Case Nai

The team has been creating various projects in the culinary and restaurant industry for a long time. Therefore, after February 24th, 2022, dozens of requests to “help open a high-quality Ukrainian restaurant” began to come to the team members and personally to Nai co-founder Volodymyr Yaroslavsky. The request was there – the only thing left to do was to solve it.

On July 8th, 2022, the team interviewed those who wanted to open Nai restaurant among their audience – there was no website, no investment, almost nothing. On the first day, 150 people left applications to open their own restaurant. Olena says that it was “even a little scary,” because it was a huge responsibility. The applications came from all over the world: Ukraine, the United States, Mexico, Zambia, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and dozens of other countries. Everyone wanted to open a Ukrainian product abroad.

The biggest challenge Nai faced on its franchising journey was finding suitable and decent premises abroad. The average project implementation period from the approval of the premises to the first guests in the restaurant was 6 months. In many cities, it is not only a problem to find a decent space, but also to rent it.

Everything happens very slowly. We have to provide the owner with a presentation of the company, financial statements, and a finished business plan for a specific premises. The Nai team currently employs 42 people. All of them work for franchise partners: “Absolutely everyone is focused on ensuring that the partners succeed. Imagine a partner from New York building his first restaurant and having a team of 42 cool people helping him. Imagine how confident our partners feel. Each of our partners is extremely important to us, because the whole point of our company is to help our partners, not to develop our own restaurants.” Three restaurants are currently being built in Wroclaw, New York and Prague.

“From the very beginning, Nai was presented as a business for people who have no experience in the restaurant business. And the Franchise Group team wanted to keep this transparency and easiness in the franchising approach as much as possible.  But it is definitely not an easy way to teach partners to become the best restaurateurs from scratch. “We literally teach our partners all the intricacies of the restaurant business from scratch and guide them at every step.”

Many people dream of owning their own restaurant, but usually people are stopped by a lack of experience, high-quality training, or a mentor who will be open to help with everything. This is where the company is of great value to its partners.

The fact that Franchise Group also responded and shared the same values, that sales for the sake of sales is not a story about Nai. It is important for the team to find people with similar core values who will develop the company in different parts of the world: “A restaurant is a child. And we choose those who are ready to become parents to this child.”

All the decor, furniture, and accessories of the restaurants are made in Ukraine. Kyiv-based designer Yova Yager has created a unique design that demonstrates the modern face of Ukraine to the world. But it has not only aesthetic value, but also practical use for her partners.

The team purchases the necessary materials and interior items in Ukraine at the lowest prices, creates special “packages” in the warehouse for each partner, and delivers them in one truck or container (depending on the country). In this way, the partner receives a shipment with all the necessary furniture, decor, tableware, and other small details for their facility.

The global thinking of Nai with a focus on global companies has given Franchise Group an impetus to talk about global networking. The team focuses on companies with thousands of locations. As for markets, Nai is currently focused on the USA, Canada, and Europe. They plan to open 30 restaurants within a year, 300 within 5 years, and then thousands more product, a marker of impeccable service, and Ukrainian, which is a growing desire on the global stage. Because it is a high-quality product, service, and it is Ukrainian, which will be all over the world.