You're reading: War, inflation hit restaurant business

Ukraine's restaurant sector is suffering. Some 120 restaurants closed in Kyiv alone while the overall number of eateries around the nation fell by 30 percent, to 15,200 outlets. In the Donbas alone, some 3,000 restaurants closed while Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea lopped off 1,600 places.

People spent Hr 21.4 billion at
restaurants this year, 11 percent down from 2013, according to Restaurant
Consulting. Prices rose 30 percent to offset the hryvnia’s 50 percent
devaluation.

Olga Nasonova, an industry expert with Restaurant
Consulting, estimates that  the dropoff
in customer traffic hit 30 percent and those who did go out opted for cheaper
places.

“It’s very silent in the
graveyard of closed restaurants,” says Saveliy Libkin, owner of Resta
restaurant chain in Odesa. “However, new restaurants are opened in place
of the old ones. We also managed to open one more location and keep all the
existing ones.”

McDonald’s, an American fast food giant,
managed to unveil four new locations, three in Kyiv and one in Boryspil, the
city 40 kilometers away from the capital. However, the chain closed three
venues in Crimea and halted operations in Donetsk, Luhansk and Mariupol.
Overall, however, McDonald’s reports a 4 percent growth in visitors this year.

Ongoing economic crisis depressed the restaurant market with the number of outlets shrinking by 30 percent. Only 15,200 outlets stayed on the scene. Source: Restaurant Consulting

Yan Monastyrsky closed his restaurant Onegin in
downtown Kyiv and opened up a kiosk serving hot dogos on Khreshchatyk Street.
“Spring was totally dead, peopled stopped coming to the restaurant,”
he told Capital, a business daily.

Sushiya, a Japanese food restaurant, says the
EuroMaidan Revolution affected their business, although chain did not raise
prices until October.

KultRa, a restaurant on Kyiv’s Volodymyrska Street,
suffered the greatest losses in autumn last year,
says Oleksandr Vavryk, an owner. Turnover fell by some 20-30
percent this year. Vavryk laments that his restaurant’s strategy to
attract Russian tourists won’t work anymore. “People
are poor and government is letting the capital out of the country instead of
stimulating domestic production and consumption,” he adds. Many of
KultRa’s suppliers went bankrupt, according to the restaurant owner.

Anastasiya Chornogorets,
29, a hairdresser from Kyiv, used to have lunch at Puzata Hata, an eatery
serving traditional Ukrainian food. “A lunch used to cost me some Hr 35,
now it’s not less than Hr 50,” she says. “But I keep eating here as
there is no other place nearby where I could get three courses for such a
price.”

Kyiv Post staff
writer Olena Gordiienko can be reached at [email protected].