Sergey Malakhovsky, a whistle-blower of burger hipsters, recently closed the Ribs House in St. Petersburg and went with a ribbed franchise throughout Russia. He promises franchisees foodcost 25% - we ask how this is possible in a purely meat project.
Evgeny Lebedev: Sergey, as I understand it, your main project “Ribs House” now has a new life. You closed a restaurant in St. Petersburg, doing federal history. Tell me how it started?
Sergey Malakhovsky: Zhen, look, came to visit 2014. There were no products of any kind; import substitution began. Then I worked at the restaurant "Divan", in which there were many denominations in the kitchen: pizza, sushi, "Europe".
At my intersection 16 objects opened, we traded the same thing, well, really. I walked for a whole year and tried to understand: whether it is necessary to leave this intersection, close or "change shoes" in another name.
I made a decision and on May 1, 2015 I turned off the “Divan” sign, fastened the “Ribs House”, made “cosmetics” inside, altered the furniture and stuck 28% from the first month. I nurtured this project since 2007, after studying in the USA.
Is 28% profit?
That's right. I realized that I won. I ignored everything that people around sell, went into the meat theme and put all the knowledge gained in Italy, Norway and the USA on the menu. He began to languish beef, pork ribs and fry the little pistols of the chicken tail lamb. There were ribs in every check. I made an inexpensive lunch.
Do you have any special technology for creating these edges?
I haven’t tortured ribs in any way. You can even torment them with super-visible technology, but the result will be good if you have a marble source, the beef rib has come of prime quality, just a visor. If you have a good fat net, then God himself ordered to play in a sou-form.
But if the quality takes a walk from select to prime, it is better to bring everything to one denominator by baking below 100 ° C. There is no boiling, fat changes the formula, it becomes useful-active-delicious-digestible, if I was not difficult to put it. I began to languish beef and pork ribs using this technology. And I realized that the human factor in the kitchen began to decrease: my ribs began to cook ovens at night.
When the ribs are ready, raise the temperature and glaze them, this is close to the principle of American barbecue. And you can imagine, my motto at the opening was: "Caution, our ribs are addictive in severe forms." He was on the cover of the menu, on the walls.
But for six months I heard a lot from the guests, from friends, in the reviews: we went to the "Ribs", there the meat is chewing lips. Or: teeth are not needed to remove meat from the bone. Then I realized that after all, our ideology is “chewing on lips.” I picked up the "ruble" and went to the USA to study pastrami.
“Ruble” - in the sense of a million?
No, this is conditional. I rented a car and drove 21 staff. Not only did I call in pastramas, I also wanted to understand the perfect burger patty.
The Americans, of course, are the gods in this. Someone puts a sour apple in a patty, some dried figs, some anchovies, some caramelized bacon. And everyone patents his cutlet. I drove into more than 30 craft burger, non-chain ... But this is a different story, the main idea I had was to learn how to make pastors.
Explain what pastrami is for those who don’t know.
This is the most delicious beef dish in the world. Salmon of a goby is salted out in a light brine for up to ten days. Then we cook, bake, reduce the temperature, gently cool, and this brisket turns into a terrific ham, which you can eat with a spoon.
Professionally squeeze it with brine, as they do in meat processing plants, will not work. You tear the fiber, break, the texture will not be. And the processes so far, I think, have not learned to speed up.
Breast is generally complex meat, housewives practically do not buy it, usually it goes to industrial processing. And after America, I, inspired, invented my tasty brine, where I put spices and nitrite salt, so that the meat remains red, like a medium. Well, spoiled the food by twenty thousand.
So far, have you picked up the technology?
Yes. At some point, it turned out, and Ryober screwed pastrami to ideology. He began to put pastrami in salads, twist the shawarma, make burgers, just a beautiful piece of brisket, ready, to grill.
The menu prescribed that for 500 rubles you get a big good piece of meat. I used to have only ribs in my check, and now it’s 50 to 50. Someone loves pastors, some ribs. Everything went well.
Well - how is it? What is the revenue, for example?
Good - this is when your lunch is packed and in the evening chock.
Are you talking about a place where you had about 40 places?
No, there I had a five-room space plus a summer terrace. If everything is folded, 148 places.
And then you moved to a smaller area?
That's right. Here I am at this address with a summer veranda paid rent, which was even slightly above the market. Seriously, I monitored who pays how much. And when I began not to get on any day of the week, the landlord got the feeling that I earn a lot. “Sergey, can I please, instead of 335 thousand rubles, now 750 thousand?”
And what was the revenue at that moment?
We fastened to 3 million rubles. We had 3.6 million rubles. The break-even point is 2.172 million rubles, 2.25 million. But we have decreased dramatically in electricity - I turned off the pizza oven.
Father, I became a happy person. Why I fed this stove with electricity, I don’t understand at all. You pay from 90 to 150 thousand rubles a month. When you turn off the stove, you start paying 47 thousand and you think: “Wait, yes, I was selling golden pizza.”
In general, I began a dialogue with arm twisting. I say: gentlemen, look, I’ve made “cosmetics” for you, put up sound insulation, I need to cure the sewer, you’ll bewail, I’ll leave.
They: “Here, Sergey, we are offered“ Dodo Pizza ”, Papa John's offer rental for the year ahead.” It is clear that they have thoughts, like ordinary people: a child can be paid for education, housing conditions can be improved by a fly, and the car, by the way, worn out.
And I had to fold from there. It turns out there was no long-term contract?
Very good question. When I twisted the signboard from “Sofa” to “Ribs”, I signed a fresh three-year agreement. There was registered an increase in rent per year up to 10%, but not such an arm twist.
How then did you manage to evict?
Zhenya, you know, I'm an impulsive person. In a bad mood, everything falls out of my hands, I can’t work when this happens.
I have a partner, Mikhail Kashin. We are different: I am very impulsive, and he has cold decisions, he has been reassuring me for ten years.
I say: “Misha, we have a successful project: a signboard, a brand, meat, this is the future. Now these burger watered like from a watering can, someone will turn sour, and we will catch the hype because we have the technology.
I also screwed the chips in the "Ribs". I made five sauces with which tarpaulin boots can be eaten: awesome barbecue, smoked mustard, cucumber ketchup, adjika and garlic. People steal these sauces from tables, so they are tasty, they can be eaten through the nose.
Then I became a schizophrenic by the age of 42 - I took up cabbage in Ribs. I’ll tell you something now that when you visit meat places, you will start with cabbage.
Look: in 90% of burger, pastrami cabbage in Russia, cabbage is chopped with the back leg. It’s as if a drunk is standing there and really is not trying. Cabbage should be sliced on a slice machine for a quarter of a millimeter, you should get a bowl of fluff from a head of cabbage.
I have it multicomponent, there are carrots, and leeks, and green onions, and parsley. Add chili, sugar it. Here’s such a five-minute seasoning that gives the dish life, it acts like a Mezim: all the fat little ribs are pastra digested, and there is no heaviness.
This is also important when, after visiting your institution, a person does not hiccup in the car. I am a schizophrenic: I come and check in the morning what kind of cabbage I have. If on this day the trainee was entrusted with chopping some cabbage, he didn’t remove any solid cabbage or something else - it all flies to the trash. I do not want to see it.
The ideology of "Ribs" now really begins with cabbage. Cabbage, stewed meat, sauces - and hello.
And when he moved to a smaller area, what happened to the Ribs?
Then I got it wrong. He took a travel space on the embankment and thought that I had enough business centers to feed with lunch, and in the evening - jazz-bass-teribas with ribs and pastors. But I can’t do it.
People are all in cars, far from the metro, there is no boar trail. I began to pull out my popularity with master classes, birthdays, weddings. There was a one-place space, a very beautiful loft-industrial. Hall 130 m².
As a result, closed it for economic reasons?
That's right. And it seems like you have to give up and say to yourself: “You lost, Malakhovsky, go fuck. Complain to everyone about life, say that everything is goats around. "
Thank God there are pleasant people who say: "
- Sergey, you have a unique ideology, you will definitely board this train if you pack everything in a franchise box.
- Since I have no starting point, where should I bring and show everything? This is hard.
- It's okay, you’ll open the first franchise point, where it will be shown, and everything will go.
Well, I drew a brand book, drew a contract, a presentation, designed a website.
So you will have the first franchise point? Where?
In Yekaterinburg, 58 Sacco and Vanzetti Street. Detached mansion. Oleg Yuryevich Ananiev, a megaman, came to me. He looked after me on Facebook, and then he was seen on the plane by Oleg Nazarov - the grandfather of our Russian restaurant, the holiest man - and said that Malakhovsky - "a pleasant guy, not a bastard, not a deceiver, will do well." Oleg Ananyev called me: "Sergey, in my opinion, is on our way."
What format is this restaurant?
A real restaurant with an open kitchen, with production downstairs. The basement is dry there. We will smoke and languish in alta-shaamahs and even buy a visiting stove we will buy a beautiful, American one.
Will the Ribs House be called?
Yes. There will be many offal, because I have perfected some dishes from the offal. I taught offal there are girls who are sick of the word "kidney". 48 out of 50 people ask: when are our favorite kidneys with celery, honey mushrooms and nutmeg?
Because I can achieve textures and close the taste at such a level that you eat in silence, it is better in darkness and loneliness. But not so with everything.
The scar that I tried in Verona, in the 12 Apostles, drove me crazy. I projected a recipe for Russia, but it didn’t work on Ribs. That is, I, like all businessmen, am 25% mistaken.
The best example is calf liver. He ran after her to the market, soaked the steam room in milk, she turned white, took films, marinated: honey, ginger, garlic, lemon. He breaded in nut crumbs, a medium steak fried, asked 300 rubles - nobody needs it.
I take a cheap beef liver, 91 rubles in the purchase. We peel off the film, on a slice machine we cut it in millimeters, shred it, oil it, we get such “hair”, a person doesn’t understand how they cut it so thinly.
We freeze pancakes, throw a pancake in a pan, it flares up in ten seconds. Serve with mashed potatoes, crispy onions, salted cucumber and creamy sauce. A fully garnished dish with a cost of 32 rubles. The menu costs 180 rubles. And the margin is sustained, and the person does not feel that I am a bastard. Now it goes. That is, you can’t give up, you need to work with the product from all sides.
How often is your menu updated? Can you just cook something and write on the board what today is such and such a dish?
Sure. So I found a supplier of rabbit kidneys - a farm where five thousand rabbits, and they fed the kidneys to dogs. Ivan the Terrible considered rabbit kidneys a dish of longevity. They are sweet, their fiber repeats the heart muscle, nourishes it very high quality, urea does not smell at all, just a boutique product.
They collected me the first 30 kilograms. And I, on the board, as you say, wrote a snack and a hot dish. This is how you examine whether there will be a demand for it or not. If you take, you can enter in the main menu. You need to update at least once a month, then people understand that your company lives.
What is your overall franchise concept? Do you grind it somehow under the local market?
I have three options. The first is when businessmen have a fading cafe or restaurant. They sit and scoff at the chef: let's introduce chebureks, let's make delivery. The porridge begins. And what to do?
So I suggest investing 2 million rubles and take a small point, which will be the procurement base. And where is the boar trail in their city, take from 15 to 50 m², not more. There, the rent will be high, semi-finished products are brought there, two station wagons serve a point with disposable tableware.
Prices will be competitive to KFC and generally to all fast-food and street-food players, maybe a little higher. The second course is from 60 to 120 m², where everything is prepared on the spot. Without an alcohol license, purely on beer.
And the third format is the maximum, 250 m², with an alcohol license, with liquors and moonshine, with cocktails, with chips that I came up with. For example, in the Ribs, I came up with a 15-hour hourglass on the tables that says: if the sand is over, the Ribs are treated, it’s not necessary to pay. The waiter, having accepted the order, set the watch, wished a good evening and left. It motivates.