Tetiana Koval, reformer of patient meals in hospitals: "Only 160 hospitals in Ukraine have switched to meals delivered to each patient’s room"
The founder of a company that has been operating in this market for nine years and currently feeds more than 8,000 patients across the country talks about reforming hospital food. She continues to do this despite the fact that her husband, with whom she started the business, has been at war since 2022.
Recently, a scandal broke out in an Odesa psychiatric hospital. A combat medic with the 35th Marine Brigade, Petro Konoplia, recorded a video with complaints and went on a hunger strike: "Please help... Everyone here complains about the food: doctors, military, civilian patients, and they can't do anything about it. Only a few people come to the canteen, often elderly people who have been here for a long time and have no other way to eat. We have no vegetables or fruits. We are fed just overcooked junk, made from the cheapest products."... After the publicity, the situation improved, but only thanks to volunteers who now bring fruit to the hospital. But the problem is systemic. And people who are trying to change the food system in hospitals from the usual Soviet one to a modern, high-quality one are well aware of this. Unfortunately, there are still many hospitals across the country that do not want to change. But the more military personnel enter these institutions, the more often they demand normal treatment. Including food. But there are people who have been trying to break through this wall for nine years.
...An American comedian once said: "Every day I get up and look at the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If my name is not on it, I get up and go to work." When I met with Tania Koval, I joked that she might not have to go to work because her brand name and her name appeared in this influential magazine. But she just laughed and said that this just motivates her to work even harder. The brand, which Tania founded with her husband nine years ago, was included in the list of 250 promising small and medium-sized companies this year. The Forbes team chose the most promising out of more than 700 companies. And, as the editors note, this is "a guide to a part of Ukrainian business that usually remains out of the attention of investors and journalists, but whose success will determine the shape of the country's economy in 5-10 years." "Foodicine" is a brand that tries to change the way patients eat, expand the menu and make it tasty and beautiful, rather than a solid gray color, at best "diluted" with grated red beets... Even more. Tetiana's main idea is to change the approach to catering in public hospitals. And she succeeds, although at first, she encounters fierce resistance. We talked about all this.
"FOOD UNITS IN HOSPITALS ARE MOSTLY IN A TERRIBLE STATE. BUT I'M GLAD IT DIDN'T SCARE US AT THE BEGINNING"
- "My own experience as a patient abroad, as well as my two previous stays in Ukrainian hospitals, allow me to look at this problem from the patient's side as well," says Tetiana Koval. - "I realized that the food, the organization of food, greatly distinguishes us from European clinics. I can't say that the food there was very tasty, and here it is not. There is such food both there and here. The approach is different. In Germany, where I was part of a delegation to exchange experience not so long ago, I saw that the hospital served both shank and fries...
- Shank in the hospital?!
-They bring you a menu where you can tick the boxes, ask if you have any allergies or food preferences. The food is brought to the ward, not just haphazardly piled on the food counters, where people stand in line. Those who can walk come, and those who can't send relatives. The organization of food is very different. And this interested me.
-Nine years ago, when I started thinking about it, the Shalimov Institute publicly offered to rent a room for a food unit. At the time, my fiancé and I, who had just been demobilized from a territorial defense battalion after being wounded, were running a pharmacy on the institute's premises, and it seemed like the right opportunity to realize a new idea.
- Were you not frightened by the state of the premises?
- This room was rented with repairs, but later, when we started looking at other food units in hospitals, we faced reality, and then we could ask ourselves: what are we doing in this area? Because the actual number of food units I have visited over these nine years are buildings from the 1970s and 1980s that have never seen a repair. They are in a terrible state, but I am glad that this did not scare us then. We signed our first contract with the Center for Eye Microsurgery.
- In other words, you had a kitchen in Shalimov's, and you fed the patients in the eye microsurgery center?
- Yes, it was there that we won the tender. There was a moment when there was a failure, and we carried food for 30-50 patients as couriers.
- Why didn't you feed the patients at the Shalimov Institute of Surgery and Transplantation? How did they solve this issue?
- Since the Institute was founded, they have been purchasing food from the 6th Hospital. And they announced a new tender for the purchase of catering services only in November 2016, when we applied for this procedure. I am in favor of all hospitals providing catering services on an outsourced basis. It is specialized companies that should be engaged in organizing catering, which involves many people: from purchasing food to serving food in the ward.
So we started. At that time, this market was completely lifeless, with almost no competition. At the end of 2016, we were already cooking for 400 patients a day. It seemed like a big number.
- Did you manage?
- We entered a business that we underestimated, but we were motivated by our goal. As a result, of course, we managed, as you can see, but what we went through... There were different things: my husband and I would go to "Metro" at two in the morning to buy 70 kilograms of meat and carry it home to the 14th floor to bring it to the kitchen at 5 in the morning. These were difficult times in the company's formation, when we went through all the processes personally.
At the beginning, the supplier brought us the equipment, we started working on it, but the investor did not pay for it. So one day, the supplier simply took away half of the equipment, and that was the equipment that could be used for frying, steaming, and cooking, leaving the tables and refrigerators behind. For a few days, until we bought a combi steamer, we saved the situation with the help of emergency purchased stoves, on which we made a steam bath for cooking cutlets. They were super delicious. We managed to make sure that no one noticed our problems.
- How was the search for cooks going?
-"It was so easy back then, compared to now. I remember in 2015-2016 we offered a salary of 5 thousand hryvnias to a cook. While I was studying abroad, the day of my husband, Sasha, was filled with interviews, and he conducted them. As a result, we found people who are still working with us today. For example, it was then that Zoia, a cook, joined us, and now she is the head of kitchen production in Kyiv.
"THE ROLE OF NUTRITION NURSES IN OUR HOSPITALS IS UNDERESTIMATED AND THEY ARE OFTEN LACKING IN KNOWLEDGE OF MODERN NUTRITION."
- How did you develop the menu? We know very well that the most common dishes in hospitals are buckwheat, mashed beets, compote made from unknown dried fruits... Did you struggle with this at all? Have you thought about how to surprise patients? Or did you not have a task to surprise?
- Companies that participate in catering tenders do not develop menus, but adapt to the hospital's order. The customer has to put the menu in the procurement item. We are also working to teach hospitals how to create quality menus. Because diet menus have not existed for a long time. In 2010, they were abolished by an order developed by a nutritionist and approved by the Ministry of Health. There are three weight categories in that order. That is, the algorithm that should now work in hospitals is to weigh patients upon admission to the hospital, divide them into three categories (normotrophs, hypotrophs, hypertrophs), and feed them accordingly. Of course, there are certain diets for diabetes, a postoperative table and recommendations for cancer and tuberculosis diseases.
In my opinion, according to the current order, the menu can be made quite varied. But hospitals still use Pevsner diet menus, perhaps because there are clearer rules and recommendations for each category of patients. In hospitals, a dietitian and/or a nutrition nurse are responsible for the menu, and unfortunately, the latter does not always do a good job. A nutrition nurse is a very important link in the organization of catering in hospitals, and we have seen this in foreign practice. In our hospitals, however, this is usually a neglected position, which, as it happens, is not based on modern knowledge of nutrition.
We created the Nutrition Nurses' Club on the basis of the Academy of Patient Nutrition, a public union where we gather nutrition nurses, engage them in discussions, and hold lectures from leading experts in the field.
My goal is to make sure that the hospital menu is no longer gray. My team has already done a lot to achieve this: the technologists have integrated spinach sauce, rolls, and jelly into the menu. And, most importantly, we have developed an example of a modern balanced menu that meets the norms of Order 931 in cooperation with an experienced nutritionist Svitlana Fus and made it public.
But let's ask ourselves: "why doesn't every hospital in Ukraine have such a menu?" Because there is still resistance to change in some places. Hospital food is an entrenched system that has been in place long before I was born. We offer something new, modern and overcome a lot of arguments against it: "inconvenient, too expensive, hard to carry, nowhere to store, patients won't want it...".
- So there is still resistance?
- Of course, only 10 percent of the total number of hospitals have outsourced catering to private companies. For me, these are progressive hospitals that aim to save money in order to spend it more efficiently. It often happens that the director of an institution intends to lease out the catering department and engage a catering company, and his subordinates find many reasons why not. I would like to understand their motives.
- How many similar catering companies exist today? How many have appeared in the last nine years? How did they develop? Did they follow in your footsteps?
- We were not the first company, several existed on the market before us. Nowadays, 52 companies provide catering services in hospitals. There are 9 legal entities operating under our brand, "Foodicine".
Over the course of 9 years of work, our brand has done a lot to make this market grow. I mean that hospitals are increasingly paying attention to the nutrition of patients and switching to a different way of eating. I hold a lot of meetings, presentations, and gatherings to familiarize the public with the concept of catering. I share the experience of European clinics, show relevant cases in Ukraine.
- A personal meeting, of course, matters. Have you ever had a situation where there was no feedback after a meeting?
- It happens quite often. During the first meeting, I talked about the existence of catering and outsourcing, of course, not everyone is familiar with these words. From this moment until the hospital submits a tender for catering services, even five or six years can pass. And all this time we have been holding regular meetings, starting with the words: "It's me again, good afternoon! Do you remember what I was talking about?". Sometimes I hear that this is a painful topic for the manager, who already understands that it is necessary to lease the old food unit because the hospital cannot allocate a budget for its reconstruction.
- These meetings are like a little stroke fall great oaks. But it takes a lot of time and effort.
- It happens that I have been holding meetings for all these five years, and not one of the companies working under my brand wins the tender. It's a tender, a kind of competition, where the only criterion that determines the winner is the price. It's my pain, to be honest. For example, this is what happened in Ternopil: " Foodicine did not win, but I understand that our work was the impetus for the development of the direction in the region.
"OUR COMPANY IS TARGETING STATE HOSPITALS BECAUSE THE OLD SYSTEM NEEDS TO BE CHANGED"
- How do you work with private hospitals?
- We do not work.
- Why?
- This is a completely different menu, a different set of products, and it costs about 600-800 hryvnias per patient per day on average. We work with budgets ranging from 80 to 250 hryvnias per day. These are completely different kitchen processes and equipment. Our kitchens are more adapted to a mass production approach: 1500-2000 daily meals from one kitchen.
- But it's more expensive, you can cook less and earn more, right?
- We conceived this business to influence the development of the state, first and foremost. Our kitchens are a "train" that is already running, and it is difficult to maneuver, let alone stop it. We used to cooperate with one unit of the Dobrobut medical network with 16 patients. And it broke all our well-established processes in the kitchen. So we were forced to abandon this cooperation. I even promised myself that one day we would build a separate kitchen to serve private clinics.
- Why did you choose state hospitals?
- Because we need to change the old system. It is important for the whole country. With a food budget of 200+, the hospital takes the service to another level. The patient feels like in a hotel, served by a nutrition nurse. We get feedback via QR codes. For example: "This is just wow! The hospital has such a service! A nutrition nurse came and helped me get up, food on a tray, everything tasty and hot."
- What is the difference between meals in a private hospital and a public hospital? Of course, there is a difference in the budget. But what else? Are there bigger portions or do you buy better products? Or is there some kind of branded plate?
- For example, I was a patient in a private hospital and I can analyse this. Yes, of course, there are a number of foods, such as red fish, that can be used in a private hospital, but we cannot. Or even broccoli, some specific vegetables, fruits. Fruit in public hospitals is a rarity, and we only use fruit in children's hospitals and hospitals for the military, because they have at least some budget for it.
- So there are companies that cook specifically for private clinics?
- Yes, these are catering companies that have experience in serving buffets, so they understand the concept of dishes. Our dishes are simpler. Especially if the menu is for 80 hryvnias a day per patient, and it's three meals a day. This is a very difficult task. Not a single competitor enters tenders with such a budget. And we have a socially oriented business, so it is our task to support such hospitals and to convey the importance of allocating a larger budget during cooperation.
- So the hospital itself can offer a higher price?
- Yes, hospitals can allocate funds within their budgets. And when the hospital realizes that food is just as important as other cost items, it allocates more money. After the full-scale invasion, the military began to arrive at the hospital, and the initial budget for their meals was 80-100 hryvnias. The guys wanted a lot of meat, dumplings, cheesecakes, pancakes, yogurt, fruit, and everything else that would help them recover faster. And this is portioned, handmade, and requires more staff, which means it costs much more. And then the budgets for the military began to grow, for example, in the Lviv rehabilitation center, the budget per patient was 300 UAH with the support of the city council. This is one of the record budgets for Ukraine.
In contrast, another example: one of the capital's hospitals assures me that they currently spend 18 hryvnias per patient per day. I can't imagine how it is, whether patients are satisfied with such food. I think they are miscalculating, or economists are deliberately coming up with such figures. This is about the topic of resistance.
"THE CHILDREN'S INFECTIOUS DISEASES HOSPITAL ALLOCATED 65 TO 80 HRYVNIAS PER DAY FOR THE FOOD OF LITTLE PATIENTS"
- What should change in terms of nutrition in children's hospitals? How do you see this situation? How much are children being fed now and how much is needed to make it adequate? Especially since you are a mother of a small child and you understand well what is needed.
- I'll start with moms (smiles). Once, when I was not yet a mother, I came to the Children's Hospital No. 9, and they told me so: "You are not a mother, you have no right to feed small children" - a kind of discrimination. As for how I see the situation, I think there are too many children's hospitals in Kyiv - 10, including the infectious diseases hospital. They are 20-50 percent full. Because there are so many hospitals, the budget is blurred. It is difficult to maintain them because they are separate entities with entire staffs of people. It would be good to focus on two institutions, for example, the first children's hospital and the second hospital. Then the budget could be increased to UAH 300 per child, which would allow for a varied, colorful, healthy and, importantly, portioned menu. We regularly conduct surveys on the wishes of young patients, and children always indicate fruit, yogurt, and juice. The state does not provide this, it provides minimal budgets, which is absolutely unacceptable now, especially for the children's segment.
- How much?
- 70-80 hryvnias.
For this amount, you have to feed your child three times a day?
- Even four times a day, according to the order, there is still an afternoon snack.
- This is impossible in our time...
- It is impossible. And feeding children is an art. And this price includes porridge, soup, cereal... But even under such conditions, we manage to feed them deliciously. Once my groupmate was in the hospital with a child we were feeding. She said: "My child has never eaten cutlets. Give me the recipe for your cutlets, because she ate them." I thought that we had ordinary standard cutlets, but I gave her the recipe. She still remembers me.
- Children under 3 years old are one thing, from 3 to 12 are another, and then teenagers are almost adults. Is such a division foreseen in any way? It's obvious to me that it should be.
- Yes, it is. The older the child, the bigger the portion.
- Do you have one kitchen in Kyiv now?
- We have four and one intermediates shop.
- How did you expand?
- We realized that one kitchen would not be enough for Kyiv when the number of patients to be fed exceeded a thousand a day. Hospitals offer their canteens for rent, and we monitor and participate in the auctions. They reserve the right to have access to the canteen at any time and control its condition.
- Didn't the fact that they want to control you scare you?
- On the contrary, I'm always happy - it's double control. I dream of online cameras in the kitchen with free access for the hospital administration. This speaks of the company as one that has nothing to hide, especially if we provide catering services to the same hospital.
- Does this mean that responsibility is shared?
- Then there will be fewer questions to the market operator. On the contrary, I really want them to come and taste food to make sure that everything is done according to the rules.
- When and where did the next kitchen appear?
- At the Institute of Innovative Medical Technologies. We have renovated the premises of this institution, we have before and after photos, there is something to see there - so much effort has been put in, so the dream is coming true. The third kitchen in Kyiv started working in 2019. After that, I started looking at other regions and going on business trips. By that time, we were already feeding 20 hospitals in Kyiv, and I could talk about it in the regions, and it inspired them too.
We found the first kitchen for rent in Lviv, in the city hospital. At that time, a new young team led by Oleh Samchuk started working there. That's how we won our first catering contract outside of Kyiv. We started with 900 patients a day, and then, when the city hospitals were merged into a territorial medical association, we cooked for 1700 patients. We also operate a fast food restaurant and a café in Unbroken under the brand name of our FoodieSpace chain.
- Is this a separate business line?
- Exactly two years ago, we started opening catering establishments in hospitals, and now we have eleven operating establishments - in Lviv, Lutsk, eight in Kyiv, including the Cancer Institute and the Shalimov Institute. Another 5 FoodieSpaces are currently undergoing renovation.
A cafe has also been opened at the Institute of Orthopedics and Traumatology. I love these before and after photos. Because there was an old place in that place - in pink colors, with a "delicious" smell of fat, chandeliers... A classic standard of the Soviet cafeteria interior. We demolished everything, invested four million to build a new, beautiful, clean place. And it's so cool when people come in and go: "Wow!" And it's even cooler when they call someone on video and say: "Look, it's me in the hospital!" Even our employees, being in this facility, are delighted, and the doctors are happy: "Look what we have opened!" We did our best there.
"THE NUTRITION NURSES TELL ME THAT SOMETIMES THE MEDICAL STAFF ATE THE PATIENTS' FOOD, AND THEN THE PATIENTS ATE IT. I HOPE IT'S JUST GOSSIP OR SINGLE CASES."
-Is there always resistance when a hospital switches to a different form of catering?
- When a hospital first starts working with a catering company, there is a so-called transition period, which lasts about 3 months, when hospital staff test the service provider's strength. An established hospital system rejects anything new, but eventually adapts, it's inevitable. They are especially nervous if we immediately start working with portioned meals, which is when each patient is brought a closed portion of food that no one has access to. I would not like to think that where the hospital organizes the food itself, patients receive food on a leftover principle.
- Does anyone eat the patients' food?
- I can't say for sure, I just want to remind you that the state guarantees free meals to patients. According to the rules, there should be a menu hanging in each corridor near the dining room or the serving room, so you can familiarize yourself and control what is on the menu today. If a patient is missing something, they should contact the distributor, who should fix it. I also urge you to share this experience with the Patient Nutrition Academy through social media and the Union's website, as they will definitely consider it and help you change it.
When we hire food handlers, they become nutrition nurses. They wear uniforms, have conversation scripts, advanced functionality, and receive ongoing training in sanitary and hygienic standards and service. At the beginning of the work, we talked personally with each of them about how they worked before and what exactly will change now. It is important to me that the patient feels care and service from them.
- Does it happen that patients refuse to eat?
- Yes, of course. People who get to the hospital often refuse without even looking at the food. There are stereotypes in society that food in hospitals is something that shouldn't even be given a chance. Food in hospitals has discredited itself - and here again, I'm not talking about taste so much as the organization of the process. We still have a lot of work to do.
- What unusual things have you cooked in your kitchens? And what can't you use?
- For example, we can't provide more than two types of bread, it's a restriction. We can't use garlic, pork, or spices - it's forbidden for patients.
And in May 2022, the military guys made an unusual offer to us: "We can bring ten tons of chicken, and you can make us stew." I thought: ten tons was not much. They brought us the first batch, and I realized that it completely filled one workshop. I said: "You guys, this is so much!" And they: "It's only a ton...", and since then I know what ten tons is... But we did it, we processed the chicken.
- This is volunteer help...
- I'm just remembering the unusual things we did. It was extraordinary! We didn't have any cans back then, all Kyiv brought in cans. We glued patriotic poems on each of them... At Easter, we boiled eight thousand eggs and colored them to give each patient one. When you're a small company, it's not difficult to do these things and not so expensive. But when you are such a big company that works all over Ukraine, it is a whole event for us. 8000 eggs - can you imagine?
- In nine years, has there been at least one case of people being poisoned by your food?
- At the Children's Hospital No. 4, a mother said that her child had been poisoned by the soup we brought. When we investigated (because there are samples from our side and samples from the hospital), it turned out that the mother had put the soup in a bowl on a radiator to keep it warm and went with her child to the procedures. The soup turned sour, the child ate it, and she felt sick. I remember this incident as a great stress.
Don't do that. If you can't eat or feed the person right now, don't take the food from the person who is giving it to you, let her be responsible for it. Then the distributor has to pour food for you and heat it up. This is her responsibility.
"I'VE ALWAYS SAID: "WE ARE NOT A ONE-DAY COMPANY, WE ARE IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL"
- At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, how did you work in Kyiv and other regions? How difficult was this period?
- It was very difficult. There was panic among all hospitals. Food became an important component for the heads of healthcare facilities because it was under the threat of not being delivered. But we decided to work non-stop almost immediately after the news of the full-scale invasion. We started getting calls from hospitals that were being fed by competitors, asking if we could bring them something because they still had patients and no food. We delivered everything, recruited volunteers to help us with raw materials. At that time, we fed them and didn't even ask for payment, it didn't matter. We also fed doctors for free, for example, in the Kyiv emergency hospital. But patients were a priority, everything was very difficult then, because there were still curfews, not hours. So we made dry rations, packed what could be steamed with boiling water on the spot...
- Didn't your people leave? Was there anyone to do it?
- The fact is that we had a lot of people from Kherson and Sumy regions working in our kitchen, and they said: ‘We have nowhere to go. Tell us what to do.’ When it all started, I was in Khmelnytskyi. I called the cooks and said: ‘If you leave, we will understand’. No one left. In fact, we mobilised very hard. I immediately went to Kyiv, and together with the operations director, I coordinated all our cooks by phone - what to cook for whom. Customers called me and said: ‘’You're not going to leave us...‘’. I answered them: ‘It's okay, everything will be sorted out now, we'll bring you...’ And once you've made a promise, you have to keep it.
There were different things. Some hospitals sent us their ambulances to pick up food. Sometimes the suppliers would bring a minimal amount of food, so we would write announcements to people who were willing to help, bring food and come to the kitchen themselves. It is very difficult for such a large company to survive serious challenges and shocks. At that time, there were 270 people in the company, and we checked the lists every day: who, what, how, whether everyone was alive...
- You have a lot of women in your company, as I understand it. But there are also men, of course. What is the current situation with mobilisation? You are not a critical infrastructure.
- We have 90 per cent of employees who are women, and it is difficult to recruit men in some areas. For example, delivery drivers, loaders and storekeepers. A storekeeper is a position where a woman can replace a man, but not a loader. Drivers... There were situations when our drivers' wives delivered food. There was a time when our driver immediately went to the TDF in 2022, and his wife replaced him and did his job. My husband also went to war right away, and it's hard for me without him.
- What did he do, what was he responsible for in the company?
- He was the technical director. He was in charge of all procurement, logistics and technical issues. He was also in charge of working with suppliers, operational issues, all repairs, and drivers. He selected people like himself. So they all went off in their own military fields.
- Have you taken over the technical part now?
- No, we have divided it up. The operational director took over the repairs. I took over purchasing. The company has grown a lot. Before the full-scale operation, we employed 270 people, now we have 550. We split up all the functions and gave everyone a little bit of everything. At first, we thought it was temporary, so: ‘Yuliia, back me up...’, "I'll back you up...". And then we realised that we needed to make some kind of support.
- It is clear that many people have left, many children. But it seems that the number of patients is not decreasing...
- Children's and maternity hospitals have reduced their volumes. All adult hospitals are working as they were before. There are many wounded. There were indeed times when patients in hospitals were laid in the corridors, in Bucha, for example. By the way, this hospital was under occupation. We brought them as long as we could. But when it was completely occupied, we could no longer get there.
- Have you ever regretted doing this particular job?
- Yes, we regret it from time to time together with Sasha (laughs).
- Did you imagine nine years ago that you would be feeding thousands of patients, opening so many canteens and cafes?
- I imagined it and always declared it to the team, often using the phrase: ‘We work for the long haul’. We are not a one-day company, we are building a large system, which means time, endurance, dedication and, of course, scale. I've always said that.
"95 PER CENT OF OUR EMPLOYEES SAY THAT THEY WORK WITH THE COMPANY BECAUSE IT HAS A SOCIAL MISSION AND IS CHANGING THE COUNTRY FOR THE BETTER"
- Do you see any need for you to become more and more popular?
- I think that in the future every hospital will switch to catering, sooner or later. When some director says to me: ‘We don't have time,’ I appeal: ‘Then we will meet with you a little later’. It's not because we are following someone else's example, it's an economically sound story. I am talking about the fact that it is economically beneficial for cities and regions. Why should a city keep ten catering units that consume a lot of electricity? An old boiler or stove consumes 28-30 kilowatts per hour, while our stoves have seven and can cook for a much larger number of patients - up to ten times more!
- There is a difference...
- And that stove has to be switched on at four in the morning so that it can heat up by six o'clock. With ours, you switch it on, put a pan in, and everything is ready in no time. This is about great energy savings for cities and regions. I now want to address the issue at this level: optimise and centralise this function! This is not about my company, but about the country. It is very difficult for us to get rid of the manifestations of Sovietism that are rooted in the healthcare system.
I sometimes hear: ‘We are actually a medical institution, we are not about food... This is secondary. Nothing will happen to the patient, relatives will bring something.’ And this is wrong, because food can speed up the recovery process and the patient will be discharged from the hospital sooner, and there will probably be more cured patients in the country.
- Tell me, is this business profitable?
- Yes, this is a business that has allowed us to build 11 restaurants without working with investors. There are nine legal entities operating under the brand, and now I intend to attract even more and scale up the franchise.
When we started, it seemed that it would remain a social enterprise forever and never generate income. We even thought a few times that we had to end it all, because it was difficult, we received nothing, there was no motivation. And now it is a business that allows us to reinvest, develop and help the army.
- You also help the army by buying bulletproof vests...
- At the moment, we have given more than two million from the company, plus we often initiate collections. Uniforms, protection, drones, thermal imagers, a boat, a car - and many other things. We hold draws for our merchandise and send coffee drips to the military. We do a lot for Sasha's unit. It's in the company's DNA - our people take part in all fundraisings.
- How much does Forbes' attention to your brand motivate you?
- Very much so! We were interviewed a lot in the spring of 2022 because we were super active - we volunteered, we fed. As for Forbes... This is, after all, the first stage of our recognition. I really wanted it because I understood that the team needed this encouragement. When we do a survey: ‘Why do you work with us?’, 95 percent of the answers are: ‘Because we have a social mission and can influence the course of the country's development.’ We really do influence the development of healthcare in Ukraine. This is very encouraging for the team. This mission has brought us to where we are. For this reason, we do not stop and move quickly. This is a stressful job, and I work with people who care about the country. And I was very happy that we received this recognition because it motivates the team. Now they work for a company that is on the Forbes list.
- One day you may not have to go to work...
- The thing is that we work 365 days a year, without days off and holidays. Because there are always patients.
Violetta Kirtoka, Censor. NET
