" began a price fight, serving sushi with salmon for 29 rubles - about a third cheaper than its competitors. During the crisis, Ginza began to bargain hard with the owners of the premises on rental rates (Yaposha was one of the first to announce that it would seek a 30% reduction in rates). As a result, since the beginning of 2009, Ginza has had two new Yaposha cafes and 13 new signature restaurants.
Of course, most of these restaurants are far from such Moscow hits as Cafe Pushkin by Andrey Deloss or Aist and Nedalny Vostok by Arkady Novikov, where limousines line up in two rows in the evenings with drivers and bodyguards waiting for their owners. But the founders of the Ginza Project have taken one more step bringing them closer to the market leaders. This year, Arkady Novikov for the first time decided to open a restaurant outside of Moscow - in St. Petersburg - and chose Lapin and Sergeyev as partners. Together they prepare for the opening of the institution Italian cuisine. What if Novikov's point of view on where the guards should stand does not coincide with Lapin's? “Let's listen to his opinion,” Lapin quickly replies. “Maybe we will correct the scheme in other restaurants.”
Alexander Lobanovsky EconomySt. Petersburg restaurateur Vladimir Spirin said that he feared for his life and health, as well as the safety of his loved ones amid a conflict with Vadim Lapin, co-owner of the Ginza Project holding. Spirin stated this at a specially convened press conference.
I discovered that I was being followed… I turned to law enforcement agencies about this. A tracker was found on the car. The tracker was filmed along with witnesses. A statement has been written about this, and the investigation is underway. Actually, I fear for my life and health and my loved ones, - he said.
Vladimir Spirin is known in the catering market of St. Petersburg. Among his projects are the restaurants ZimaLeto, Gastronom, On the Roof. A few years ago, this list also included the Sunday and Na Rechke establishments located on Krestovsky Island. The restaurateur told the story of their loss to reporters.
Creating the restaurant "On the River" in 2009, Spirin decided to invite Lapin as a partner - at that time already one of the largest restaurateurs in the city. Ginza, headed by him, entered the business, taking over half of the business. Spirin kept only 25% for himself.
Things went well, and in 2011 the partners launched another project - "Sunday". There, Spirin received 42.5%, while Lapin and his partner Marina Ivanenko received another 42.5%.
When we organized two successful restaurants, we had a very good relationship, we called each other, we met, sometimes we had drinks, we discussed some completely non-working matters. I treated him like an older, experienced, respected comrade, a businessman, ”Spirin says about his relationship with Lapin at that time.
In 2013, Ginza, according to Spirin, took a large loan from Promsvyazbank (this fact is reflected in the court documents available to the site) and she needed a large pledge. Lapin asked Spirin to temporarily re-register his shares in restaurants.
The parties entered into purchase and sale agreements at a nominal value. Spirin received about 14 thousand rubles for his shares. At the same time, they signed agreements according to which, by April 1, 2014, the buyer had to return to the seller his shares in the business for the same symbolic money. In case of non-fulfillment of this condition, large penalties were prescribed in the agreement.
The reverse transaction did not take place, but, as Spirin explains, he did not worry about this, since Ginza regularly paid dividends to him as a participant in the common business in accordance with the formally sold shares. In June 2016, Spirin says, he called Lapin about a work issue, but received a text message in response, which shocked him.
I received a message that Mr. Lapin no longer wants to communicate with me, some of his representatives will communicate with me. And after that, I stopped receiving all information, money, etc. from these establishments. After that, there was a meeting ... at which it was announced to me that I was not observed in the constituent documents and I could be free, - says Spirin.
The offended restaurateur filed a lawsuit in the Arbitration Court. He demanded that the transactions for the sale and purchase of shares be declared null and void. However, he lost the case in four instances. The court concluded that the transactions were not imaginary and the shares were sold for real.
However, Spirin did not give up and at the beginning of 2017 filed lawsuits in civil courts for the recovery of penalties under additional agreements. And here the first instance remained with him - Spirin was awarded a total of 144 million rubles. The defendants (Lapin and Ivanenko) have already appealed against these decisions, new hearings will begin this summer. It was against this background that Spirin announced the threats.
Ginza did not respond to a written request from the site for comment.
This is the first conflict between St. Petersburg restaurateurs that has gone public, Leonid Garbar, president of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers of the North-West, believes. According to him, conflicts in this business are not uncommon, but even the court does not always reach.
This is rarely taken out, because after all the restaurant business is personal, and the reputation of all parties suffers from this, - explains Leonid Garbar.
According to him, in the restaurant business, "gentlemen's agreements" are often concluded that do not have a legal status. And this is one of the causes of conflicts.
If all the conditions were clearly prescribed, then there would be much less conflicts. When gentlemen's agreements are negotiated, it must be understood that the concept of a gentleman to modern business does not apply, - says Leonid Garbar.
Let's add that this spring, when restaurants were massively demolished on Krestovsky Island in order to make a beautiful embankment for the 2018 World Cup, both Spirin's Winter Summer and Lapin's "Sunday" managed to resist. That is, restaurateurs have not lost their ability to negotiate.
Vadim Lapin, co-owner of the Ginza Project restaurant holding (Photo: Ginza Project)
In several dozen companies associated with the Ginza group, the composition of shareholders has changed. In particular, as it became known to the Delovoy Peterburg newspaper, the founder of the group, Vadim Lapin, transferred his shares in 38 companies with a revenue of at least 1.1 billion rubles to his son.
The change of shareholders in the companies began after the court decisions on the dispute between Lapin and restaurateur Vladimir Spirin came into force. Lapin, Spirin, and Marina Ivanenko were previously partners in the Sunday and Na Rechke restaurants. In 2013, Spirin sold shares in these restaurants to partners at par. They needed this to obtain a loan from Promsvyazbank secured by shares in the authorized capital.
According to the terms of the agreement between the founders, in the future the shares were to be returned to Vladimir Spirin at the same nominal price. But the reverse deal did not take place, although until 2016 he received the compensation provided for by the agreement. After the termination of payments, Vladimir Spirin tried to challenge the transactions for the sale of shares in restaurants in arbitration, but to no avail. Last year, he filed civil suits against former partners for the recovery of a penalty for non-payment of compensation and won the case. Now Vadim Lapin personally has to pay 42 million rubles, and Marina Ivanenko - 30 million and 42 million rubles. for different transactions. Another decision to recover another 30 million rubles from the founder of Ginza. until it entered into force, as it was challenged in the second instance.
However, after the first court decisions came into force, the media learned that Vadim Lapin's shares in 38 different companies passed to his son Mark Lapin in a few days. Also in July, Marina Ivanenko, Vadim Lapin's partner, left the list of co-owners of 32 legal entities, including those associated with Ginza. She is associated with Dmitry Sergeyev, a longtime partner of Vadim Lapin and the second founder of Ginza. She gave up her shares in the authorized capital of the companies in favor of 74-year-old Nina Sergeeva.
At the same time, according to SPARK, Vadim Lapin remains a co-owner of 22 companies (as related to restaurant group, and not) with a total revenue of at least 925 million rubles. Shares in 14 of them are pledged to OJSC Promsvyazbank, that is, their alienation requires the consent of the bank to change the founders. According to the businessman, the process of registering shares in the business for children began a long time ago, back in 2014, and is not associated with lawsuits.
As for the legal proceedings with Spirin, Lapin noted that they have been going on since 2016. “The courts have repeatedly confirmed our case, and we won the cases, we hope this will be the case this time as well. This decision will be challenged in a higher court. It’s too early to put an end to the process, ”says the businessman.
Vladimir Spirin, in turn, connects the change of shareholders with an attempt by his former partners to hide assets. “I believe that Lapin and Ivanenko are trying to evade the penalty. It is clear from their actions that assets are being withdrawn, that they are trying to evade the execution of court decisions,” he told reporters.
reference
The international restaurant holding Ginza Project was established in St. Petersburg in 2003 by Dmitry Sergeev and Vadim Lapin. Currently, the holding owns and manages more than 150 restaurants in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Baku, as well as New York and London. Among the flagship projects are the restaurants Marie Vanna, Butler, Sixty, Uilliam's, Christian, Carlson, Terrassa, Mansarda, etc. The holding also owns the Danilovsky market in Moscow. Often, Ginza Project participates in projects not as an investor, but as a management company.
