Echpochmaki like Granny's: an interview with the co-founder of the Tatar restaurant chain "Tyubetei

Rarely a guest, or even a resident of Kazan, has not tried dishes and pastries of the national Tatar cuisine in the local chain of restaurants "Tyubetei". It is the first Tatar halal fast food chain in Russia. The team of the brand considers its task to "feed the whole world with its favorite echpochmak", "infect people with its soulful attitude towards life" and popularize Tatar culture, values and good traditions.

During the Russia - Islamic World Summit: KazanSummit - 2021 the co-founder of the brand Sultan Safin said that "Tyubetei" already goes beyond the restaurant business and launches a whole ecosystem of halal brands with Tatar roots for everyone. The Made in Russia editorial board talked to the young entrepreneur and found out what the secret of the brand's success is, the prospects for investors and plans for Tyubetei's scaling up in Russia.

- How did the idea of opening such a restaurant format come about?

- The idea came in 2011, when McDonald's was actively conquering the Russian market and people were actively getting involved in this atmosphere of American happiness. We were watching this and realised that our cuisine was in trouble, and we, as Tatars practising Islam, were hurt by it. We realized it was time to create something of our own. Then we, a team of like-minded people, not indifferent to the fate of Tatar cuisine, got together and formed the concept of "Tyubetei": what it is and what it's for.

The main idea was to take our national cuisine and give it back its exemplary taste. We went back to our grandmothers' recipes - it only took us three months to find the recipe for that very echpochmak, and when we found that taste, we started working on the packaging.

- How has the chain evolved?

- We launched in 2015. We started with pavilions, and in 2017, for the first time in the history of Tatarstan, we opened a national fast food restaurant in the historic centre of Kazan. The President of Tatarstan Rustam Nurgaliyevich (Minnikhanov - ed.) came, a whole delegation, which we were shocked by. We just wrote an invitation to the President's Office, and they supported us and came. Our government is very open.

From that moment on we opened a whole network. Today we have about seven sites - it is a Tatar cuisine and in parallel we are doing another network of halal hawaiian cuisine Poke Soul, which is part of our T-Family (group of companies - ed.), in the segment of T-food. During these 6 years we have cooked more than 1 million echpochmak, guests from 50 countries have tried our cuisine. With the delegation of the Republic we have traveled more than 25 exhibitions around the world and established ourselves as a young delicious brand of the Republic of Tatarstan. More than 3 million people have visited us and we have been entrusted with more than 600 million rubles, and this figure is constantly growing: thousands of people are passing through us. "Tyubetei" is our native brand, it is about our homeland and patriotism. When you see some family with a child walking around the city, and they are holding not some American logo, but our, native one, you get very excited.

- How has the pandemic affected your work?

- It has been some kind of unique experience. At first, we were very scared. And when the pandemic had not yet touched Kazan, but touched our friends abroad, we got together very quickly and began to "storm". We quickly changed the structure of our company: during the lockdown, the management team changed roles, and everyone became the drivers of narrow directions.

Despite the fact that we only had one restaurant open during the pandemic, and it worked as a takeaway, we recovered fully in three months at the most. That is, we grew by a factor of 20 during the delivery lockdown period. We always had pie delivery, but we never really focused on it. But before the lockdown happened, we launched a delivery of halal semi-finished products at wholesale prices in just one week, and it helped the residents of the city a lot and gave our people work: everyone was in business, at work. With the opening of the restaurants, we recovered our numbers pretty quickly. As of July 2020, we've surpassed our 2019 numbers. It must be some kind of miracle. We didn't expect that ourselves.

- Are there any plans for scaling up in Russia?

- We do have such plans. Right now we have seven sites, soon we will open two more in the centre of Kazan. We are planning to open another one in a shopping centre, and by the end of the year we have plans to open three more.

This year we want to try to give Muscovites our brand, our taste, but at the moment there is no specifics, we are looking closer and thinking about it. Our task is to make Tatar and Halal food for everyone. So of course we're trying to expand the brand to other cities in Russia.

- Tell us about the investments and how your chain is opening, as a franchise?

- Investments in a large project - a restaurant in the city centre - amount to about 15 million roubles and pay for themselves in three years. In 2020, the restaurants which opened in 2017 paid for themselves. As for profit, the restaurant brings the investor up to 700-800 thousand roubles a month.

We don't open by franchise, but by partnership. We had that experience when we were just starting out. And we realized that the B2C business is very sensitive, and Tatar cuisine is complicated, so in such a format the taste of our food, our brand suffers a lot, and we decided to manage ourselves. So we can take on a team of partners who are willing to invest, but all the operational management is up to us. They work as regional development directors, and we do all the work - marketing, production, and management.

Made in Russia // Made in Russia

Author: Karina Kamalova