The first McDonald's brand restaurant in Russia was founded during the Soviet era, in 1990. His first top manager was Khamzat Khasbulatov. He chose a very convenient place for the restaurant - Pushkin Square. At first, in order to get to the restaurant, people stood in line for hours. In the first day of work alone, more than 30,000 customers visited it. Ahead of the restaurant was a long and fruitful road. Later in the article we will tell you about the life path and how it turned out that Khasbulatov Khamzat Hamidovich stood at the head of the Russian representative office of this world-wide company. His biography will certainly be interesting to many. Our story will also be about how the company developed over the course of 27 years.
Khamzat Khasbulatov: biography
The future businessman and restaurateur was born in 1956 in Kazakhstan, in a Chechen family. In the late 30s and early 40s, his parents, like many Chechen families, were deported from their native land to Central Asia. Khamzat spent his childhood in the small Kazakh village of Sas-Tyub. After the death of the leader of the peoples, many of the settlers decided to return to their native places, to the Caucasus. Khamzat Khasbulatov, whose photo you see in the article, has already gone to school in Chechnya. He studied very well, was a purposeful, inquisitive boy with a great outlook, with excellent mathematical abilities. His uncle was a mentor for him in life, and he advised his nephew to continue his studies in Moscow at the Plekhanov Institute after school, which at that time was considered one of the best and most fashionable in the country.
Khamzat Khasbulatov: biography of the Moscow period
Studying at the university was just as easy for him as at school, and upon graduation he was assigned to work as a deputy director of a restaurant at a closed facility in Tushino. Apparently, he was helped by communications in this matter. However, a few months after receiving the appointment, Khamzat Khasbulatov was drafted into the Soviet army. Two years later, having returned from service, he got a job in another restaurant for the same position. Probably, he had a special gift for the proper conduct of the restaurant business, and having noticed this, the Moscow restaurant trust began to transfer Khamazat from one catering enterprise to another. Wherever he worked, the restaurant began to flourish. Thus, he earned a reputation as an excellent crisis management specialist. And so, when it was proposed by McDonald's to open the first restaurant in Moscow, H. Khasbulatov recommended Mosrestorantrest as the future general manager.
Moscow McDonald's
In the two years that the first institution of the world-famous McDonald's fast food chain was opened in the Russian capital (at that time the main city of the USSR), that is, in 1988, a contract was signed on the creation of the Moscow-McDonald's joint venture, and Khamzat Khasbulatov was chosen as his leader (and is to this day). Prior to that, he was deputy director of the famous metropolitan restaurant Budapest. He was invited for an interview, in which many other candidates participated, but the American side gave preference to the thirty-two-year-old restaurateur, who was notable for his time thinking. After signing the contract, Khasbulatov went to the American continent in the United States and Canada, where he stayed for about a year and became embarrassed to grasp the nuances of managing this type of restaurant. By the way, 51% of the block of shares of the enterprise belonged to Mosrestoranservis.
Life in Canada
Thus, in 1988, Khamzat Khasbulatov ended up in the Canadian city of Toronto. He did not speak the language, and this was his main problem. However, he had high abilities and very quickly mastered the language from scratch. In the New World, he began to look at a lot from a different angle; his life was filled with contrasts. Before that, he had only been abroad twice, and even then, in the countries of the socialist camp, and here in the country of “rotting capitalism,” he realized how far behind life we were in the country of councils. Here he first saw houses with two pools, underground and multi-storey garages. I saw many-tiered streets and highways. Shock was waiting for him at every step; he, like all Soviet people, was not used to such luxury. However, he also faced the other side, behind all this visible beauty and luxury was the incredible, just hard labor of the employees of the enterprises. In none of the Moscow restaurants where he worked did the burden fall on the share of employees as in the Canadian McDonald's.
Western experience
In fact, Khamzat Hamidovich in Canada began to learn the basics of the restaurant business from scratch. He even had to wash the floors in a restaurant, along with 15-year-olds. Then, when he mastered the language, he was already standing at the checkout. Therefore, he was given access to the “holy of holies” - to the kitchen. That is, he at an accelerated pace comprehended all the steps of the career ladder. Then he went to the States, Chicago to study the science of “Hamburgerology” at a special institute. Incredible, huh? It turns out that in the West there are even higher education centers where you can learn the technology of cooking hamburgers. All the acquired knowledge helped Khasbulatov to organize correctly the activities of the first McDonald's restaurant in Russia in the future, and then create a network.
The first steps of Mankdonalds in the Russian Federation
Returning to Moscow, Khasbulatov, enriched with impressions, decided not to limit his activity only to work in the restaurant business, and also founded a real estate business. He also learned this in Canada. The formation of the Moscow “McDonald's” did not go quite smoothly. It was difficult to adapt to Russian realities. However, Khasbulatov tried to solve problems as they arrived. He even had to agree on the cultivation of special potatoes in Solntsevo, and for this he brought seeds from the United States. Khamzat Khamidovich set a goal, and this was what the general management of the company required: everything had to comply with the parameters generally accepted for the entire company, and not a step away from them. In 1993, a multi-story office building was constructed for McDonald's in Gazetny Lane.
Difficulties
Initially, most of the raw materials (80%) were imported from abroad, however, after the collapse of the country and the beginning of new market relations, the import of imported products became extremely impractical, and then he began to think which of the local suppliers could address this issue. This simple question turned out to be one of the most difficult. Khasbulatov traveled all over the country and searched for, found and recruited manufacturers. Thus, the first serious Russian supplier was Belaya Dacha. However, the goods she supplied were better than many others, but they did not quite meet McDonald's requirements. Khamzat Khamidovich also found a solution for this: the employees had to be trained all over again. To do this, internships were organized, and the best of them went for consultations abroad or, conversely, foreign experts were invited. For suppliers, McDonald’s funds supplied the latest technology. So, the restaurant appeared local quality raw materials: greens and vegetables, both fresh and pickled. Moreover, thanks to Khasbulatov, these products began to be delivered to restaurants in other countries, which was a great help for the Russian manufacturer. Surely, many have a question about how Khamzat Khasbulatov was able to fix all this. His nationality, as you know, is Chechen, and that says a lot. He knows how to achieve everything, achieve his plans. “Mountain People” tend to the top and do not stop at any obstacles.
Today
Khasbulatov Khamzat Hamidovich is currently the managing director of the entire Eastern division of the McDonald's company in Europe. Over the years, the company has had significant growth: the McDonald's restaurant chain has more than 20 establishments, and McCafe has 38. Since 2002, the project “Breakfast at McDonald's” has been launched.