Iryna Dobrutska, artist and creative director of Salateira: “The chain restaurant business should be simple, clear and inexpensive to implement”
9 May 2024 14:32
MOTHER OF THE BRAND
Iryna Dobrutska, founder and creative director of Salateira, has been actively involved in business for 20 years. She is directly involved in the creation of the first healthy fast food in Ukraine in the format of healthy food restaurants.
In a short period of time, Salateira’s dishes have become a favourite among many Ukrainians, although at first many were surprised by the idea. Not every restaurant business in Ukraine was able to withstand the economic challenges of the war, but the well-known green food chain managed to survive. The company is not resting on its laurels and promises to surprise its customers in the near future.
In a blitz interview with Kommersant Ukrainian 
During the war, food service establishments in Ukraine, like any other business, faced many challenges. For many people, this period was a shock and at the same time a need for a total rebirth that would allow them to adapt to new realities. Your business has survived. How did you personally learn from this experience? How did you manage to develop rather than close, despite the difficult economic and social situation in the country?
The situation is really quite difficult now, as it is for any business in Ukraine. To be honest, it is even more difficult in the restaurant business. Our client from the middle segment, which we were mainly focused on, left the country at the beginning of the great war. Now there is a demand for either cheaper products or VIP. The new conditions are a challenge for us to become more attractive to the middle segment than before. If before the war it was enough to do our job well and efficiently, now it is much more difficult.
We need to change our approach. Although we have a very clear format that stands out from the rest, we are now adapting it to the new environment. The war has pushed us to make our business even more systematic. To ensure that it remains stable even in this state, with these fluctuations – when the cost of production jumps several times during the week, and you simply do not understand what else to expect. We have traditionally adapted to all crises, but now there are many more challenges. By the way, we are creating and testing a new Salateira format. Like everyone else, we do not know whether this experiment will be successful, but we are looking for options.
Salateira is a fast-food salad, but it definitely breaks the stereotype that such restaurants are unhealthy. How did you come up with the idea for Salateira? What factor did you consider to be the basis for creating a successful business project at the start?
We opened Salateira at a time when there was very little choice on the food court market. Everything was quite simple: home cooking, kebabs, even burgers, I think, were not available then – except for McDonald’s. At that time, we found a truly new niche in our market. We didn’t know 100% whether it would take off, because we didn’t understand whether there was a massive demand for this story at all.
At first, people really looked at us like we were weirdos and didn’t really understand our idea, but they quickly tried it out. So the take-off of our idea was actually quite fast. We had a lot of obstacles and challenges. We did a lot of things wrong at the beginning, so our business also experienced serious financial difficulties. But the belief that people need it, and we saw that people really loved our salads, encouraged us to make our business smarter and adapt it to our market.
The idea of healthy eating is still relevant, even despite the war. In addition, we have noticed a trend that people now want to spend more time in a restaurant to enjoy their food more. Everyone is no longer in such a hurry, because they know: what’s the hurry? The new format that we are developing now is all about ‘sitting’. Before that, the principle was to serve as many people as possible, especially at lunchtime. Now it’s the opposite – we want to create an atmosphere where people can enjoy their food. It’s still fast, still tasty, but it’s more comfortable.
What does it mean to you to be the mum of the Salateira brand?
To be honest, I don’t consider myself the brand’s mum and I don’t consider myself the mum of Salateira at all. This path has already been passed for me. In fact, I believe that being a mum to your business means not being separated from it. Before, I couldn’t even imagine not being involved in Salateira – I mean, I really treated the business like a child. But it’s not a child… Years of therapy helped me realise that you can’t treat business like that. You need to treat it pragmatically – exactly as a business. After all, your attitude affects your decisions about business and its development. So I am definitely not a brand mum.
How do you manage to combine network management with your creative expression? After all, you paint pictures, and your Instagram page – about art, not business – appeared in August 2022, during the war.
I’ve always had a need for creative fulfilment. In fact, I’m still in the era of psychoanalysis. For me, this is also an additional fulfilment. I like it. At one point, I just allowed myself to do what I like. I finally allowed myself to do different things that were not related to each other. When I considered myself a brand mum, I couldn’t afford it. I had one big child, whom I took care of from morning till night. Now everything is completely different.
If we talk about the prospects for the development of the chain restaurant business in Ukraine in the current environment. In your experience, is this area promising today? Would you advise entrepreneurs who are starting or changing their business path in related areas to rely on network models?
If we are talking about some mono-products, and possibly a franchise with mono-products (a product that can be produced and sold very quickly – ed.), which requires small investments and will be appropriate in small towns, then it makes sense to develop such a business. In Ukraine, there is now a demand for an inexpensive product – tasty, inexpensive and preferably a lot of it. There are recently launched projects in our market that are positioning themselves quite well. That is, a mono-product will be relevant now.
As for some chains a la Salateira, which are quite complex and large, you need to understand that there must be a certain amount of money so that the business can balance. You also need to decide for yourself whether you can develop yourself and take risks, or whether it’s better to have a great franchise. Basically, it’s nothing new, but there are a lot of unknown factors that can affect this process
I think that restaurateurs with their own restaurant – with some unique cuisine and offer – feel better now than chain restaurants. There are restaurants in the VIP segment that make a lot of money. They felt their target audience in time. I also know a lot of cool little restaurants that are barely breaking even. Business in our sector is a specific story. Even now there is demand for the VIP segment, but there are a lot of nuances.
We can now test different formats in Ukraine and, for example, sell them as a franchise abroad. This is also a cool story. Of course, there are different aspects, but in general, the Ukrainian franchise is showing good results. For example, such a chain as Lviv Croissants. But again, everything needs to be packaged in such a way that people who have moved to Europe – mostly our Ukrainians – want to buy this project and develop it there. It should definitely be simple, clear, and inexpensive to implement.
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