One of the first franchisees of the network, Denis Deco became a co-owner of a part of the business, which, according to expert estimates, brings about 20% of the total revenue of the network.
At the end of 2019, the Russian fast food chain Kroshka-Kartoshka had a new co-owner, it follows from the register data. In December last year, Denis Deco received a 50 percent stake in LLC Crash and LLC Saturn, engaged in restaurant activities and licensed for the Kroshka-Kartoshka trademark. The same share was transferred to him in November-December in five more LLCs related to Kroshka-Potato: Kivin, Orion, Unifood, Galaxy and Dominion. Prior to this, the only owner of all seven companies was Andrei Kononchuk, one of the founders of Kroshka-Potato.
The managing company of all seven legal entities is Era Potato LLC, for which, according to SPARK, the domains are crumb-potato.rf and crush-potato.rf. The sole founder of the "Potato Era", according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, is Larisa Naumenko.
From van to food court
Chain "Little Potato" with dishes based on baked potatoes and Russian cuisine appeared on the Russian market in 1998. Its founders Andrei Kononchuk and Vitaliy Naumenko met in 1990 in Odessa. The business in the field of catering they started with two street bus shops.
The project "shot" in Moscow after the Tverskoy district government allowed Kononchuk and Naumenko to put an autobuffet in front of the first McDonald's restaurant. “When we opened, there was a queue for us at XNUMX am. We didn't know where to put the money, ”Kononchuk recalled in an interview.
They invested money in further development: during the time of active street trading, Kroshka-Potato had about 300 points. But in the second half of the 2000s, the network was seriously affected by the policy of the Moscow authorities to combat unauthorized street trading - according to the founders, the business sank.
Then restaurants began to be opened in shopping centers, and gradually the business was restored, including through a franchise, Kononchuk said.
In the early 2000s, the opening of a stationary restaurant paid off in one or two years, but over time, the opening of points in shopping centers began to cost more and more due to the high rental rate and increased competition, so "Little Potato" began to develop less actively, Kononchuk admitted . The founder of the Teremok restaurant chain Mikhail Goncharov also complained about the drop in sales and increased competition in 2017: "Another one or two years - and in general it will be possible to close." Goncharov linked the losses of some points with privileges for foreign fast food operators: according to him, McDonald's pays 5-6% of the turnover for rent, and some shopping centers want to take 20-25% from Teremka.
In 2017, Kroshka-Potato had 270 points in Russia and the CIS countries, it is now indicated on the company's website. But over the past two years, the number of retail chain objects has decreased by about 100 and amounts to a little more than 2020 at the beginning of 200, says Burmistrov from INFOLine-Analytics.
As of May 2019, Kroshka-Kartoshka had 223 points, experts at RBC Market Research indicated in their report on the Russian Fast Food Market 2019. For comparison: the market leader in terms of the number of points was the KFC network with 790 establishments.
The report indicates that the revenue of Kroshka-Potato in 2018 decreased by 1%, the absolute values are not given. The main reason is the reduction of the target audience in the segment where Kroshka-Kartoshka operates and the decrease in solvent demand, network marketing director Sergey Lapada explained to RBC Market analysts. Attendance at the network has been falling since at least 2012, although even now Kroshki-Kartoshki restaurants are in the top 10 most visited in the fast food segment: as of May 2019, 4,1% of the surveyed residents of cities with populations over 100 thousand people, the study said.
There was a time when “Little Potato” was booming, but now the network is outdated and five to seven years behind the market, says Anton Krasulin, general manager of the noodle chain Vokker: the concept does not change to the tastes of customers, but the dots look old-school on the food court.
In general, the Russian fast food market in 2019, according to RBC Market Research, was supposed to show the largest growth in the last five years - by 8,7%, up to 700,1 billion rubles.
Source: RBC