Tubetey

When the standard did not travel

The first way was franchising, and what travelled with the franchises was the name. The standard behind it depended on each franchisee, and some could not hold it. The people serving under the name did not share one idea of what the brand promised.

Safin, looking back in December 2025, did not dress the episode up. Given the company’s finances and its inexperience, he told Business Online, “we got into a franchising adventure and a year later closed it without incident,” because each franchisee understood the model in its own way. Cafe-Future gives the account of Ainur Kamaliev, who founded Tubetey with Safin and Ruslan Gilmutdinov: more experienced entrepreneurs advised the founders to wind the franchise down before it was too late. In June 2019 the founders took that advice.

The counts show how far the first way had gone and where the second has got to. At its widest, in November 2018, Tubetey had 17 points of its own formats, franchises included, and 82 shops in 20 cities stocked its frozen goods. Three years earlier, in July 2015, six of its pavilions had traded at the world aquatics championships in Kazan, and the kitchen began that year as a production unit of 350 square metres. Today its restaurants are co-owned with about ten investor partners and supplied from the company’s own central kitchen; one partner project, Zaman, has taken the model to Ufa. Tubetey is certified halal by DUM RT, the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan. The number of restaurants is best read as a range. Business Online counted 17 restaurants in December 2025; a regional profile published the following month counted 11: eight under the Tubetey name, two under the Tatar name and one Zaman. The two counts do not reconcile, so this profile gives between about 11 and 17.

A pavilion by the station

The idea came long before the format. Safin, then a geology student in Kazan, has said it came to him on an internship in China in 2010. The next year he and Kamaliev settled on the name, four years before there was anything to put it on. The business itself opened on 14 June 2015, as a single pavilion beside the suburban ticket office at Kazan-1 station, a spot built for people in a hurry. The same year Tubetey began making its frozen goods in its own production unit on the outskirts of Kazan, where, by Safin’s account, echpochmak, the triangular Tatar pie, and elesh, its round cousin, have been shaped by hand and frozen ever since. A fast-food brand that makes its own pastry keeps in its own hands the thing its customers come back for.

The first real test of demand came within weeks. Kazan hosted the world aquatics championships that July, and Tubetey had six pavilions trading at them. For a business a month old, it was proof that Tatar pastry could sell at fast-food speed to a crowd that had not come for it.

The proof did not outlast the summer. In August, after the championships, the city froze the arena pavilions, and the company went into several loss-making years. The pavilions had been a format for an event; what the company needed was a format for an ordinary week.

In 2016 Tubetey began franchising and put its frozen goods on sale in retail. The two moves pointed the same way: more places selling Tubetey than Tubetey itself could staff.

Growth through pavilions and franchises

Franchising carried the name out of Kazan quickly. The first franchise, a cafeteria on Derbenevskaya embankment in Moscow, opened in 2016. A franchise food court followed in Samara and a franchise in Surgut in 2017, and franchises in Ulyanovsk and Naberezhnye Chelny in 2018. Each new point took the brand to a city the founders did not live in, run by people they did not employ.

Late in 2016 a free franchise held by Tubetey’s franchise partner, Azat Nazmutdinov, was revoked, and his outlet became the first Kystybyi (Кыстыбый), his own venture.

At home the company moved into restaurants, the format the 2015 freeze had made necessary. Its first, at Kremlyovskaya 21 in Kazan, opened in 2017; Rustam Minnikhanov, the president of Tatarstan, opened it. A second followed on Baumana Street in 2018, the year the management company set up at Mardzhani 4. The frozen line was tested abroad as well: in May 2017 Tubetey sold from a stall at a Sabantuy festival in Paris, stocked with 1,000 frozen pieces, as a one-off export test.

By November 2018 the network was at its widest. Tubetey had 17 points of its own formats, restaurants, pavilions and franchise outlets among them, and 82 shops in 20 cities stocked its frozen goods. The shops were stockists, not Tubetey outlets. On paper the brand reached across Russia. In practice the standard of what was served under its name now depended on people outside its own kitchen. The following February, in Naberezhnye Chelny, it gave way.

Back to its own kitchen

The founders could have kept franchising and tried to hold the standard from Kazan. In June 2019 they cut back instead, to what the company ran itself. It kept two restaurants and two pavilions of its own, plus two franchise points, in Surgut and Ulyanovsk. The Moscow franchise, the Samara food court and the first pavilion by Kazan-1 station all closed that year. From 17 points in November 2018, franchises included, Tubetey was down to six, and only four of them were its own.

The cut did not touch the kitchen. The production that had supplied the pavilions since 2015 kept making the pastry by hand, now for fewer counters, and the co-founders kept the management company that holds the trademarks. What Tubetey gave up was reach it could not stand behind; what it kept was the product.

What came next was a different way to grow. Instead of licensing the name to franchisees, Tubetey opened restaurants with investor partners as co-owners, supplied from its own kitchen. The outlets multiplied again, and the kitchen stayed with the company.

The rebuilding started in Kazan. A restaurant on Universitetskaya Street opened in 2019, the year of the cut. When COVID arrived in 2020, the company reorganised for the pandemic, moving about 30 people into new roles within two weeks. A company that runs its own restaurants can move its own people; a franchisor would have been relying on someone else’s. Another restaurant opened on Tatarstan Street in 2021, and one trades in the Park House food court on Yamasheva prospekt. The 2017 restaurant on Kremlyovskaya 21 remains the flagship.

By December 2025 the company had brought in about ten investor partners as co-owners of its restaurants, instead of licensing the name to franchisees. That is the structural difference from 2018. A franchise could open in a city the founders had never worked in, on its operator’s timetable, with whatever its operator chose to put on the shelves. A restaurant co-owned with an investor partner is supplied from the company’s own kitchen, where the echpochmak and elesh are still shaped by hand. The second arrangement grows more slowly, and it keeps the product in the kitchen that set its standard.

Restaurant by restaurant

In 2023 the model reached beyond the city. Zaman, an investor-backed Tatar restaurant in Ufa, the capital of neighbouring Bashkortostan, started that year as a ₽100M (~$1M USD) project. In the same year Tubetey was named best national-cuisine concept in Russia at the Premiya bystrykh (Премия быстрых) quick-service awards.

By December 2025, ten years after the first pavilion, it had about ten investor partners and, on the two published counts, between about 11 and 17 restaurants under the Tubetey, Tatar and Zaman names. Tubetey’s outlets in Kazan serve up to 100,000 guests a month, according to a regional profile. A brand that once sold from a single pavilion by a railway ticket office is now a group of restaurants with several names and several owners.

Who owns and runs it

Tubetey is founder-controlled. Safin has been general director of the management company since 2018, and in 2025 he described his work as leading strategy, product and brand. Kamaliev and Gilmutdinov, his co-founders, co-own with him the company that holds the trademarks; registry snapshots disagree on the present shares. Restaurants co-owned with investor partners add a second layer of ownership: the management company holds the name, the trademarks and the founders’ direction of the product, and the restaurant companies hold the outlets, where the partners take their shares.

What it built instead

In 2018 Tubetey’s name reached customers through franchisees’ counters and through the shops in 20 cities that stocked its frozen goods. The group of 2025 is smaller on the map. Its restaurants are in Kazan, with one, Zaman, in Ufa, and they trade under three names rather than one: Tubetey, Tatar and Zaman.

It is wider in another sense. The pavilion that opened by a railway ticket office in June 2015 belonged to its founders alone. Ten years later, investor partners share in the restaurants alongside them. The franchisees have mostly gone: in June 2019 two franchise points, in Surgut and Ulyanovsk, were all that remained of the network. The brand that once lent its name to franchisees in other cities now shares ownership of its restaurants instead.

Last updated: November 7, 2026

Researched 33 sources in Russian.