Wine house and oyster farm joining forces to start restaurant chain
Abrau-Durso Russian Wine House and Crimean Seafood oyster farm, both based in Crimea, have joined forces to set up a chain of restaurants in Russia to offer Black Sea oysters and wine. The chain’s first restaurant called “Dozen: oysters and wine” was launched in Moscow on the New Year eve, according to RBC.
The partners' plans provide for opening a chain of 15 restaurants including four in Moscow and about the same in Saint Petersburg. Other restaurants will be opened in large cities with infrastructure appropriate for fresh seafood handling.
The restaurants’ menus will contain seafood dishes (including oysters, mussels, etc.) and wines both from Abrau Durso and other producers (70% of Russian wines and 30% of imported wines).
The idea behind the project is to offer oysters and wine at prices close to producers’. The average check is expected at RUR 2000 for a dozen of oysters and two glasses of wine. Initially oysters will cost from RUR 99.00 against the regular price of RUR 300-400.00. At present oysters do not enjoy a strong demand in Russia and the new project is aimed at promoting the Russian wines and shellfish.
Import substitution in the sphere of seafood in Russia took off in 2014, when a number of imported goods, including oysters, came under food sanctions. In 2017 oyster production in Russia totaled 531 metric tons with a lion’s share (358 tonnes namely) contributed by Crimean farms. The second largest producer was Vladivostok-led Primorskiy Krai (89 tonnes), which was followed by Sevastopol with 65 tonnes.
About
Crimean Seafood is Russia’s largest oyster and mussel farm with the production premises located in the saline lake of Donuzlav in Evpatoria. In the first ten months of 2018 the farm grew more than 500,000 oysters and more than 20 tonnes of mussels, according to the company’s own data.
Abrau-Durso Group of Companies owns the same called sparkling wine factory, a Krasnodar resort "Abrau-Durso Center of Wine Tourism", vineyards and Vedernikov group. In 2017 the wine house sold 33 million of bottles of sparkling and still wines.