Business idea for a culinary school for children. How to open your own culinary studio: first steps. Possible formats for opening a culinary business

Anyone can find a recipe on the World Wide Web, watch a video tutorial and follow the recommendations exactly, but there is no guarantee that you will be able to prepare a truly tasty and beautiful delicacy, because it is impossible to become a chef remotely. There are many people in almost every city different ages and professions who want to learn how to cook professionally. If you dream of opening cooking courses for beginners, rest assured, you will find people willing to come and learn.

Cooking is not just the process of cooking, but also a useful hobby, a unique opportunity to communicate with friends or like-minded people, an area that is developing along with programming, so you may not have time to learn all its subtleties even in a lifetime.

It is the kinesthetic sensations, interactivity and variety in cooking that attract many people. Cooking courses certainly meet all the expectations of such enthusiasts.

In the West, they became popular entertainment and a way of organizing leisure time in the middle of the twentieth century. Television shows, live master classes from world-famous chefs, series of books with recipes for every taste and budget, schools teaching the skills of cooking dishes from different countries - all this was familiar to Americans and Europeans long before anything... something similar arose in the post-Soviet space.

Discoverers

Cooking courses first appeared in Russia in the 90s of the last century, when the famous English chef and restaurateur Jamie Oliver once again came to Moscow with the goal of popularizing a healthy lifestyle and home-cooked food.

After that, he visited the capital more than once, organized master classes, gave interviews, presented his books with recipes and even opened a restaurant. His original idea picked up Russian entrepreneurs and chefs, thanks to which in large and small cities of the country you can easily find culinary courses and learn how to cook.

Demand creates supply

First of all, you should decide on the profile of the culinary courses, because this will determine the target audience, the specifics of which directly affect your income and risks. Naturally, in large cities there is greater demand for this type of education and leisure; there you can think about unique and extraordinary courses that none of your competitors have yet offered to anyone.

In small towns, the idea of ​​opening Brazilian or Indian cuisine courses is unlikely to pay off; at the level of small settlements, creativity in this regard is reduced to a minimum. In megacities, such exoticism will be received with delight and interest.

Men and children are in on it too

Cooking has long ceased to be a traditional female household responsibility. Now men are also showing great interest in cooking, and, as a rule, they become the most famous chefs in the world. Some people think that they can handle even the delicate work on pastries better.

Cooking courses may just be designed for a specific group of people. For example, it is now fashionable to introduce children to cooking, and to introduce older people to products and flavor combinations that are unusual for them. The most popular modern trends are vegetarian dishes, world cuisines, food for weight loss and proper nutrition.

Legal nuances

Decor necessary documents and obtaining a license to open culinary courses is an important step that should not be postponed. If you want to solely legally own such a business, you first need to register an individual entrepreneurship.

If the idea of ​​culinary courses belongs to more than one person or you cannot do without the experience and support of partners, then the business is registered as an LLC.

According to the documents, culinary courses will be listed as non-state educational institution. In this case, taxes are deducted according to a simplified system in the amount of 6% of profit.

You can obtain a license that officially allows you to conduct culinary courses from the Department of Education, where you need to come with the following documents:

• statement from the owner;
• statements about the founders, their documents and charter;
• certificate of registration with extra-budgetary funds;
• a certified copy of the LLC registration certificate;
• OKVED and certificate of registration with the tax authorities;
• documents confirming the qualifications of teachers;
• Plan of the education;
• information about the premises where the hens will be held;
• work permit from the SES and fire department;
• availability of necessary literature corresponding to the training program.

Within a month, the request and the provided package of documents will be considered by the relevant commission. After this period, you will receive official permission or a refusal to conduct culinary courses. Documentation is necessary if you plan to provide paid permanent professional education for many people and issue them authentic certificates.

If an individual entrepreneur registers courses as a development center, then a license is not needed. This form of business corresponds to 2 types of OKVED code: 93.05 – personal services and 92.51 – a club-type institution. Taxation will be calculated according to the following scheme: 7% of net and 15% of total profit. This significantly reduces accounting costs, but opening a bank account is mandatory. In addition, you need to conclude a waste removal agreement.

Important! The only way to test such a business idea is through the preferential patent tax system. She doesn't demand accounting, but you won’t be able to make a significant profit within its framework.

Selecting a room

The ideal place for cooking courses would be an establishment already equipped for cooking, for example, a cafe or restaurant. Most often, it is the owners of institutions who develop such business ideas. If you are not one, you can agree with the owner of the establishment about cooperation, but in this case you will have to adapt to the schedule and workload of the restaurant or cafe.

You can also rent the premises of an abandoned buffet or dining room, but this is a more financially expensive option, since most likely the premises will still have to be renovated. A powerful electrical network, ventilation and sewerage are what must be present in the place chosen for the courses.

Important! It is best to locate in the city center, where, as a rule, many people live and where it is convenient to get to from other areas. Rent in a metropolis and a small town differs significantly in cost. Therefore, opening courses, for example, in a residential area of ​​Moscow may turn out to be more profitable than in its center.

Dishes and appliances

A professional kitchen requires large investments in equipment for storing, cutting and preparing food. The minimum set of furniture for culinary courses includes tables and chairs, counters and shelves for a variety of ingredients. As for dishes and other utensils, it will be impossible to do without cutting boards, knives, bowls, saucepans, several types of frying pans, whisks, forks and spoons, spatulas, and baking sheets.

For clothing, a professional chef and his students need aprons, caps or other headwear, fireproof gloves or oven mitts. The most expensive equipment will be the purchase of equipment, the basis of which in the kitchen is a refrigerator, freezer, stove and hood. For in-depth training, you cannot do without an oven and microwave oven, mixer, blender, food processor, ice cream maker.

The type and complexity of equipment you will need will directly depend on the culinary course you choose. For example, it is not advisable for children to be trusted to work with dangerous electrical appliances and a gas stove.

Attention! If you expect to train people efficiently and issue them certificates, purchase only professional furniture, dishes and equipment in specialized stores. Reputable chef teachers will not agree to work with equipment for home use, which can also reduce your credibility in the eyes of competitors and clients.

People are the key to success

Finding an interesting person who would be both a good teacher and an experienced cook is difficult. It depends on him whether people will come to your courses, whether they will recommend them to their friends, whether they will be happy to come to other culinary training programs.

The chef-teacher must not only pay attention to each student, but also present boring theory so that the lesson seems like an exciting performance that one would definitely like to see more. Not every certified culinary specialist knows how to vividly present knowledge, express his own thoughts, attract the attention of students and find an approach to them.

As a rule, in megacities, where there are many famous chefs and qualified personnel, there are no problems with recruiting staff. This is more difficult to do in small towns. If you want to open Mexican cuisine courses, you may not find a specialist and abandon this idea. You may have to train chefs to teach courses yourself.

Promotion is a delicate matter

In the modern world, there are dozens of ways to popularize your business. Which one to use is your choice. Promotion through social networks is now considered the fastest and most effective, because not even a single newspaper in the world can boast as many views as posts on Instagram or Facebook.

No less effective is contextual advertising, which often attracts the attention of search engine users. To familiarize those interested in culinary courses in detail, you can create a website where you can permanently and freely post any information in the future. Large banners, leaflets and flyers are the simplest and budget method promotion.

A more expensive, but less troublesome option is to sign an agreement with an advertising agency that will develop and implement a scheme to popularize your business.

The Millionaire's Long Journey

It is difficult to say how soon the investment will pay off and increase without having accurate calculations and deciding on all the components of the business idea. Profit is influenced by the specifics of the courses, location, professionalism of teachers, and marketing moves. After all the preparations, plan a clear lesson plan.

There should be no more than 10 people in the group so that the cook has time to pay attention to everyone and answer their questions. Create a class schedule that is as convenient as possible for your students. Lessons are held in both morning and evening sessions. The duration of one lesson for learning new material and practice is on average 3 hours.

There may be 3-4 such meetings per week. You determine their cost yourself, taking into account the costs and solvency of the students. VIP clients can be offered individual lessons, and for an additional fee, a chef-teacher can be sent to their home.

Important! If you plan costs clearly and competently and attract as many people as possible, then ideally in 3-4 months your first stable income will appear. For a larger city this amount is at least 100,000 rubles, for a small city - 40,000 rubles.

Prospects and pitfalls

It is quite difficult to guarantee the profitability of a certain business because there are too many factors that influence it. Like any type of activity, the idea of ​​opening cooking courses has its advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages include:

• demand for mastering the basics of professional cooking;
• interest of potential clients in communicating with famous chefs;
• wide choice of specific courses;
• high profitability;
• quick payback;
• opportunity to take a leading position in the educational business.

Among the disadvantages that can interfere with your plans and significantly affect your income level and the success of your idea are:

• availability of large initial capital;
• lack of qualified chefs who are talented teachers;
• the scale of the city in which the courses will be held.

This is the story of a cute small business. Compote studio has two directors - two equal partners, Oksana Kim-Flayosk and Zauzamira Abisheva. They hatched the idea independently of each other: one in Nice (Oksana’s husband is French), the other in Almaty. When the idea was ripe, a few days apart they came with their business plans to Askar Baytasov, managing director of AB Restaurants (the largest restaurant company in the Republic of Kazakhstan, the group includes more than 20 establishments, including the restaurant chain Del Papa, Bochonok ", Augustin, coffee houses "Coffeemania", Cafeteria). Mr. Baytasov invited the girls to get acquainted and look at each other, to “sniff”, as Zauzamira and Oksana themselves say. They “sniffed it” and decided to work on implementing the idea together. Therefore, it is also a story of compromise.

Some luck

Cooking is one of the trends of our time. The creators of the culinary studio say that they sensed it intuitively, and then, when developing the idea, they realized that they were in tune. “This idea came at first, and when you go to Google and see that this is a huge trend, everyone is crazy about cooking, then you understand that preparing food, gathering around the table is fashionable,” recalls Zauzamira. The appearance of an idea does not mean its implementation; but here, as Compote’s directors repeat, “our idea was lucky”: the trend was noticed not only by them, but also by Askar Baytasov, who acted as an investor in the new business.

The two business plans were combined, and the studio’s creators did not focus on the fact that they had to give up something. On the contrary, they indicate that the best was taken from each business plan. Zauzamira Abisheva laughs: “Oksana paid more attention to the professional, technical side, while my emphasis was on the social component: drinking wine, communicating, cooking together. There were funny moments when we were calculating each session, because the investor demanded from us not only ideas, but also numbers. And when we were doing the calculations, Oksana and Askar said: “Why wine, it makes the class more expensive.” I said: “No, I need wine. It's a social lubricant."

They moved quickly from jokes to action: within three or four weeks after Askar Baytasov saw the business plans for creating a culinary studio, he found a place for it. In the very center of Almaty. “When we saw the room, at first we thought that it was very, very small, 2 times smaller than we wanted - we expected a minimum of 80 square meters. Askar did not insist, we could have looked for something else, but we decided: so be it. And that turned out to be a good thing. The fact that the studio became intimate influenced the format. That is, if it had been large, the format would have been different: we initially assumed that there would be two tables - we cook at one, eat at the other, and relax. But this divides people: someone may move away, sit on the sidelines, and so on. And here we have one center, behind which all the people sit - it unites,” says Oksana.

It took six months and about eighty thousand dollars (estimated at sixty) to open the culinary studio. In addition, this amount does not take into account the internal resources of AB Restaurants used to create Compote: for example, the help of lawyers who know all the requirements of the authorities regulating this market, advice from chefs who know the technical part very well - from what refrigerators and dishes to buy , before where to put the combi oven. “Some processes happened automatically, we, in fact, did not even take part in them, and if it were not for the investor and the established work system at AB Restaurants, it would have been much more difficult for us,” admit the company’s directors.

Cooking studio Compote opened last September. “We could have waited a couple more months - this is always the case with construction. But we set strict limits for ourselves: we invited the famous Russian chef Alexei Zimin to the opening. And he clearly stated the date when he could arrive. By the way, we remember him with gratitude - it is clear that he is a star, he has a crazy fee. Zimin and I arrived at the studio the evening before the opening. And everything seems to be in order with us, but there is still a little smell of paint, there is a clock on the windowsill - it hasn’t been hung; It’s not clear which frying pan is which – now we know this by heart, with our eyes closed, but back then there was no system. In the utility room there is a bunch of food for tomorrow's opening: meat, vegetables, seasonings. Oksana and I are running, we don’t know what to grab onto, and at some point I go into the back room, I see Zimin: he’s calmly choosing food for himself, without saying a word, knowing full well what it’s like for us before the opening,” Zauzamira Abisheva shares her emotional memories and adds that the first three months of the studio were very tense.

Food as entertainment

The Compote culinary studio focuses on those who are interested in food as a topic, and not as a physiological need, and who are willing to spend money to make everyday life more colorful. The cost of classic master classes lasting 3 hours is about 10–14 thousand tenge, events in the “Open Kitchen” format are a little cheaper, 7–8 thousand. How do classic master classes differ from open social cooking? Oksana explains: “The classic master class is led by a practicing chef who explains everything, and for each of the participants a different set of products is prepared, and everyone prepares their own. Regarding the format " open kitchen" - this means: a group of people prepares one dinner for everyone. One of the subformats of the “open kitchen”, when specially invited people cook famous people, athletes or musicians, and you can casually chat with them in the process.” Zauzamira adds: “Open kitchen” can be either lunch or dinner, and is a more informal event. Operations are divided as if it were your kitchen, you are cooking with friends: one peels the carrots, the other chops. That is, operations are divided among everyone. And in the classroom, the goal is to teach a person so that he completely masters the process of preparing this dish.”

The culinary studio has many areas of activity. In addition to master classes and “open kitchens”, there are classes for children, private master classes and closed culinary events, corporate events with a culinary theme. We can say that the culinary studio offers not so much the opportunity to acquire cooking skills (although there are those, too, of course), but rather the atmosphere and mood created by a stylish interior, hospitable hostesses, a couple of glasses of wine, and, of course, delicious food. The directors of Compote say that their expectations were justified: the culinary studio receives most of its income from those who come there for entertainment - for corporate and just parties, birthdays, family holidays, presentations.

The audience Compote is targeting is people twenty-five and older. However, the main core of visitors is still in the age range of thirty to forty. For the most part, these are already established and fairly wealthy people. When asked whether a kind of price filter is deliberately set for the audience, Ms. Abisheva notes that “it is not overpriced on purpose, but we could slightly reduce prices for regular open classes - since this is not the main source of income for us. The main source is, after all, corporate customers with events, but we deliberately do not do this. Because at the beginning of our activities, when classes cost 5-6 thousand tenge, different people came in and asked to pour vodka. And they weren’t interested in what was happening here.” Now Compote notes a trend that people who cannot attend quite expensive culinary master classes on a regular basis use these events to celebrate some significant event for them: “For example, they invite a girl to celebrate the anniversary of the start of a relationship here.”

Amateur cook

Zauzamira Abisheva draws attention to another point why a culinary studio attracts clients: “People who work in offices often do not see the result of their work, which can be felt and touched with their hands. And when they come to us, it shows! A man is frying a steak - he’s already hovering over him like a kite - no one comes near, I’ll fry this steak! Or a young guy makes some kind of cheesecake - and sees that it is ideally shaped, the cream is good. People have a certain sense of completion - that they do everything with their hands. This is very important actually. Not to mention, it's really delicious."

At one time, the culinary studio can accommodate 13 people, in rare cases 14 people if it is a classic master class, and 16 people if the event is in the “open kitchen” format. Registration for events at Compote is not closed until the last moment, despite the fact that food purchases are made a day or two in advance. “We know that if there is a meat class, there is an 80% chance that it will all come together, even at the last moment. Therefore, we buy 13 servings for 13 people; in the worst case, two sets of products will remain. If there are other classes, then we buy 2-3 servings there, plus those who have signed up. And if at the last moment people apply, we always have the opportunity to add 2-3 more people,” explains Zauzamira, and Oksana adds: “We are now working according to the scheme - prepayment of 50% at least a day. Previously, there was payment after the fact, but practice has shown that there are people who sign up and don’t show up. We hold space for them and bear losses. I had to switch to a different scheme.”

If at first the studio was busy with master classes and meetings in the “open kitchen” format almost the entire week, now there are fewer classes, and the rest of the days, as they say at Compote, are “busy with parties.” If we estimate the total number of participants in both master classes and corporate events, it turns out that since the opening of the culinary studio, about 3 thousand people have visited it. 20–30% of them became regular customers. “They each took more than 20 classes with us for sure. We are now thinking about some kind of loyalty system, it’s time. These are people who are truly loyal to our studio: if they sign up, we are 100% sure that they will come, and we do not require advance payment from them. And if we know that a person always goes to this cook, we call him ourselves and talk about it - maybe he did not have time to see our new schedule. By the way, parents also want something like club cards, because about half of our children return to children’s culinary classes (the average age in these classes is 5–6 years old), ”say the studio directors.

Cooking with kitchen stars

At first, Compote received strong support from the brand chefs of AB Restaurants: “These are strong chefs, mostly foreigners - we had to start somewhere. Because if we immediately started paying some large fees, it would be difficult to get the commercial side of things going. And so we had a head start of several months. Plus, we also agreed with other chefs not from AB Restaurants establishments, for example, with Giorgio Palazzi, the founder and chef of the Pomodoro restaurants. And it should be noted that Askar Baitasov took it completely normally,” says Ms. Abisheva.

There are no problems with inviting chefs to public master classes in the studio: “they already know us,” Compote states. Despite the fact that in such classes, the chefs’ fees are either purely symbolic or completely absent. Public master classes carry primarily an image load and are promotional items for the restaurants where the chefs work. But if a chef is invited to a private event (and the scheme usually looks like this: the client came to an open master class, he liked it, he brought his company or department to team building. And, as a rule, he says: “I was with such a chef, I want exactly him”), then the fee here will be quite significant - up to 150–200 thousand tenge.

Course on internal reserves

The Compote culinary studio has already become quite a fashionable place in Almaty - which, of course, is what its creators wanted. Using their experience in advertising, they actively use social networks - carefully thinking about what photos to post so that clients want to return to them. “And here we have a symbiosis: Oksana is responsible for the photos, and I write the texts well,” says Zauzamira. Compote did not advertise for money at all: “In AB Restaurants establishments, we displayed table talkers about what a culinary studio is. And now we’re laying out our schedule there. Otherwise, the main advertising tool is social networks, where we do everything ourselves.” In addition to the two directors, the studio has 5 more employees: executive manager, two master class assistants and two technical workers who clean the room.

According to Oksana Kim-Flayosk and Zauzamira Abisheva, they chose a successful business model: they do not need a permanent staff of waiters, they do not need a food warehouse: they made a schedule and purchased. Of course have fixed costs- such as rent, communal payments, staff, but the studio has not only reached self-sufficiency, but also generates income. And yet, Oksana and Zauzamira are not going to expand their presence in the Almaty market by opening another studio - they are confident that their project now covers almost all the needs of the southern capital. “Perhaps we will expand operationally, we have many different ideas to expand the business itself - these could be gastronomic tours, some kind of outdoor events, picnics, etc...” - Oksana shares her ideas. “We, of course, would like to invite some stars - Jimi Oliver, Belonika, Vysotskaya - not because we ourselves are ambitious in this regard. We just know that our audience needs it,” adds Zauzamira.

Even at the discussion stage when creating a culinary studio, Askar Baytasov told two future directors: “Calculate the business plan in a normal scenario and in an optimistic one.” Then it seemed to Oksana and Zauzamira that the optimistic scenario was the ultimate dream. The real Compote turned out to be better than the dreams about it - the optimistic scenario has already been exceeded by 50%.

Kitchen shooting

To begin with, Anna and Maria created an account with beautiful pictures desserts on Instagram. The plan was this: make an attractive website, film a basic pastry course with a professional teacher and sell it as online lessons. Anna previously worked at the City business school - they were just launching online courses, and the girl decided that this format could be repeated in the culinary niche. “We analyzed what our competitors were doing and realized that in Moscow full-time schools education was expensive, and there was no online service at all. We decided that we could launch,” recalls Anna.

The first videos for the Bakerschool project were filmed at Anna Kovalchuk’s home and we agreed on a barter deal with kitchen appliance supplier KitchenAid. “We wrote to them about the school, told them the whole plan, and said that their equipment would be constantly visible on the video. They agreed,” says Kovel. So the girls got a professional mixer, blender, etc. - they saved about 100 thousand rubles.

Anna had to urgently renovate her own kitchen. This and the selection of equipment took the entire summer, which is why the start of filming had to be postponed until September. Meanwhile, the girls ordered a website for 300 thousand rubles, developed a design, compiled a course program, and looked for teachers.

Filming began in the fall of 2015. Without taking into account the costs of kitchen renovations, entrepreneurs needed about 1.2 million rubles. — for design, website creation, payment for the film crew and teacher, purchase of ingredients and kitchen equipment for filming. The investor of the project was a friend of the families of both girls, entrepreneur Evgeny Vardanyants (now he owns 50% of Bakerschool LLC, Kovel and Kovalchuk each have 25%).

The main difficulty was finding a professional pastry chef. What was needed was not just a professional, but a person who could tell and teach others. “We found a super cool girl, her Instagram at that time already had 50 thousand subscribers, and she successfully taught in-person master classes in one of the culinary studios in Moscow. But during the filming process, it turned out that conducting “live” master classes and working on camera are far from the same thing. We filmed half a day and realized that this was not suitable for us,” recalls Kovel.

I had to urgently look for a replacement. A friend advised me to contact pastry chef Maria Reshetnikova, a teacher by first education. “Masha studied with Ivan Shishkin, the founder of the Delicatessen and Yunost cafes, popular among Muscovites. And even through video she was able to convey her love for her work. As a result, we filmed the first basic course - ten lessons of 1.5 hours each - with her,” says Kovel.

It took the whole autumn to install and “package” the material. As a result, the school launched in December 2015 - a user could buy access to the entire series of video lessons on the Internet for 12 thousand rubles. or one lesson for 1.5 thousand rubles. The video was accompanied by recipe texts and a description of the cooking process; in the comments to the lesson you could ask your questions to Maria.

The first sales were brought by Instagram; at that time, the Bakerschool account already had more than 12 thousand followers. Before the launch of the school, fashionable city and culinary publications wrote about it (Maria Reshetnikova’s acquaintances helped). Sales fluctuated at the level of 150-200 thousand rubles. per month.

“For the first six months we had problems with the site - there were many technical problems, many previously planned sections, tests and a good chat were missing,” recalls Maria Kovel. “We realized that with the money we invested, it was impossible to make such a cool site as we originally wanted.”

As a result, the entrepreneurs worked “about zero” - they gave 15% to the pastry chef-teacher, paid a freelance developer who helped solve problems with the site, a lot of money was spent on the production of photo and video content for promotion on social networks. The production of one video course now costs 150-300 thousand rubles. At the same time, we did not spend money on renting an office; we worked either from home or from a cafe. Kovel was in charge of marketing, and Kovalchuk was in charge of operational management.

Credit on Instagram

In June, it became clear that the current school model was not working, everything urgently needed to be redone - both the approach to teaching and the sales system. “In fact, from the very start, we were more involved in PR than building sales. The time has come to correct the mistakes,” recalls Kovel.

We started by “moving” to a new website, created the “landing” pages ourselves, bought an account on the online learning platform, and hired a sales manager. Previously, you could only buy a course, but now you can leave a request and make a decision after communicating with the manager. This increased the conversion several times. The girls began experimenting with marketing tools and set up contextual advertising.

And most importantly, now the courses came in streams and started on certain dates. This disciplines the students. The first group of 30 people started on May 25, 2016. In order to answer numerous questions from students, the company created a department of curators - through a competition, they recruited professional confectioners to the team for daily support. The school employs three curators from Kazan and Stavropol, who from 9:00 to 22:00 “sit” in Bakerschool chats on VKontakte and in instant messengers, promptly answering students’ questions.

The basic course works like this: one week is allocated for one lesson, during which the student studies educational materials, recipes. Then he prepares the product for testing and by Friday-Saturday he posts it on Instagram with a certain hashtag (both the whole product and in section - then the pastry chef’s mistakes are visible). After which you need to pass another online test, and on Sunday go through a webinar with a teacher, a debriefing, and a discussion of mistakes. “The teacher pre-checks homework on Instagram and gives it a pass, and sometimes doesn’t pass it and asks them to do it again,” explains Maria. It turned out that many students want a certificate, even if there is no question of any state standard, and strict teachers discipline them.

From communicating with students, it turned out that many of them take courses not for fun, but to earn money - after the courses they start selling desserts through Instagram or open their own establishments. One Russian girl opened a restaurant in Jamaica and even got into the local press - desserts on the island are not very good.

The approach worked: in the summer of 2016, Bakerschool sales increased to 700 thousand rubles. per month, and in January 2017, revenue exceeded one million rubles. Operating profit - about 200 thousand rubles. per month. Last year's turnover amounted to a total of about 7 million rubles; all operating profits were spent on filming new courses with new teachers.

Currently, three courses from three teachers are available at Bakerschool: basic confectionery (12 thousand rubles), a business course “How to open a pastry shop” (in two versions: for 13 thousand rubles and 18 thousand rubles) and a course on desserts for raw foodists Raw and Vegan (8 thousand rubles). Now the girls are filming several more courses - on gingerbread, chocolate and mousse cakes.

In total, during the existence of the school, 2 thousand people bought courses. According to Kovel, today site traffic reaches 1,500 people per day, the main source of attracting customers is contextual advertising, followed by word of mouth and Instagram. “Purchasing one client, who will then pay for the training course, costs us about 1.5 thousand rubles. It’s a little expensive,” admits Maria. But the school does not spend money on rent - a key cost item in the business of offline culinary schools.

Online or offline?

In what direction should we develop next? Bakerschool's competitors balance between online and offline. For example, the culinary school Chefshows by Novikov started in the winter of 2016 as an online project. “We contacted chefs and invited them to record video lessons. This was a popular format for professional content, which is especially suitable for confectioners, since all the details are very important for desserts,” says Julia Mitrovic, founder of the Chefshows by Novikov project. However, then Arkady Novikov joined the project, and the school began to conduct full-time courses. This allows you to attract a new audience and sell your services at a higher price. “Our goal is to give people the opportunity to either learn to cook from scratch or improve their skills with professional chefs,” says Mitrovic.

“The absolute advantage of an online school for the founders is the absence of daily operating costs for a large number of participants, since students study at home, in their own kitchens,” says Maxim Katsev, CEO culinary studio Clever. — And most importantly, it is much easier for online schools to grow and scale; it is enough to correctly distribute the advertising budget. While an offline school requires the opening of new sites to develop. It’s always difficult and expensive.”

But an offline school can attract a completely different audience - these are people who not so much want to learn how to cook, but come to the courses for fun. “The purpose of an online lesson is to gain knowledge. A culinary master class is a different format, during which participants not only learn something, but also communicate live with the chef and with each other. This is a special atmosphere, dinner at one table,” says Maxim.

Moscow culinary school Culinaryon, founded former top managers Indesit, Alex Blanc, Giulio D'Erme and their partner Vera Sadovina, entered the Singapore market in November 2015. In Russia, according to Giulio D'Erme, corporate events and parties in the format of a culinary master class account for 85% of the school’s revenue, but It turned out that in Singapore it is not customary to organize private large parties for friends. Usually the celebrations take place in the family circle.

But other opportunities unexpectedly opened up: it turned out that the government of the city-state annually gives out $500 to residents of the country for education. You can spend it on photography courses or piano master classes. As it turns out, many people are interested in learning how to cook. “We are now the number one culinary school in Singapore for government classes,” says Giulio. The company plans to expand its activities around the world, with Bucharest, Hong Kong, Australia, Thailand and Vietnam next in line. Last year, Culinaryon held 3 thousand events, which were attended by almost 40 thousand people.

The founders of Bakerschool also expect to start conducting master classes offline in 2017 - this is one of the most frequent requests from clients and an additional opportunity to earn money.

We would like to thank SCHMIDT for their assistance in conducting the survey.

Before becoming interested in cooking, Russian Alexander Blank and Italian Giulio D’Erme managed to work as managers in large international companies. Thoughts about creating a culinary studio appeared when they were choosing a place to relax with their friends. The attempt was successful: there was great demand for the service. Then the friends sold the company and opened a larger school. There are no long courses at Culinaryon: the focus is on master classes that can entertain a group of clerks after work. Having invested money from the sale of houses into the studio, the partners were right: within six months they had to rent additional space. Last year the company's turnover reached 160 million rubles. The entrepreneurs say their school has a 60% market share of cooking courses and is the largest in Europe. Now their plans are to open a studio in Singapore, London and New York. The Village found out how they did it.

From the office to the kitchen

Alexander Blank: We met Giulio about 15 years ago, when he was the marketing director of Indesit Company in Spain. I have practiced management consulting, our company advised them.

Giulio D'Erme: Afterwards we began to work together: Alexander came to Indesit as sales director. We worked like this for four years. In general, each of us has extensive experience in leadership positions. Alexander specialized in finance (Value Partners, UBS, Finaport), and I specialized in marketing (Philip Morris, Nike, Rosinter Restaurants, Triumph International).

Alexander: The idea to open a culinary school came to us in 2006. It was born out of the fact that we were looking for a place where we could have fun with friends. But our climate does not allow us to walk in the park and spend time in the fresh air all year round. Therefore, rest is somehow connected with food. But we didn’t want to just sit in a restaurant. Culinary school seemed like just the right leisure format for us. In addition, among our friends there were many chefs. Not only from Russia, but from Australia, USA, Italy and France.

Giulio: So, in 2006, in parallel with our main work, we launched the Italian culinary school Accademia del Gusto. It was a small room measuring 150 square meters in which guest chefs held master classes. The business gradually began to grow: at first there were 70 events a year, then 250. But still this was not what we wanted: we dreamed of a large studio that would not be limited to one kitchen. And in 2012 we left the business to start a new one.

Giulio D'Erme

Alexander: But Accademia del Gusto became a good school for us. At first, we even purchased the ingredients ourselves. I remember well how after work we went to Metro to buy groceries. It was late and the supermarket was empty. Giulio and I shared a shopping list and agreed to meet in half an hour in the fruit and vegetable department. There was only one last ingredient left to buy. In the list it was written in Italian - porro. Neither I nor Giulio knew what it was. I had an old HTC, through which I tried to access the Internet and find out the translation of this word. But I couldn’t connect to the Internet, no matter how hard I tried. I finally called the chef around 1am and found out it was leeks. But a new problem arose: we knew what it looked like in soup, but we didn’t quite imagine it uncooked. Then we went looking for these mysterious greens in the produce department. With much grief, we managed to find a seller who brought us leeks.

The adventures didn't end there. There was a technical glitch at the checkout, so you could only pay in cash. We emptied all our pockets, but were still missing 800 rubles. Then Giulio remembered that he had a small amount in his passport “just in case.” And when we arrived from Metro, it turned out that the elevator in the culinary studio building did not work and the entire mountain of products would have to be carried on foot to the 4th floor. During the flights, we periodically stopped to rest and looked at each other with the words: “It’s good to be an entrepreneur, right?”

New project

Giulio: Accademia del Gusto allowed us to test the market. We realized that there is a demand for culinary schools, and it is quite big. So, in November 2012 we launched culinary studio Culinaryon in the Novinsky Passage business center. We needed about 1–1.3 million dollars to open. To raise this amount, both Alexander and I had to sell our houses. Six months later we expanded and rented additional space. So, the total investment was about 2.5 million dollars, now we have 5 halls for master classes and 1 conference room, with a total area of ​​850 square meters.

Before opening we made a lot of calls potential clients. Our main goal was to attract as many companies as possible to order a corporate master class from us. In addition to our old contacts, we tried to meet new people. LinkedIn was a great help here. In this social network It’s immediately clear who is the CEO of the company and who is HR. We ended up opening in November and did 40 events in 40 days.

Assembling a team was not difficult. We currently have 50 people on our staff, including four chefs and eight sous chefs. Giuseppe D’Angelo became the brand chef; we have been working with him for 7 years. Invited chefs - about 50 of them - from different restaurants regularly conduct master classes. We invite many foreigners who teach what they specialize in. Sometimes you come across clients who want to cook only with a chef from a certain restaurant. In this case, we go and get to know him. But there are fewer and fewer of them, we know many. Chefs very rarely refuse. But indeed, this format is not suitable for everyone: in order to conduct a master class, you need not only to be able to cook, but also to love people. And some chefs are misanthropes.

For clerks and billionaires

Alexander: In the new culinary studio we have implemented a completely different concept. We wanted to convey to visitors that at the master class you can not only prepare delicious dishes, but also have fun. We expanded the menu to eight cuisines (Japanese, Spanish, Thai, French and others), and did not limit ourselves to Italian only.

All master classes in our studio are divided into two areas - private events and open ones. You can sign up for the latter in a group of up to 20 people. The ticket price ranges from 2,900 to 4,900 rubles. Each lesson is dedicated to a specific topic. For example, a master class on cooking pasta, meat or fish dishes. On average, about 30 open master classes are held per month.

The scenario of a corporate master class depends on the client. Our custom service manager finds out which format is most suitable, the number of participants, taste preferences - everything that is needed for preparation.

Giulio: Typically the event lasts from three to five hours. There is no limit on the number of people for such a master class. The largest one once had 200 people, but the smallest one attended only one. This was the director of the bank who came every week for a month to learn how to cook some dishes with the chef.

Alexander: The entire room of our kitchen can be transformed if we separate the zones with soundproof partitions. So, once in one part there was a bachelorette party, which ended with songs with Verka Serduchka; at the same time, an open master class in Spanish cuisine was going on next door. In another room, an event was held for top managers of the Shell concern, and in the next part, friends of a famous entrepreneur from the Forbes list were preparing dishes for a culinary evening in the back to USSR style. I also remember a master class that NASA astronaut Terry Werts came to us two weeks before going into space. It was private party where his friends were. Throughout the evening he showed videos he recorded in zero gravity.

Each master class is staffed by a chef, sous-chef, bartender, event manager, photographer and two cleaners. Unlike professional culinary schools, our focus is not on the chef, but on the client. We are not like a university where there is a professor and students who diligently record valuable knowledge from the teacher in a notebook. The main goal is to have a good time, unite and cook delicious dishes. Each participant is given an iPad, which contains a step-by-step recipe with photos and explanations. In addition, if one of the guests does not understand or is not sufficiently involved in the process, then the staff takes care to interest the guest as much as possible.

Giulio: As a rule, three or four dishes are prepared at one event. Before starting kitchen chores, at the client’s request, we arrange a buffet. Many people come to us hungry after work, and they have to wait at least an hour for the first dish. As soon as something is ready, portions are immediately served and eaten. Sometimes guests make shared portions and individual portions, then there is an opportunity to compare who did better.

Alexander: If you look at the restaurant market as a whole, then in Moscow 30% is occupied by beer restaurants and Russian cuisine. Russian cuisine master classes are not very popular here. “I already know how to cook dumplings, but my mother makes the best borscht” - apparently, many people think so. Therefore, the absolute bestseller, which takes up half of the master classes, is Italian cuisine.

In open master classes, all dishes related to meat take the lead. Vegetarians are in the minority. Last year, for example, only 50 people expressed a desire to cook “green” dishes.

Most often women come to master classes: 75% of them. Men - 25%. Average age participants - from 25 to 35 years.

Giulio: Ingredients for master classes are brought to us by suppliers. In the studio we do not store anything in large refrigerators; food is delivered in the morning in time for the evening or afternoon event.

We have many suppliers, it all depends on the product category. For example, we buy Italian delicacies from Dolce&Salato, vegetables and herbs from Belaya Dacha, and fish is supplied by La Marée. Previously, we bought Australian meat, but after the sanctions we switched to Russian Miratorg brand. Before the embargo, we managed to purchase 2 tons of different cheeses, and there are still purchases left from last year.

For wine, we work with different companies, including Simple. And starting this year, we even produce our own wine, which is made for us to order at the Pierazzuoli winery in Tuscany.

Alexandre Blanc and Giulio D'Erme

The biggest

Alexander: Last year, about 55 thousand people attended culinary master classes in Moscow, of which 25 thousand came to us. We are the largest culinary studio not only in Moscow, but throughout Europe. Our turnover last year reached 160 million rubles. At the beginning of this year, everyone was panicking: the euro is 100 rubles, what to do? But the fears were not justified, and we managed to grow by 41% in the first half of the year. In April, for example, we held 180 events. In summer, of course, we expect calm. In Moscow, as soon as the greenery appears and the snow has thawed, this is the reason why you should never be indoors. Urgently for Fresh air to enjoy these two weeks of summer. But we offer an alternative here too - a barbecue master class, for example.

There are about eight more studios on the Moscow market that conduct large culinary master classes. But each of them has chosen a different type of clients to whom they appeal. According to our own assessment, we occupy 60% of the market, the closest competitor is the school of Yulia Vysotskaya with 23%. Their clients are readers of the culinary portal edimdoma.ru. They are focused on learning how to cook. Basically all schools practice an academic approach. We want to instill a passion for cooking so that after our visitors come to Culinaryon, they would want to cook at home with their family.

Giulio: In September we will open a culinary studio in Singapore, and a little later in New York and London. Plus, at the same time, we will expand in Moscow.

We want to open in those places that are the center for each region. If you look at the USA, then everyone looks at New York: if the concept went there, then they want to use it in other places. And Singapore is the gateway to all countries of Southeast Asia. In addition, it is easier to open up there, there is greater concentration corporate clients, and everyone speaks English.

But we do not claim that we will open strictly according to our plan. For example, we met an entrepreneur from Houston. And he wants to buy our franchise to open it in his city. He says his city is second only to New York in the concentration of corporate headquarters. And it’s much cheaper to open there. And he really is right. That is, if we meet people who have the same passion for cooking, we can easily change our plans.

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