According to statistics, approximately two and a half billion people eat street food every day, and these are people from all income levels.
Street food has long become a part of the culture of every single country. Including Russia. The professional team of the Street Food Russia project knows this more than anyone else – they have been organizing street food festivals in our country for ten years now. The creative director of the company, Anastasia Tkach, talks about why this is interesting.
– Anastasia, how did your project begin?
– We were looking for an idea to organize an event in the Kaliningrad region that would be attractive to tourists and interesting for ourselves. We were thinking about the possibility of organizing a music festival, but for our region this is a difficult format. But the street food theme was perfect. I can’t say that it was easy to implement. We held the first Street Food Weekend festival in 2014, and it was the very first gastronomic festival in Russia.
Few people believed that we would succeed. But several times more people came to the festival than we expected then.
Today we consider it our mission to promote street food culture throughout Russia. And the name of our project now sounds like Street Food Russia.
– Why is street food interesting to you? It is believed that this is a relatively simple type of business. You need to find a place with good traffic and organize the sale of some simple hearty hot food (hot dogs, pizza, shawarma). And the whole secret of success. This is wrong? Should street food dishes be interesting and unusual? Does this trend have a future in a country where it is winter for five months of the year?
- Good question. It is much deeper and more important than it seems at first glance. The fact is that this is a problem - people confuse street food and fast food. And we are working on it. There is nothing surprising in such confusion - during Soviet times, the culture of eating street food was destroyed in the country, but this is an organic process: cities developed, new professions appeared, and along with this the need to eat outside the home. Some dishes were invented to fulfill this need. For example, the same kalach.
What I'm getting at is that fast food may be street food, BUT not all street food is fast food.
Street food is more like what conveniently use outdoors. It is important. For example, restaurants often participate in our festivals. They offer a gastronomic menu simply adapted to the street format. These dishes cannot be called fast food, and they are usually unusual and interesting.
By the way, we usually try to say “street food” to avoid associations with fast food. Although we keep street food in the name of the project.
And street food in Russia, of course, has a future. We hold events in the winter and during the New Year holidays with great success. In our country, no weather prevents us from meeting in good company.
– Tell us about your festivals. Is it primarily a celebration of food? Or is it a competition of ideas?
- First of all, our festival is a holiday, and food acts as an occasion, as a connecting link for all elements.
Food is an important part of culture: we eat when we meet with friends, we eat at all significant events in life. It unites us. But making food the theme of a festival is difficult. This is not enough, we understood this from the very beginning. Therefore, the idea is that food is a social glue: people come to us with their families and friends, buy delicious food, and then someone goes to listen to a concert, someone to a lecture, and so on.
There are no competitions between our participants. On the contrary, they often exchange experiences, communicate, and get inspired. And in general they don’t have time to compete, each festival brings about 60 thousand visitors, people work!
There is some competition for our Russia Street Food Awards, but the atmosphere is still pleasant.
– How do you choose venues for the festival?
– We started with the Kaliningrad region, now we work throughout Russia. In our region, the project has two permanent sites - we chose them somehow organically, as we developed. For example, the FISHtival, for which we are now selecting participants, was held every year in Zelenogradsk, on the Alley of Friendship (in the center of the city), and now we are moving to a new location, because we simply need a larger area. That is, initially we do not have a very large choice - we need a passage area in the city center so that there is enough space for participants and visitors. And as development progresses, the site may change to a more convenient one.
– How willing are the participants to respond? Do people come to you with a finished product and already have experience in street food, or are they those who are just trying out their skills in this direction?
– It’s not a problem for us to gather participants for the festival – there are enough of them. This is not the main goal. We always leave room for interesting concepts - for example, local cuisine, local products, and are always looking for new projects and ideas. The festival is also a platform for creativity.
We definitely help a new participant prepare. For example, we pay attention to the fact that the buyer should be comfortable holding this or that product in his hand. We suggest which utensils to choose, what sauce you can add/remove, etc. In general, we also do training.
- What, from your experience, should a successful street food product be? I know that you conduct expeditions around the country and are looking for interesting local dishes that can be developed into a street food product. Can you give examples of such vegetable/potato based products? What are the benefits of street food dishes with a regional twist?
– Success depends on many factors, including the region.
There is an interesting story about potatoes. It’s like bread – it doesn’t often become an independent dish, but it acts as an “addition” in very many cases. The competition for the best street food dish at the Russia Street Food Awards was won by the team that cooked deep-fried pike perch, but in this case potatoes were a necessary accompanying product.
When using potatoes, the originality of presentation and the concept itself play a big role. For example, we received an application from “Frishnaya” (Moscow) to participate in the festival. The participants grow their own potatoes in the Krasnodar region and cook “only from their own.”
– Is it possible to turn the festival product into an ongoing successful project? Under what conditions?
– There are a lot of such examples. But the festival format itself is not about money. The main advantage and feature for a participant is the opportunity to try your hand, test the concept and, most importantly, see how people react to what you do. You get an answer instantly, you instantly read trends.
The earnings that participants receive help replenish the energy they spent. And in order to participate with us, you need to “invest” in the work: create a concept, adapt dishes to a street format. The owners of the establishments themselves often go “out into the street” to look at the results.
- Where will the festivals be held in 2024?
– Two annual festivals will be held in Kaliningrad – “Fishtival” (April 27 – May 1) and “City Picnic” (September 7-8). We will also have festivals in other regions of Russia. The dates are still tentative: Udomlya (Tver region) - May, Obninsk (Kaluga region) - June, Smolensk - August.
It is better to follow this through our website streetfoodrussia.com or on social networks.
Photos from the site streetfoodrussia.com