Oleg Lega

We were developing it together; the business plan was already written and the project's philosophy set, and then the crisis struck. The Swiss left Russia. Our would-be partners came from the German part of the country and wanted us to be called "Zuckerland", but we called ourselves "Bushe".

The economist who said no to a bank #

Lega came to bakeries by way of economics. A graduate from Rostov-on-Don, he earned his candidate of economic sciences degree at FINEC in 1990. What followed was a short spell in banking and a decision to leave it.

“After defending my dissertation in economic materialism I worked in a bank for a month, but the business seemed too conservative to me,” he told Sobaka.ru in 2015. “So I soon decided to go into private business.”

Two offers followed. He was offered the post of deputy bank manager and, as one of few, a place teaching at his department. He turned both down. “I found the strength to refuse,” he said.

It was a choice made with nothing yet built: a private career over two offered posts, taken by an economist who had only just finished his dissertation. The bakery was still years away.

A plan made with partners, opened without them #

Bushe was not meant to be his alone. It was planned as a joint venture with partners from Switzerland, and by 1998 the groundwork had been laid. “We were developing it together; the business plan was already written and the project’s philosophy set, and then the crisis struck,” he recalled in 2015, in an interview with FoodService magazine. “The Swiss left Russia.”

The crisis did more than unsettle the plan. It took the people who had worked on it with him out of the country before a single shop existed, and with them went the name they had wanted. “Our would-be partners came from the German part of the country and wanted us to be called ‘Zuckerland’,” he said, “but we called ourselves ‘Bushe’.”

Leaving was the partners’ answer to the crisis. Lega’s was to stay. The bakery-patisserie on Razyezzhaya Street opened in February 1999 with no foreign partner behind it, and when its operating company was registered in St Petersburg on 2 November that year, his was the only founder’s name on the papers.

That is the turn on which everything after it rests. Whatever the partnership might have brought, he started without it, and whatever Bushe became would belong to the one person who had stayed.

Sole founder, sole owner #

The company has stayed his, and his alone. The operating company in its present form dates from 2003; registry data put every share of it in Lega’s name from 27 January of that year, and the related companies around it belong to him outright as well.

Under that single ownership the one shop became a chain: a fast-casual menu and specialty-grade coffee arrived in 2014, kitchens in 2015, a Moscow café on Lubyanka and an in-house cheese workshop in 2017, and in 2018 Kofe Lab (Кофе Lab), a bar for coffee and wine, upstairs from one of the St Petersburg cafés. All of it was built under his sole ownership.

In May 2017 SPARK listed him as both sole owner and general director, and RBC Petersburg reported plans to take the chain into Europe. In November 2018 he told the same outlet that Bushe had grown to the size at which, as he put it, a chain stops being alive, and that it would grow no further in St Petersburg. He said it as the man who owned every share. The limit he drew was for one brand in one city; the mini-bakery format was outside it, and so was Moscow.

A hired director, the same owner #

Two months later the title passed to someone else. In January 2019 Inna Zubtsova became general director, and Lega stayed on as the company’s founder and sole owner, a division of roles that has held since. The change was in who held the title, not in who owned the company; the registry cards still carry his name alone.

The same year, two ventures beyond the St Petersburg cafés carried his stake or his name. In June 2019 RBC Petersburg reported on Chou Do (Чу До), a ramen company in which Lega held 80% and a partner the rest, announced with a plan for 50 ramen outlets in five years.

The other was Oleg Pelmeni Bar in Amsterdam, his first European venue. In November 2018 RBC Petersburg had reported Lega’s Amsterdam venture planned at about €500,000, with Bushe to fund 80% and local partners the rest. By September 2019 the same outlet named a Dutch branding agency as the partner and the venue as Roetersstraat 10, with the opening set for November 2019.

The Amsterdam plan had been reported on 7 November 2018, in the same RBC Petersburg article in which he said Bushe had reached its edge in St Petersburg. The stop at home and the step abroad were announced together. Chou Do, for its part, was a separate company from Bushe’s operating company, with its own partner and its own plan. Neither venture was part of the November 2018 stop, which covered the Bushe cafés in St Petersburg alone. Both were announced as plans; the record holds no account of how either ended.

Partners again, on different terms #

Two decades after his Swiss partners left Russia, Lega was again planning ventures with partners. This time the larger part was on his side: he held 80% of the ramen company, and under the November 2018 plan Bushe, which he owned outright, was to fund 80% of the Amsterdam budget, with local partners putting up the rest.

In 1998 the partners had been the ones who could leave, and they did. Two decades on, in both new ventures as announced, he or his own company was to carry the larger share.

The partners who left in 1998 had wanted the venture called Zuckerland. Twenty years later, the bar he planned for Amsterdam was to carry his own first name.

Last updated: November 4, 2026

Researched 34 sources in Russian, English.