30-year-old entrepreneur Nina Gudkova cooks herself, sells desserts at high prices and is not afraid of failure.

Nina Gudkova, co-owner of the Friends Forever Co cafe chain, is an extremely principled person. To the visitor’s question: “What, don’t you have eclairs?” - She raises her eyebrows in surprise: “Volkonsky” and “Coffee House” are around the corner. I won’t make eclairs.” Gudkova actually cooks herself, spending her days at the kitchen counter. The peculiarity of her desserts is original recipes, large portions and a huge amount of fresh berries, which significantly increase the cost of the dish (average price - 450 rubles). Cafes are criticized a lot on forums for their high prices, but the establishments themselves are sold out, and in one of them they even introduced a limit on the time spent at the tables. At the same time, they do not smoke in the establishments (even in the pub), do not sell strong alcohol (all cafes are positioned as family cafes), prohibit playing board games (“you just came here”) and do not provide discounts. “Visitors can be educated and accustomed,” says 30-year-old Nina, shrugging her shoulders.

Gudkova always wanted to open her own cafe, although becoming a cook, much less a pastry chef, was not part of her plans. After graduating from the Moscow Academy of Tourism with a degree in restaurant business manager, she went to gain experience in metropolitan restaurants: she worked as a manager, accountant, and merchandiser - in order to learn everything.

Her friend Pavel Kosterenko, an economist by training, opened a small company “Art Coffee” in 2005, supplying coffee and tea to cafes in the capital. Three years later, Gudkova and Kosterenko, who were 25 and 27 years old respectively, decided that the accumulated experience was enough for an independent business. “There was no fear,” Gudkova assures, “even if we failed, we are not 50 years old, we do what we want.”

From my own experience

In 2008, friends opened a cafe of American cuisine, Friends Forever, on Petrovka, investing the money they had saved and borrowing from their parents. It cost them 7 million rubles (of which 3 million were spent on renting a premises with an area of 65 sq. m). The lease agreement was signed two weeks before real estate prices collapsed, and the beginning of 2009 was remembered by young restaurateurs for the fact that the public began to save money on visiting cafes. The first discovery was the most difficult and expensive. “Most of the contractors didn’t give a damn about kids like us,” Nina recalls. - Now we open establishments on an area of 200 square meters for the same money. m".

Gudkova and Kosterenko even resorted to a trick: they positioned themselves as managers of the establishment - a brand chef and a brand manager, assuring their counterparties that the owners were some Americans. This made it easier for both them and their parents. Nina really became the face of the cafe: regular customers came to her and asked: “Ninochka, I’m losing weight, make broth without potatoes” or “Nina, I’m pregnant, can I have dessert without raspberries?”

So, “on cake”, the budget for the launch of the first establishment was replenished in six months. Over the next two years, Pavel and Nina opened two more Friends Forever - using working capital from the first. But Nina’s parents, who helped with the initial capital, continued to be skeptical about their occupation, saying that Nina “installs frying pans, having studied to be an economist.” They calmed down only after the grandmother, having tasted the desserts, concluded that she could finally be proud of her granddaughter.

New forms

In 2010, Kosterenko and Gudkova decided to look for new forms: the Favorite Pub beer was opened. “It was a very interesting experiment, because there is a radically different cuisine, different from the desserts at Friends Forever,” says Kosterenko and jokes that it was not so easy to lure the target audience from one cafe to another: “We told the men in the cafe : go to the pub, drink beer.”

The next new project is the “American dessert laboratory” I Love Cake - a tribute to Gudkova’s love for desserts. She comes up with an incredible number of them. This is a category of dishes that is in no way tied to the menu, “because I can’t print it every day,” says Kosterenko. The business grew, but restaurateurs still preferred to rely only on their own strength and did a lot of things with their own hands. For her favorite desserts, Nina came up with a ceiling-high glass display case, which she made herself from glass with a refrigerator. “But after a week the refrigerator no longer worked, I had to change it, otherwise all Nina’s desserts would melt. I changed it and all the windows fogged up,” recalls Pavel. “But we are learning, and that’s the main thing,” adds Nina.

Now Kosterenko and Gudkova already have seven establishments: in addition to the dessert laboratory I Love Cake, the beer Favorite Pub and two Friends Forever, there is also a cafe of American cuisine Conversation, breakfast all day at Breakfast Cafe, as well as a supplier of coffee and tea for Brickstone Trade restaurants, a delivery service Friendly pizza and a small brewery called Brickstone beer, which brews Fuel lager under license. Forbes estimates their total turnover at over 300 million rubles a year. Brand developer and director of the Archidea consulting agency Samvel Avetisyan estimated Kosterenko and Gudkova’s business at $30–32 million. “But this is not for sale!” - restaurateurs exclaim in unison. It’s just that their business is expanding beyond Russia: a company from Dubai has become interested in the possibility of purchasing a franchise.

How to make money from your love for sweets