KYIV — Marco Cervetti is a tall, robust man with almond-shaped eyes, a sort of fairytale giant. The Italian chef’s face dominates huge cardboard posters inside one of the 309 Silpo supermarkets he runs in Ukraine as brand manager. Pots and pans, knives, cutting boards and food products are all on display. Silpo is part of the Fozzy Group, one of Ukraine’s largest holding companies, which covers everything from supermarkets to banks.
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After eight years as oste (innkeeper) in Venice, followed by 11 years in Moscow running wine bars and restaurants, Cervetti met Fozzy founder Volodymyr Kostelman, in Venice before working with the group.
“I first met him as a poet and musician. He used to take refuge in this house in Venice to write verses. We met because he liked my tavern and, at one point, he said to me: ‘Why don’t you come give us a hand in Ukraine?’ I thought he had a small bar or store; I hadn’t grasped the true size of the business.”
Like most Europeans before the Russian invasion, Cervetti knew little about Ukraine: “When I arrived in Kyiv for the first time, I realized that Kostelman had a real empire. It wasn’t the usual business, but rather something evolved, informal, very interesting, with crazy prospects, and I was immediately won over!”
Rock and poetry
In 2015, Cervetti joined the Fozzy team. The first thing that struck him was the way board meetings were conducted. Even today, they take place in a bar, and the managers speak quite freely.
A visit with him to one of the Silpo chain’s stores in Stoyanka, on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, says enough about this highly innovative concept, “a kind of Bon Marché [department store] for the people, accessible to all,” Cervetti says.
Retail is the group’s core business. In addition to Silpo, Fozzy controls other stores and supermarkets, for a total of 774 outlets in Ukraine. A development and success that the four founders, originally from Dnipro, could never have imagined.
These young friends of Jewish origin — Kostelman, Roman Chyhir, Oleh Sotnykov and Yuriy Hnatenko — united by a passion for rock, tried to make a career for themselves in the 1990s. But at the time, it was very difficult for them to make a living from music alone.
So they looked for a business compatible with concerts, and turned to the retail sale of coffee and tea they bought in bulk.
Exponential growth
Since then, the band’s current president, Kostelman, doesn’t seem to have changed. He has published collections of poetry and remains shrouded in mystery. He doesn’t give interviews and there are very few photos of him online. On one of them, visible on a manager’s laptop, he appears in a T-shirt, with very long hair and a full beard, the casual look of a real rock singer.
In 1977, the budding musicians opened their first store, the Fozzy superstore in Vyshneve, near Kyiv. Since then, the company has not stopped growing. Today, the group counts more than 70 companies in various sectors, including retail, food production, logistics, catering, banking and information technology. Despite the developments, the four founders have not abandoned their shared passion for music and continue to meet up for rehearsals.
In March 2022, Russian forces targeted one of its logistics centers in the Kyiv region.
Today, the holding employs 50,000 people worldwide, 10,000 fewer than at the start of the conflict with Russia. In 2022, the latest figures available, it posted sales of 2.7 billion euros. But business dropped in value by 20% in the first months of the war, and the group suffered heavy losses.
In March 2022, Russian forces targeted one of its logistics centers in the Kyiv region, and 10,000 pallets of frozen products were lost, with a total value of almost 13 million euros. In all, 72 stores were destroyed, others looted, ruined or inaccessible because they are located in Russian-occupied territories. Added to this is the challenge of inflation, with prices rising by 26% in 2022.
Support for the army
Yet despite the extremely perilous environment, the group decided not to stop. To contribute to the war effort, Fozzy tried to support the army with logistics.
“For a while, I had to transform myself into a military chef, preparing the K ration,” Cervetti says. In other words, a meal corresponding to the standard 6,000 calories per day for soldiers. “I consulted dieticians, American soldiers, an Italian colonel, I looked at different combat rations and from what we had, I created the right formula.”
What is most striking today is the huge amount of work carried out by the group to ensure the continuous supply of foodstuffs to stores.
Many managers continue to scour Europe in search of products to import into Ukraine.
Many managers continue to scour Europe in search of products to import into Ukraine. Along with other colleagues, Cervetti has just returned from a trip to France — to Cancale, Saint-Malo and Marennes — in search of oyster suppliers. French products are very much in demand in Fozzy stores. They account for up to 10% of imports in certain categories.
The director has an extensive knowledge of international gastronomy, which he shares with his 20,000 YouTube followers in highly original “gastronomic satire” videos. Winner of the Flos Olei award, the olive oil Oscar, he has helped spread the culture of this product in the kitchen through various recipes, including a reinterpretation of borscht, a typical Ukrainian dish, with just two ingredients: extra-virgin olive oil and beets.
International products
Other missions in Europe allow Dmytro Tsyhankov, the group’s “cognitive director” in charge of developing new projects, to draw inspiration from department stores and chains such as Le Bon Marché in France, Eataly in Italy, as well as Tesco in Great Britain.
That inspiration can be seen on a stroll through Stoyanka’s Silpo — destroyed during the Russian occupation of the Kyiv region and rebuilt just two months later. It’s amazing to wander through the store’s various aisles and find all kinds of supplies, food and non-food, in a range of around 25,000 different products imported from 60 countries.
“The range of products requested by Ukrainian customers hasn’t changed significantly since the beginning of the invasion, but it has become more international,” Tsyhankov says.
Ukrainian specialties are not forgotten either. The Lavka Traditsii department, which promotes local producers, offers a wide range of products, such as farsh mak, a kind of herring rillettes to be enjoyed with bread. Scented cakes and croissants are baked daily, while the delicatessen section offers all kinds of meats and dishes, from smoked fish to sushi and baklava.
Between the aisles, we pass Ukrainian women, but above all soldiers on leave who push a cart without much conviction, to regain a form of normalcy.
Design first
Kostelman’s artistic sensibility is reflected in the choice of design for the supermarkets, each with a different theme. Stoyanka’s is inspired by Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.
From the outside, it resembles an old ranch, whose decor immediately transports the customer into a Western setting. No interior detail is left to chance: the wall features photos of cowboys holding bananas instead of guns. Another store is inspired by the story of The Little Prince, a kind of literary alternative to war.
Half an hour’s drive from the center of Kyiv lies Europe’s largest shopping mall, opened shortly before the outbreak of the conflict in the Teremky district. Strolling through the vast, almost empty, white marble space brings a sense of alienation.
In this immense complex, the highlight is a Silpo supermarket, the chain’s largest, 5,290 square meters developed on the theme of Brazil, featuring straw umbrellas, exotic fruits and celluloid monkeys. Here, the growing difficulty remains finding workers to work on the group’s premises, given the large number of conscripts and national refugees abroad.
Eyes on Europe
Tsyhankov observes that “what we’re trying to import from France and Italy is the ability to tell the story of products and recipes; we’re training staff in this kind of empathy with the customer, which isn’t very widespread in Ukraine.”
The labels of prestigious French Champagnes glitter on the shelves, but what attracts the most attention here is the space reserved for beer production, a pilot project.
Fozzy plans to expand outside Ukraine, into other European countries.
New ultra-modern facilities can produce around 500 hectoliters a month and over ten different types. Under the supervision of master brewer Victor Vaschuk, the very light Ukrainian Golden Ale is produced here. Next door, a pub with a design inspired by Brazil’s national library welcomes customers to sample freshly brewed crafted beers.
The Fozzy chairman’s desire to innovate and invest in new products didn’t stop after the Russian invasion. The next step for the group is to move into the production of spontaneously fermented beers, a growing trend throughout Europe, inspired by the best traditions of Belgium.
And then, as soon as the situation allows, the holding company plans to expand outside Ukraine, into other European countries. The determination of Fozzy’s entrepreneurs to innovate in a climate that is more than hostile to the country’s economic development demonstrates, in its own way, the formidable tenacity shown by Ukrainians since 2022.
