The fair sex is forced to constantly monitor their figure. But how do we do it? From time to time we go on a diet, and exactly the same periodically (maybe a little more often) we try to fight extra pounds in gyms. And in between these "recovery procedures" we still continue to pamper ourselves with fast food. Pizza, hot dogs, hot ham sandwiches, fries, coca-cola ... Harmful? Yes, it is definitely harmful, and we are well aware of this. But it’s also very tasty - how can you resist such an appetizing hamburger ... And then again to the gyms. Although, in truth, we appreciate fast food not only because it is tasty, but also because it is very convenient - and you can eat it quickly enough (and to satisfy the feeling of hunger, this is one of the best options), and will be brought directly to the workplace or to the door of the apartment.
About Russian fast food
By the way, if it's all about the speed of delivery and the convenience of absorption, then it is absolutely not necessary to eat cutlets from meat grown in another hemisphere on incomprehensible dressings and eat fried potatoes with GMO (and you did not know that for the production of French fries it are they brought here frozen?) There are restaurants of real Russian cuisine, which food delivery to the office or home is included in the range of services provided in the same way as in ordinary pizzerias. And this is not even the trend of the very last days, when taking care of your health has become not only a vital necessity, but also a fashion trend of its own kind. The first public catering network that practices home delivery not of some hamburgers, but real Russian dumplings, pancakes, cold appetizers, even first courses (if you want, they will bring you real borscht, or if you want - even okroshka with real kvass, and for the second - buckwheat porridge or mashed potatoes with river fish), appeared in Russia twenty years ago. Even the French press wrote about her - oddly enough, journalists from a country distinguished by one of the most exquisite cuisines in the world were more interested in the Russian food delivery service than the Russians themselves, who had already begun to get used to McDonald's. By the way, in fact, this service could have become popular a long time ago - at one time Mikoyan himself, after a trip to the States, suggested adapting the idea of fast food and its delivery service to our conditions, but the government did not support it. They say, bourgeois culture, food delivery is somehow not socialist ...
The benefits of Russian cuisine
Frankly speaking, Russian cuisine is not even included in the top 10 of the healthiest culinary worlds. But this does not mean at all that it is harmful. In any case, it is more useful than the American one. You just need to carefully choose what to order.
Take ready-made salads, for example. In Russian cuisine, as such, there are not very many of them at all; pickled vegetables are mainly practiced as snacks of a similar type. Choosing between Olivier and sauerkraut, it is still better to opt for the latter. Firstly, mayonnaise in a seasoned salad becomes not the most useful product in a couple of hours. Secondly, fermentation is the most optimal way to preserve the maximum amount of vitamins in a product - in the same salad, especially if some of its components have been heat-treated, nothing useful remains. And when choosing between fried pork and stuffed pike, it is better to prefer fish - both healthier and tastier. And if you really want meat - let it be a rabbit. Russian cuisine has unique recipes for its preparation - it turns out more tender than chicken or suckling pig meat. At the same time, the product is considered dietary - there is very little fat in it, but there are plenty of proteins.
But, what is most interesting - all this can really be brought directly to the workplace or home. That is, in fact, the same fast food, but in the Russian style, while it is much tastier and healthier.
Does Russian cuisine have its own fast food? NTV journalists contacted me with this question. Well, well, let's think and talk.
Whether we like it or not, Russian cuisine is forced to compete with other national culinary traditions. This competition is not easy. But do not you seriously think that, say, Japanese or Mexican cuisine is richer and more varied than ours, Russian? However, both have conquered the world, are present in restaurants in every more or less self-respecting city.
Why? Because, on the one hand, they are technologically quite simple, and on the other hand, they are expressive and have a unique, incomparable character. All right, "sushi" and "tex-mex", this is still cooking. But what is the dominant opinion among public catering workers regarding our dishes? If you don't know, ask your friends. This opinion is very simple and unambiguous: “Russian cuisine is tasteless and inexpressive. Unlike the Caucasian one, it does not attract clients. "
Anything to object? We have. The popularity of fast food among the public has never been a criterion for the quality of cooking. Otherwise, the real capitals of international cuisine would not be Paris and London, but Istanbul and Beirut. Real cuisine does not pursue cheap popularity. Well, tell me honestly, do you need foie gras and asparagus and cheese to become the leader of fast food. And this is not just a menu of expensive restaurants. It is also part of the usual diet of a normal French family. Sorry for the political incorrectness, but by the word "normal" we mean a family whose ancestors have long lived in France.
So it is with our traditional dishes. Numerous experiments on their adaptation to fast food, the apotheosis of which was the not-remembered "Russian Bistro", demonstrated a complete fiasco. And this is not a business model problem. It's just that Russian cuisine has always meant a serious attitude towards oneself, knowledge and skills that need to be applied to achieve a result.
There are cookery in the world adapted for mass use, and there are those that require some preparation on the part of customers. It's the same as with painting. There are Glazunov and Shilov, who are liked by the majority, and there are Korovin, Makovsky and Filonov, to understand which you need to know and feel something. So it is with our gastronomy. We are convinced that it is not destined to become a fast food product. She is not suitable for this either in character or in content. The fate of Russian cuisine is to become a solid national cuisine, serving on an equal footing in world capitals with other well-promoted brands. But competing with them not on the platform of mass or tourist catering, but among the so-called "slow food", a thoughtful and unhurried acquaintance with new gastronomic tastes.
I am glad that I was able to comment on this in the new film by Sergei Malozemov "Fast Food" (from the cycle "Food is Alive and Dead") on NTV:
The company was founded in 1940 by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald, who were the first in the world to formulate the principles of the concept of fast food. In 1955, entrepreneur Ray Kroc came up with the idea of developing a chain in order to increase the supply of his mixers to these establishments. He received consent to promote the company, and in 1961 bought all the rights to it.
Most restaurants are franchised, so the assortment, size and portions of portions may vary from country to country. For example, in many countries of the world, the chains sell beer in restaurants, but in Russia they have always been non-alcoholic.
The first Russian McDonald's (at that time - the largest in the world) opened in Moscow on Pushkinskaya Square in 1990. On this day, it was visited by 30 thousand people, which became a record for the network.
The interests of the network in Russia are provided by subsidiaries of the American structure - CJSC Moscow-McDonald's and LLC McDonald's. Due to the fact that the first restaurants in Moscow were opened with a rental rate of 1 ruble per year, and contracts were concluded for a period until 2041, rumors circulated that half of the chain belonged to the Moscow mayor's office. The state enterprise Mosrestoranservice was indeed a co-founder and is listed as a co-owner of McDonald's in Russia. In 2010, the Moscow government tried to challenge the conditions and raise the rate to at least a thousand rubles, but the court sided with the network. The franchise scheme for opening restaurants in Russia began to be applied only in April 2012, after Subway overtook McDonald's in terms of the number of eateries in Moscow.
Last year, the company's revenue grew by 19.6% - to 55.4 billion rubles, while the year before last - by 24.8%. The slowdown occurs from year to year.
Subway
In 1965, 17-year-old Fred Deluca told family friend Dr. Peter Baku that he wanted to become a doctor and that he needed money for training. He advised to open a kiosk selling sandwiches and gave Fred a thousand dollars - the start-up capital for the future establishment. Soon, the first Super Pete Subs stall appeared in Connecticut. The sandwich was shaped like a submarine, and it was called "submarine", and then shortened to "sub".
Ten years later, partners began to actively use the franchise scheme, transferring restaurants to management, and ten years later they solemnly celebrated the opening of the thousandth Subway restaurant. By August 2014, the chain has 42 thousand restaurants in one hundred and seven countries. In terms of the number of restaurants, it is ahead of McDonald's.
In Russia, the company began to actively develop in 2004, opening the first restaurant in St. Petersburg on Nevsky Prospekt. Today it is the only restaurant chain represented in the Far East. The master franchise is owned by the American company Subway Russia Franchising Company, its owners are US citizens, the network's activities in Russia are monitored by a representative office located in Moscow.
KFC
Until 1991, the network was called « Fried Kentucky Chicken " , which reflected a specialization in chicken. KFC is the second largest cafe chain in the world by turnover, second only to McDonald's. As of December 2013, it has more than 18 thousand points in one hundred and eighteen countries of the world. The company is owned by the Yum! Brands, which also includes Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains.
KFC was founded by Harland Sanders, who started selling fried chicken dishes during the Great Depression. He has promoted the franchise to other states and regions. Thanks to the company, chicken has become an integral part of fast food and has gained the same popularity as the hamburger. Sanders himself, who called himself "Colonel", became an important figure in American cultural life, and his image is still used in the interiors and advertisements of KFC. In 2013, KFC had sales of $ 23 billion.
In Russia, KFC cooperated with the Rosinter company (Il Patio, Planet Sushi, Friday’s chains), cafes were open for a long time under the Rostik’s brand. In 2005 Rostik Group and Yum! Brands signed a cooperation agreement, which provided for the formation of a new unified brand "Rostik's - KFC". In 2011, the American company bought all the rights to the Russian part of the chain and returned the name to KFC. In 2013, there were 245 points in Russia. The management plans that by 2015 450 restaurants will operate in Russia and the CIS.
Burger king
James McLamore and David Edgerton opened the first Burger King in 1954 in Miami. After visiting McDonald's, McLamore got excited about the idea of creating his own fast food. In 2002, the company was acquired for $ 1.5 billion by a pool of investors, which includes Goldman Sachs, TPG and Bain funds. Ten years later, the company's capitalization amounted to $ 4.6 billion.
The first restaurant of the chain in Russia opened in early 2010 in the Metropolis shopping and entertainment center, and the second in the Evropeisky shopping center. Today there are 220 chain restaurants in Russia, of which 121 are in Moscow and the Moscow Region.
In Russia, Burger King operates through a franchise system, represented by Burger Rus LLC, a joint company of Burger King Europe, owner of the Shokoladnitsa chain Alexander Kolobov and VTB Capital. By 2016, the network plans to increase the number of points in Russia to five hundred. Burger shops may appear in place of the Coffee House coffee shops, which were swallowed up by the competitive Shokoladnitsa. If that happens, Burger King will overtake McDonald's in the number of restaurants.
"Teremok"
In the late nineties, entrepreneur Mikhail Goncharov developed a plan to create stalls with national cuisine - Russian pancakes with fillings. The first "Teremok" was opened in Moscow in 1999 near the "Airport" metro station. Over time, the company became one of the four largest fast food chains in Russia, and then Teremok restaurants were also opened. This year, information appeared that Goncharov plans to open points in America. In 2013, turnover amounted to 2.65 billion rubles in Moscow and 2.3 billion rubles in St. Petersburg.
"Stardog! S"
In 1993, Russian businessman Sergei Shikharev bought meat and meat products from Denmark. There he noticed many small kiosks offering delicious hot dogs. There was nothing like this in Moscow, so he returned to Russia with the idea of creating a similar network. Shikharev signed an agreement with Steff Houlberg, and soon the first Steff kiosk appeared in the city center. By the end of the nineties, there were a hundred tents, but during the crisis, business began to decline because the company could no longer work with Steff Houlberg. They decided to abandon the name "Steff", instead of it, the "Stop Top" logo appeared.
In 2004 the company underwent a new rebranding, receiving the name "Stardog! S". Now it has 702 points of sale in sixteen regions. Most of them work around the clock. The hit of sales, like ten years ago, is the French hot dog.
"Tea spoon"
The idea of a Russian-style bistro came to St. Petersburg restaurateurs Boris Krupkin and Mikhail Avgustin, who had previously created the first gay club in the city - "69". In a crisis year, they decided to master the lower price segment, providing an average check lower than that of McDonald's. 55 cafes were opened in St. Petersburg, in 2009 the first restaurant was opened in Klaipeda. 24% of the shares belong to the Neva-Rus fund, 19% are owned by private shareholders.
"Little Potato"
In 1998 Andrey Kononchuk and Vitaliy Naumenko registered the Technology and Nutrition company. In August, the first point of the autocafe chain was opened in Moscow. The main product is whole baked potatoes in foil with filling (cheese, butter and salads of your choice). For a long time, the chain worked in the format of street kiosks, and since 2003 it has appeared on food courts in shopping centers.
As of the end of 2012, the Kroshka Kartoshka network includes more than 300 establishments, including 76 cafes in Moscow. The network is actively represented in Russian millionaire cities and is one of the five largest players on the market.
"Wokker"
Alexey Gisak worked as a copywriter for the BBDO Group and designed advertising campaigns for Pepsi and Mars until he wanted to become an entrepreneur himself. In 2008, from a trip to Amsterdam, he brought the idea of pan-Asian food, which had never happened in Moscow before. Gisak and his friends registered a company: 70% with Aleksey himself, 20% and 10% with Daniil Ostrovsky and Inna Petrova, his colleagues in the advertising market. The business was helped by participation in food festivals: in one day of work at the Afisha Picnic festival, about a thousand portions of food were sold. Then word of mouth worked, I didn't even have to spend money on advertising.
At first, "Walker" worked as a wok delivery service throughout the city, then there were points on food courts in shopping centers. In 2012, the first Pan-Asian restaurant with affordable prices was opened. A year later, the revenue of "Wokker" began to amount to 35 million rubles a month, while another project of Gisak, "Supkultura" - only 2.5 million. Now Vokker, like its competitors, is developing its franchise network.
How sellers of junk food occupied the country step by step.
According to RBC.Research, two-thirds of Russians aged 18 to 54 visit fast food restaurants from time to time. And most of all catering outlets in the country are engaged in fast food trade. But even a quarter of a century ago, to get into McDonalds, people stood in line for many hours, and the citizens of the USSR practically did not hear anything about other fast food chains.
There was also a kind of fast food in the Soviet Union. Institutions selling fast food became widespread in the late 50s under Khrushchev. Dumplings, kebabs, cheburek, pancakes, pies and sandwiches were in abundance in many large cities. These establishments offered quite tasty, cheap and not the healthiest food. But it did not contain flavor enhancers, dyes, and unrealistic portions of sugar. The most harmful thing in pancakes and pasties was butter, which was changed much less often than it should be.
One of the great things about fast food in those days was small portions. The Soviet meat pie was more modest in size and calorie content than the traditional American hamburger, and lagged very far behind the Big Tasty.
In the 80s, due to a shortage, small catering outlets began to slowly close.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many establishments of such a plan completely disappeared, but some were privatized by enterprising people and still exist, having changed the address and underwent several rebranding.
The history of Russian fast food in the modern sense of the word began in 1988.
On April 29, 1988, an agreement was signed to open a McDonald's restaurant chain in Moscow. On this occasion, articles were published in major metropolitan newspapers. It was reported that the establishments will become a source of highly paid (from 2 rubles per hour) jobs for students and schoolchildren.
But McDonald's was not the first fast food chain in Russia. In the summer of the same year, outdoor tents of the Finnish company Polar were opened in Leningrad. Their menu included hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries and other traditional fast food restaurants. Residents of the city remember the food in these establishments as expensive and tasteless. In the late 90s, the network ceased to exist in Russia.
January 31, 1990. Opening of the first McDonald's on Pushkin Square in Moscow. On this day, the restaurant received over 30 thousand visitors.
A little less excitement was caused by the opening of the Baskin Robins cafe in the same year.
In 1993 new McDonald's restaurants began to open in Moscow one after another. The second and third appeared on Old Arbat and Gazetny Lane. By the beginning of the 2000s, there were already more than a hundred of them in different cities of the European part of Russia.
In the same year, a Rostiks restaurant was opened in GUM (a shopping center on Red Square). They borrowed a lot from the American KFC network, but were not their official partners. These companies began their cooperation in the mid-2000s, when the eatery began to be called Rostix-KFC. At the moment, the process of rebranding "for America" has been completed and the chicken fast food restaurants are simply called KFC.
At the end of 1993, street food stalls appeared in Moscow. Including hotdogs under the Steff brand, renamed Stop-Top in the early 2000s, and now known as Stardogs.
September 1996. Opening of the first McDonalds restaurant in St. Petersburg. Not all Petersburgers were pleased with this event.
In the 90s, various Western pizza chains came to the markets of both capitals, including Pizza Hut, which is quite popular today in Russia, but they all had to leave the market in 1998 due to economic difficulties. Since then, only Sbarro has survived, opening the first restaurant in Moscow in 1997. In Europe, the chain has historically positioned its food as meals available to everyone. But in this country for a very long time these restaurants were perceived by most people as an institution for "special occasions." After all, one meal here costs 2-3 times more than at McDonald's or KFC.
It is very curious that the first outlet of one of the most successful Russian fast food chains "Kroshka-Kartoshka" opened at the height of the default in August 1998. A year earlier, Andrey Kovalchuk and Vitaliy Naumenko noticed an interesting dish "Kumpir" in Turkey. It inspired men to sell potatoes with various additives.
In 1999, the first Teremok pancake house was opened near the Aeroport metro station. As in the case of potatoes, the population perfectly accepted the food familiar to a Russian person, and the network began to develop rapidly. Now there are more than two hundred points in it.
In 2004, the American company Subway came to Russia again (before that there was an unsuccessful attempt in 1994). They opened their first restaurant on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg. In the next few years after him, the company opened dozens of retail outlets throughout Russia. Now there are already several hundred of them.
In the second half of the 2000s, no new significant players appeared on the fast food market, but the existing chains developed intensively. And in the regions, their own small networks of a county scale were created.
On January 20, 2010, the first Burger King restaurant was opened in Moscow. The pace of development of the network is amazing. Over the past five years, more than 300 establishments have been opened throughout Russia.
The most popular fast food restaurants in the world are chicken and meat. Fish sandwiches can be sold as an addition to the main menu. There are few fast food chains in the world whose flagship products are fish dishes. And they are all located in Northern Europe. Of these, only the Nordsee chain entered the Russian market in 2011. It was originally planned to open more than 20 restaurants, but they stopped at 4 and closed a year later.
In 2012, the Finnish fast food chain Hesburger came to St. Petersburg. If other companies try to open points closer to each other, then this one is not afraid to open in remote regions. There are Hesburger restaurants in Petropavlosk-Kamchatsky, Vladivostok, Yakutsk, Murmansk and Khabarovsk.
On July 26, 2014 the McDonalds restaurant was opened in Novosibirsk. This is the first establishment of this chain in Russia, located east of the Ural Mountains. There is also a center for the supply of food to 20 new restaurants, which will open in the coming years in Siberia. The trend of recent years is the expansion of fast food chains to cities far from the capital.
Some Moscow McDonalds already have terminals for placing orders without the help of cashiers. In the coming years, it should be possible to place orders through a website or an app on a smartphone (this innovation has already been implemented in Australian restaurants). Most of the fast food chains are planning explosive growth in the future and do not even think about a possible exit from the market.
The fast food market began to form in Russia in the early 90s. We all remember how in 1990 the newly opened first McDonald's collected two-kilometer lines of those wishing to join a Western-style fast food establishment. Since then, new foreign and domestic brands have appeared on the Russian market, opening new catering widespread and consistently popular with the public, the recently opened Burger King is a good example of this.
The popularity of fast food among consumers can be explained by its advantages: efficiency of food (albeit often visible), convenience of visiting, fast service and organization of fast food consumption.
Types of fast food
Despite the fact that the fast food market in Russia has been developing for a long time, we still lack a single and generally accepted terminology. You can find various terms, for example: street food, casual dining food, quick & casual, etc.
However, as a rule, fast food items are divided into two main categories - street food and stationary fast food. Street fast food includes kiosks, mobile carts, auto buffets. The disadvantages of this form of fast food can be attributed to the rather low motivation of the selling staff, which can be reflected in the sales volumes.
Stationary fast food is mostly represented by food court zones within shopping malls, and sometimes also office centers. The popularity of this type among operators is mainly due to the large flow of visitors to large quality shopping centers.
According to Praedium Oncor International, the food zone (which includes a food court) usually occupies about 8-12% of the total area of a shopping center and is, in aggregate, a full-fledged anchor that can generate significant customer flows. However, when compared to other anchor tenants, the rates for food court operators tend to be higher.
This is mainly due to the fact that there is always a lot of demand from fast food operators in the area of the "food court".
Largest operators
On the Russian fast food market, following foreign brands, domestic operators quickly began to develop. In terms of filling the food court area, some of the seats are usually given to well-known and well-known brands, for which rental rates will be lower than for other operators. Such "anchor" brands most often include such establishments as McDonald's, Teremok, Rostik s-KFC, Kroshka-Kartoshka, Sbarro.
Most of the points in the past year were opened at the Kroshka-Kartoshka, McDonald's and Subway companies.
Impact of the crisis
The fast food market has quite steadily passed through the crisis in our country in comparison with other groups of tenants (with the exception of grocery discount anchors). While the total revenue of many operators was falling, the revenues of the operators of the same food court, on the contrary, were growing - according to various sources, the growth was about 20-40% in 2009.
This largely explains the fact that over the past year there was no significant drop in rates for food court operators.
Trends
Recently, it is possible to highlight the trends that are observed in the fast food market both in connection with the deterioration of the economic situation, and regardless of the crisis.
According to analysts at Praedium Oncor International, over the past year, food court operators have for the most part not experienced a decrease in the flow of visitors. At the same time, in some cases, fast food outlets attracted customers of restaurants and cafes, i.e. we can talk about a certain shift in the flow of visitors from more expensive formats towards more economical ones.
At the same time, the number of visitors to high-quality shopping centers, which are characterized by the “food first, then shopping” scheme, and not vice versa, is increasing. As a rule, most classic shopping center concepts assume that the visitor will first shop and then move to the food court area, but recently the opposite picture has often been observed. This may be facilitated by an increase in the number of office workers who go to shopping malls for lunch, as well as an increase in popularity among young people, for whom the food court is often perceived as a meeting area. All this testifies to the growing importance of the food court zone as one of the main anchors that form a significant part of the flows.
Against this background, it seems quite logical that, based on the examples of the largest and most iconic shopping centers, there is an increase in the number of operators, as well as the share of the food court zone in these shopping facilities. So, for example, in the shopping and entertainment center "Vegas" is planned a zone of restaurants and cafes with an area of 9,000 square meters. m, and in the already functioning shopping center "Metropolis" there are about 19 food court operators. Over the past few years, the average share of a food court and, in general, a food zone in the largest shopping malls has been gradually growing:
Nevertheless, despite the growth of the fast food market, there is still a tendency for operators with a little-known and not promoted brand to enter large high-quality retail facilities. Significant shopping centers mostly use only proven and popular operators.
In general, oddly enough, only a small part of well-known world brands are still represented on the Russian fast food market, which allows us to speak of favorable prospects for new foreign chains to enter the Russian market. This is confirmed, for example, by the quite successful opening of the Burger King international network outlets even during the crisis period. Considering the high degree of competition in Western European markets, the arrival of large foreign operators in Russia looks quite natural and expedient.
The importance of a good concept
Currently, the importance of the correct concept of the food zone in shopping facilities is increasing. First of all, if the object is large, then a wide variety of well-known operators must be represented. Having a wide variety of choices can make the eating area more attractive to different visitors.
Equally important is the competent organization of the space, which assumes an even distribution of tables between the operators (in this case, the same Metropolis shopping center can be distinguished), and not when, for example, all the seating places are collected in one place. At the same time, it is worth considering a comfortable space for 1 person and avoiding a situation where visitors sit almost shoulder to shoulder.
Also, original furniture design can enhance the overall appeal of the food court area. For optimal results, different placement options need to be considered, and it can also be possible for individual operators to decorate their adjacent space to add exclusivity to their fast food and variety in the overall look of the food area.
conclusions
In conclusion, it can be noted that during the height of the crisis, food court zones had the smallest vacancy rate among other tenants of shopping centers. In general, as practice shows, over the past few years, food court operators have been characterized by lower rotation compared to other groups of tenants.
The scale of the shopping center plays an increasingly important role for operators, since the food court zone is characterized by high traffic in large shopping malls, and in small shopping centers people usually do not have time to get hungry.
In general, there is an increase in the influence of the food court as a full-fledged anchor: a well-organized food zone with a wide selection of popular operators can act as an even stronger center of attraction than standard anchors (household appliances, sports goods, clothing). And at the same time, on average, the rental rates for the food court area are higher than those of other anchors, which is explained by the high demand from operators.
