Brandmine Weekly Edition 25 · Tuesday, November 3, 2026 Hiding in plain sight. Not for long. |
Three Tatarstan food businesses held on to what their owners could still walk into, and let the rest go. Past that point a name travels, but the quality does not. This week stays in Tatarstan, the Russian republic around Kazan, with the companies that pulled back. Kystybyi lost its franchise name in 2016, kept the café and, after one franchise failed, grew only in Kazan. Chelny-Khleb, a bakery in Naberezhnye Chelny, sold its shops in 2024 and kept the buildings. Krasny Vostok, a dairy holding, sold its farthest farms after its founder died and made more milk. In each case the business held what it could reach. * * * Randal Eastman · Penang |
This Week's Lead Kystybyi 🇷🇺 Russia · Brand In December 2016 a café on Spartakovskaya Street in Kazan lost its name. Tubetey, the Tatar fast-food group, withdrew the franchise, and the sign over the door came down. The man who ran the café, Azat Nazmutdinov, had founded a company of his own two months earlier, and that company had nowhere else to trade. He kept the café open under a new name, Kystybyi, after a Tatar flatbread folded over a filling. The two sides tell it differently. Tubetey said certain requirements had not been met. Nazmutdinov says it was emotionally very hard, and that he put all his savings into keeping the café going. "At first it was frightening to start a business alone," he has told Realnoe Vremya. "Many laughed and didn't believe, saying: 'You're going the wrong way.'" The café was his to run but never his to name. Now it was both. Then he tried to grow the way he had been taught. In June 2017 he told Kommersant that Kystybyi would grow by franchise, with a plan for Chelyabinsk in the Urals. That plan was never carried out. The first franchise opened in 2018 in Naberezhnye Chelny, east of Kazan. In February 2019 the company bought it back after it failed on service. Looking back in December 2025, Nazmutdinov said the chain had run ahead of itself: it was not technologically ready, it failed on service and stability, and running a franchise took a great deal of resources. After that the chain grew in one city. A café on Kulakhmetova Street opened in 2019 and one on Akademika Parina Street in 2021. A 24-hour counter opened at Kazan Airport in May 2023, and Aviapages reported it as the airport's first halal food outlet. Three openings in central Kazan followed in 2024 and two more sites in 2025. By December 2025 Nazmutdinov counted about nine restaurants, all in Kazan, and the chain's own factory behind them had just been expanded. The 2GIS map service listed 12 addresses in October 2026, a different way of counting. The café on Spartakovskaya 23 still trades as Kystybyi. It is also where the operating company was registered in 2018. The Tubetey sign was never his. What he kept was the café, and the chain and kitchen he built from it. About 9 — Kystybyi's restaurants in December 2025, all in Kazan, by its founder's count. |
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What It Means The name and the siteKystybyi lost a franchise name it never owned and kept the café it ran. A franchise brand belongs to the franchisor; the café and the kitchen stay with whoever keeps them running. The reach limitKystybyi's only franchise outside Kazan was bought back in 2019, the year after it opened, and Krasny Vostok sold its Tambov farms in 2020, the year its founder died, then made more milk. Both gave up their farthest ground and grew inside what they could supervise. The open question is whether nine restaurants in one city is a ceiling or a base. The landlord's positionBy Rafael Yunusov's account, Chelny-Khleb opened shops to escape customers who did not pay. When the shops ended 2023 with their first loss, it sold them and kept the buildings, which, Business Online reported, it leases to the buyers for ten years. It gave up the tills and kept the property. What the lease pays, and whether the buyers last, is the part the record does not show. |
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This Week's Takeaway These three food businesses let go of what sat furthest from the kitchen. They kept what their owners could walk into: the café, the dairy farms, the bakery buildings. |
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Also This Week 🇷🇺 Russia · Founder Azat Nazmutdinov He believed a shared business would make friendships stronger. It ended in 2016; he started alone on his savings and came out tougher. |
🇷🇺 Russia · Brand Chelny-Khleb By its director's account, it opened shops to escape customers who did not pay. When they stopped paying, it let them go and kept the buildings. |
🇷🇺 Russia · Founder Rafael Yunusov A vet who joined a state bakery as its supplies chief has run it since 1993. By his account he built its shops and mill; the shops went in 2024. |
🇷🇺 Russia · Brand Krasny Vostok Its founder died in 2020 and state support more than halved. Krasny Vostok sold its Tambov farms, stayed close to home and now makes more milk. |
🇷🇺 Russia · Founder Adel Khayrullin His father built a Tatarstan dairy holding and died in February 2020. Adel Khayrullin took over that month and calls keeping it a form of memory. |
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By the Numbers | ● | 1 — the franchise Kystybyi opened outside Kazan, in Naberezhnye Chelny in 2018; the company bought it back in February 2019 after it failed on service, and closed it in 2022 |
| ● | 59 — the stores whose management Chelny-Khleb handed to another operator in March 2024, as the local site Chelny-biz reported, before it let the grocery chain go entirely in November |
| ● | About 109,200 tonnes — Krasny Vostok's milk in 2025, up from 90,000 in 2022, after it sold its Tambov farms |
| ● | ₽1.2B to ₽587M (~$14M to ~$7M USD) — state support to Krasny Vostok between 2019 and 2023, by Adel Khayrullin's figures. Dollar figures use one current rate, ₽85.96 to $1. |
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From the Discovery Desk Kystybyi, Chelny-Khleb and Krasny Vostok are three of the Tatarstan food brands we have profiled. Our free Russia market page lists the others. Explore Russia → |
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