The creators of the monocafe "Doshik" on Asian noodles and insights
IN THE RUBRIC "COMMUNITY" we talk about girls who came up with a common cause. But at the same time we expose the myth that women are not capable of friendly feelings, and can only aggressively compete. At the end of last year, Doing Great agency founders, Tanya Panteleeva and Katya Shtareva, created the Doshik monocafé, which sells a truly legendary product — Asian instant noodles. While it works as a delivery service in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but the opening of physical institutions is also planned. We asked Katya and Tanya to tell how to do business on a food meme and how they are going to overcome the prejudices associated with instant noodles.
Dmitry Kurkin
About myself
Tanya: Our main occupation is Doing Great Agency, we deal with PR and SMM, most often cultural events - for example, Stereoleto, Roof Music Fest, “Oh, yes! Food” and others, often promoting concerts, started to be engaged in the management of artists not so long ago. Well, and we also have micro-projects - these are secret concerts in secret places of the Sofar Sounds Saint-P and traveling through the lighthouses.
Katya: And before that, they worked in journalism, in the editorial offices of the city media about St. Petersburg, and even before that, six years ago, it turns out, we studied together in the eleventh grade at the St. Petersburg State University.
About insights and business
KATYA: My favorite moment is when an idea appears and together we begin to twist it, think over details, offer different options for implementation, this gives rise to wild excitement and the desire to realize everything as soon as possible. It seems to me that Tanya and I have a great duet, we come up with a lot of things and implement them, Tanya is more responsible for creativity, and I - for planning and structural approach, financing and everything in this spirit.
Tanya: We were on holiday in Singapore, we had to fly to Hong Kong in the morning, went for something to a grocery store near the hotel. And already standing at the checkout, I saw a machine for brewing noodles. I took some first one, immediately poured boiling water on it, went outside, sat on a bench on the food market, and at some point it seemed to us that it dawned on both of us. That's how it happens in movies - the heroes turn their heads and at the same time say something. So they came up with "Doshik", they prayed that no one else had done this. And, hooray, in Google nothing like this was found in the whole world.
Then in Hong Kong they bought noodles - and then, of course, an amazing story with how we stopped the work of the entire supermarket (we bought two hundred and fifty servings), stopped in Hyatt for a day with huge noodle bags, counted it in the bath and made it my great (sorry) photo in the pre-bath bath. In the morning, when we ordered a taxi to the airport, Tesla came to us. Laksheri-Doshik, in general, came out.
Tanya: Everyone thought that we were not in ourselves.
Katya: That we decided to play all. Now the majority already understands that everything is serious, but some are still sure that this is a joke. Distant acquaintances, when they see me or Tanya, shout across the street: "Doshik Queen!"
Tanya: My parents live in Spain, and they offer to send batches of doshikas, photograph new stamps for me in the store.
Katya: We are not afraid of copyright disputes with "Doshirak", we do not use the name of their trademark, but take the word that is in common use and is not registered in any way.
TANYA: This year we will participate in festivals - for example, the St. Petersburg craft festival Craft Event, we want to finally open up as a mono caf, and not just delivery.
KATYA: We will definitely open the monocafé in St. Petersburg and Moscow, we are already looking for cool small rooms in the center of both cities. We hope everything will work out!
About the menu and the place of noodles in Asian cuisine
TANYA: When we flew from Hong Kong to Singapore, a plane was served doshik. If such were served on a flight of Russian airlines, many would probably be surprised.
KATYA: In Asia, it's not fast food like McDonald's or KFC, but rather street food from food stations. In our view, the Doshik monocafé is a very small room with two seats at the bar counter and automatic noodle makers so that people can drop in and have a quick bite or take take-away food.
We want to add a more personal story to this project, create a place where we can see our visitors and know what kind of people: delivery and vending machines are cool and much more profitable from a financial point of view, but completely impersonal, we don’t want to .
When we make up the menu, we see what flavors exist in the Asian noodle market. First, we selected equally different tastes, and now, already focusing on demand, which we now understand approximately, we change the proportions. For example, at first we took very few vegetarian doshikas without meat, fish, seafood and all that - but it turned out that very many people love doshiki, but cannot buy them, because there are not so much vegetarian doshikas in Russia. In Korean stores, which are in Moscow and St. Petersburg, vegetarian doshiki most often do not sell. In general, there are familiar tastes: beef, chicken, shrimp. Beef is a gold standard.
TANYA: We like the "Hello Kitty" doshik, though it is over. And we also found out that there was a Doshik with Pringles. We haven't tried it yet, but I think it should be popular. Most often, people are not so important range of tastes - they are more likely the very fact that they bring you home doshik in packaging. Russian noodle consumers are not yet familiar with brands (and their names are written in hieroglyphs), we focus more on taste.
About love and prejudice
Katya: I love to eat Doshirak from time to time at home, and only that. When the idea of opening "Doshik" came to mind, we immediately understood that it would become a meme. Firstly, an impressive PR experience helped, and secondly, the almost sacred attitude of Russians to the classic noodles of the company “Doshirak” - students eat it (and there are a lot of jokes about it), there are also jokes about trains, and Noodles are associated with a low standard of living, although there are many people who love it for nothing. And we decided to turn the game around, to show that in Asia, fast-fermented noodles are the usual version of lunch or dinner: at home, in nature, anywhere.
There are only two ways of cooking, they do not change depending on the country of origin and brand: 1) just pour boiling water; 2) cook in a saucepan and add everything you want to this “soup”. We recently brought a batch of noodles from Spain, it also needs to be prepared for example.
Tanya: On February 14 we had the action "Doshik and champagne in bed", and some young man ordered and made an offer to his girlfriend with our, so to speak, dinner.
Katya: So far we successfully overcome stereotypes about noodles - we explain that our "Doshik" is Asian noodles, almost full-fledged soup, with a lot of different tastes (from chicken with lobster to tofu with vegetables and potatoes) brought from China, Korea, Singapore and Spain , lovingly selected by us and our friends. The price includes shipping, stickers, glitter, so the price is objectively not very high.
As for its harmfulness: noodles are almost always very, very spicy, and this truth is not very useful - eating it every day, like any spicy food. There is really a lot of salt in it, but no more than, for example, in chips. We recommend our customers not to get too carried away and do not eat more than one doshik a week.
Cover: ahirao - stock.adobe.com
