Restaurateur
Saveliy Libkin

Breakfast without foreignisms

I heard that some handymen sausage makers have united and bagan to produce decent sausages in half domestic  conditions without different not enough eatable admixtures… The price differs from  shop sausages on about 30%.  And the bread is from Compote.

It’s interesting, will people pay real price for genuine sausages in our country?

How to sell ganache in the little balls at the price 125 Euros per a kilogram?

In Zürich I saw an interesting marketing solution. Chocolate, truffles and candies are sold by just about everyone in this country… The market is rammed by huge offer and ordinary «without a queue» demand. Rather famous producer Lindt & Sprungli has risked and hit the bull’s-eye. The trustful tourists together with naïve Swisses stand in a queue for truffles with 24 hours expiration date. But the truffles are common as dirt and in a week or two their taste doesn’t became different. But on the label with the price higher then the price for standard truffles by 25% is written magical Truffes du Jour. And in the annotation is stated strictly that they are sold within twenty-four hours and it is necessary to eat them only within twenty-four hours also.

In my home fridge I had as standard truffles with complex name Grand Cru so as fresh ones. Both of them didn’t change the taste even in two weeks, but for some reason the queue stands for «fresh»…in spite of that they are more expensive by 25%. I won’t be surprised greatly if in a week or two after this post at home local businessmen will decided to do the same fraud.

In the annual report 2008 one can see that the things were rather good without Truffes du Jour, which appeared on sale only in 2010 year according to the seller’s words.

By the way Swisses don’t sell fresh chocolate truffles in the online shop …they maintain their reputation.

Attention to details for 99% of fellow citizens is possible only regarding their own peson… And exactly attention to details distinguishes successful and well-established markets. The shoe salesman who tells about old Russian knot, half shoehorn, a pile of paper as a demo stand, as well as 100% chocolate cake without sticky pie shell tell me 1000 times greater about London then Big Ben and queen.

Merchandising

It is interesting  people can be tought to do it or something?

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I cite the opinion of my employer who returned form this seminar in full:

«This time the participants of Status’s seminar in Kiev were delivered by air. We have flight at 7 a.m, a few minutes after 8 a.m everyone were in the hotel.Ther check-in was at 12 o’clock in the afternoon, so the participants were recommended to have a walk without offering them a cup of tea or coffee. It was stated that the seminar begins at 01.30. a.m . As not everybody wanted to amuse by themselves in the hotel’s neighborhoods within 5 hours, part of invited persons came to the city and returned closer to the meeting with Karim Rashid. Karim finished answer questions almost at 7 p.m., after hat everybody were invited to have a dinner. We had the opportunity to communicate with the designer in person. A huge quantity of persons interested to do this wasn’t observed.

The returning to Odessa was planned on the next day, by air also at 5 p.m. The organizers didn’t provide any program for this day at all. The transfer to Borispol was promised at 12 o’clock in the afternoon, but not many people wanted to amuse ourselves in the hotel’s neighborhoods again and then to wait for the flight at the airport…”

The fact that Karim Rashid presented and even talked sweetened a little the impression of the employers from the seminar. I also wanted to see him but I couldn’t come. According to my employers all his time Karim devoted to self presentation and sure he took a notice that exists the notion «designer», in his opinion and also exists the notion «stylist». Of course he reckoned himself in the first notion and Ukrainians from the presented to the second one.

Photo by Nykolay Nevrev

I have never be delighted with his synthetic and aniline design, but the fact that the style of Karim Rashid is recognizable already is worthy of attention. On the other hand, who needs the opinions, if he got money and according to him hundreds of thousands for his ideas and projects…