The future of restaurant business in our country seems to me quite succesful

A public lecture was held by president of the Restaurateurs & Hoteliers Federation of Russia (FRIO), Igor Bukharov, at the Restaurant and Club Industry Management at RMA business–school. 

During the lesson the head of Federation told about some industry issues and actions, which FRIO undertakes for their elimination.

 “I am an optimist, and the future of restaurant business in our country seems to me even quite successful”, noted Mr. Bukharov.  “It is just necessary to understand one thing: we are going the same route, which both Europe and America passed before us. But we are very much behind them because of the fact that from 1917 to the early 90’s the restaurant business, as any other though, for reasons beyond control of businessmen, simply did not exist. Then we only need time to overtake, to minimize this delay. And so, I repeat, we go properly in line with global trends.

When you communicate with the western colleagues, you learn that everything, that we have now, they had - the imperfect legislation, corruption of officials and a lot of that else, it wasn’t once, but relatively not long ago: many of the living now remember very well those days.

We have a huge space for growth, business competition…If someone thinks that there is a wild competition on the restaurant market now, it only seems that way. In the United States 300 million of the population accounts for 980 thousand of public catering establishments. And we have 140 million for only 115 thousand, including even factory and kindergarten canteens. Or here's another figure that strikes imagination: a third of the population in the United States in some capacity or another once worked in restaurants.

What does this mean ? It indicates that a restaurant profession – cook, waiter – it is indeed a profession there, and its representatives are respected members of society. And we, if come back to the talk about culinary colleges... Who goes there ? Unfortunately, there are many whom mothers say : " You grew up such a fool, okay, go to culinary school, there’ll be fed at least ." That is, you know, it's the difference in relation to a particular work, which both us and they formed over years and decades, and that in an instant can’t be changed ", concluded Igor Bukharov.