Tenerife Oryol i Reshka New Life Advertising Agency WAMP

So, La Medusa

A figure right off the bat. 400,000 euros in investment. Wow! That's, well, that's a lot of money for Tenerife, I think. And another detail. The style is said to be inspired by Medusa. So it's not just a name, it's a whole story behind it. An upper-middle segment, or even premium. The Medusa story is pure branding, image creation. There are a pond of restaurants out there, you have to stand out somehow. And their motto is so interesting. Delicious, plentiful, expensive. It's clear and clear what to expect. It's also part of their positioning. It sounds beautiful - Medusa, tasty, big, expensive! But in the interview they also talk about problems, quite mundane. Taxes, for example. In Spain, they say they're high. They compare it to Barcelona and even joke about it. They say, kill, rob, steal, but pay the tax. Sounds like a serious expense. Well, Spain and taxes, it's a well-known song, isn't it? It's no secret to those who do business there. You have to be prepared for it from the start, build it into your financial model. These are the rules. You have to play by them. Well, that's what surprised us, that's their main, main pain, as they say. The fluidity of the audience due to seasonality. It's not like in Ukraine. In summer, the island is full of young people, they want cocktails, lighter appetizers, partying. And in winter Germans, Englishmen, older people come for a long time. They want steaks, lobsters, pasta, seafood. Can you imagine the variety?

That's probably the hardest part

Such a drastic change in the clientele twice a year, it is, well, incredible flexibility is needed from the whole business. The menu is a given, but it entails everything. What to buy, how to rebuild the kitchen, what kind of service, maybe even the staff must be retrained. In fact, yes, it's like having two different restaurants under one roof. And here, of course, the chef is the key figure. Anton, from Ukraine, was able to create a universal menu. Although there is always a risk that universal may turn out to be just average. You can't please them 100 percent, and you can't please these.

So how do you get these different audiences to come to you? They combine methods. On the one hand, well, standard, Google, social networks, all that online advertising. And on the other hand, they have a PR-manager working on the street, calling passers-by. Does it even work now, this kind of street PR? Why not? In a place like this, where you walk along the embankment, and there's a restaurant on the left, a restaurant on the right. There's a lot of competition out there. Online is for those who search in advance, choose, read reviews. And the person on the street is working with those who are walking by right now. Spontaneous choice. So, yes, that combination of online plus pitches, it can be very even effective. Fighting for every customer literally. And that's where the things that their PR person is talking about come to the forefront. Hospitality, good food, and of course the ocean view is a bonus. When there's a lot of alternatives around, it's this, welcoming, good food, that becomes the basis of the reputation. To keep people coming back.

Let's try to put it all together

To open a restaurant for Ukrainians in Tenerife means, first of all, serious money at the start. The main difficulties are high taxes. And this public, which is constantly changing, and even from different countries, attract customers through the Internet, and literally from the street. It's such a mix. And you know what the question remains, if you think about it? This need to constantly adjust to young people with cocktails and European pensioners with stays. To what extent does it not erode the very idea, the original concept of the restaurant. This jellyfish is delicious, plentiful, expensive. And how does this affect the longevity, the very identity of such a business, which was born in emigration, and has to constantly maneuver like this?