An ambitious manager who, with sincerity and consistency in management, managed to build a restaurant business, Mikhail Zelman had already left for two years to live on foggy Albion, selling all Russian assets to his colleagues. In London, he successfully manages a restaurant chain and conducts business culture training in England. Love for meat, its preparation, and then earnings - these are the priority components for the success of this successful entrepreneur. Mikhail was one of the first to enter the Western market, offered to sell lunch boxes on trains and came up with the concept of “one dish” in the menu.
Mikhail Zelman: biography
The future innovator in catering was born in 1977 in Moscow. At the age of 15, he graduated from school as an external student and immediately went to work in a brokerage office at a commodity and raw materials exchange. He was engaged in the supply of food to the state reserve. At the same time, he began to get involved in restaurant issues and, whenever possible, visited cattle-breeding farms, beef production centers, where he studied meat business.
The comrades were not serious about the young employee of the exchange. But nevertheless they took him into the business selling vouchers to the Sochi hotel “Pearl”. Mikhail in an interview said that his first business partner was 10 years older, and the desire to learn the nuances of business made Zelman often remain silent and not contradict colleagues in matters of commerce.
However, this did not last long. Already at the age of 22, the young man opened the first fashionable restaurant for the capital's bohemian “San Michel” at that time. Four years later (in 2003) he founded the whole Arpikom holding and became the winner of the Best Restaurateur award.
By education, Mikhail Zelman is a lawyer. He also mastered the work of a waiter, cook, sommelier and accountant.
Paternal influence
Mikhail's dad, Vitaly Yakovlevich, a Soviet scientist, once worked in the field of instrumentation at the Institute of Space Medicine. Before the Olympics-68, a team of Soviet riders was trained in the North Caucasus. There was invited a junior researcher Vitaly Yakovlevich, who developed a program for adapting athletes to high altitude conditions, who experienced the same sensations, loads, and oxygen starvation as the astronauts. At the training camp, thirty-year-old father Michael was appointed senior cooking. The guy who first tried the sausage after the cancellation of the coupons, had to independently receive lamb carcasses, cut them, and then also cook the dishes.
Caucasians are a hospitable people, they quickly brought the novice culinary up to date, and upon returning to Moscow Mikhail Yakovlevich left his scientific works and set about creating a cooperative for the production of mustard, horseradish and meat.
Then the father instilled a love of cooking meat and son. Mikhail Zelman, a restaurateur who developed a unique concept of a monoblazed menu, learned to choose and cook a delicious barbecue as a boy. And this is the merit of his father.
The first experience of opening a restaurant
In 1999, not far from the theater. Stanislavsky opened the French restaurant "San Michel". As a rocky island of the same name impregnable for the Vikings with a fortress in Normandy, the Moscow restaurant with French cuisine, which opened at that time, was inaccessible to people with average incomes. The fashionable place was not cheap and was intended for meetings of the capital's bohemia. For example, a barberry duck cost $ 95, and a bottle of wine cost $ 400. At the same time, the interior is furnished with IKEA furniture, and the cost of the entire project cost the budding businessman $ 1 million.
Mikhail Zelman later recalled his first experience of opening a restaurant as a "classic of mistakes." The main omission is the creation of a place for catering with dishes from French cuisine, when the country lacked food products characteristic of it.
Good man - well-fed man
In 2004, the bohemian place was replaced by Goodman's single-product steakhouse. The main concept of the restaurant was the preparation of dishes exclusively from meat. The author of the idea was Mikhail Zelman. Goodman restaurants not only successfully introduced Russian people to the steak culture, but also were carriers of creative advertising. The task of marketers was the need to emphasize the professionalism of the team in the preparation of meat. Soon the slogan “We know how to make minions” flaunted on advertising banners. The public outcry was successful - by the end of 2004, Goodman managers began to create a corporate network.
Restaurants of this network began to open in shopping centers, which at the time of 2006 was a non-standard phenomenon, awarded with international diplomas and entered regional markets. The most important project of 2008 was the launch of Goodman restaurants in the western market. The opening of a steakhouse in London, and in 2010 in Switzerland.
Arpicom
Arpikom was founded by Mikhail in 2003, the company combined four restaurant businesses and the Komfis factory. In 2010, the holding entered the group company Food Service Capital. What other ideas, besides the opening of steakhouses, did Mikhail Zelman realize in business? The restaurateur, whose family is a harmony of relationships and peace, continued the concept of a non-alternative menu, in the good sense of the word. In an interview, he said that family members, choosing dishes from the menu of a Japanese restaurant, often may not find a common language, since the choice is a nervous affair. That is why the team of Mikhail Zelman makes the choice for the guests of their restaurants.
Visitors to his incredible places of catering can only choose the product that they want to taste.
Monoconceptions
Two years after the furor caused by the opening of the steakhouse, Mikhail introduces a business of preparing fish dishes in restaurants called Filimonova and Yankel. Guests are invited to taste lobsters, oysters, trout, salmon, turbot, and freshness of the products is guaranteed by an ice showcase in the hall, where the best fish products are cooled.
Continuing the gastronomic traditions of a unique restaurant format, Mikhail opens the Kolbasoff brewery, where the menu includes world sorts of beer and signature sausages. A family restaurant with Italian traditions, Mom’s Pasta, began its work.
In London, Zelman founded Burger & Lobster, a restaurant chain that offers burgers and lobsters in a variety of dishes. The price of any meal is 20 pounds.
Unified Power Network (CAP)
Michael took care of a healthy diet of people who are forced to work, overcoming hundreds of kilometers. To do this, he created a project that is a combination of commercial and public business. ESP supplies the so-called rations (average serving per meal) for railway and airline companies in Russia.
Lunch boxes are being prepared at the factory near St. Petersburg using special equipment, which ensures safe and tasty dishes at the exit.
Hobbies
Mikhail's favorite thing is cooking meat. He takes incredible pleasure from the mere thought that he can feed people. When Mikhail Zelman, wife Julia lived in Russia, on the day off they gladly received guests in their bright country house in the suburbs. Mikhail prepared everything himself: he bought meat, picked up seasonings, made a fire. He put his whole soul into the preparation of meat delights!
Also, Michael was professionally engaged in table tennis, so the game of ping pong has become one of his favorite activities in his free time.
Like a real man, Zelman loves hunting, and especially the well-fed eyes of friends, when he spoils them with cooked fresh.
The most favorite thing of Michael is the development of the restaurant empire. An honest entrepreneur, a decent person, a generous employer and a professional in his field, he never saves on business, but only invests profitably.
