12:18, 29 January, 2020
YEREVAN, JANUARY 22, ARMENPRESS. Yeremyan Projects, the leading restaurant business company representing the most favourite and well-known Armenian restaurant brands of Yerevan citizens and tourists (“Tavern Yerevan” chain of restaurants, “Yerevani Shaurma” fast food restaurant chain, “Lavash, “Sherep, “Pandok Yerevan Reverside, “Smoking Chef, “Livingston” restaurants), has recapped 2019 by signalling the company's new business development strategy and the new “From Seed to Table” concept.
We have talked with Yeremyan Projects General Director Davit Yeremyan about the investments made in the agricultural sector, the development of farming businesses, ensuring healthy and organic food, the company's business model and vision and the peculiarities and advantages of the From Seed To Table concept.
New Decade with New Concept: From Seed to Table
Since the very first day of operations, Yeremyan Projects adopted a clear principle: we work only with high-quality products. Today, ensuring a regular supply of high-quality natural products is a complicated process, and we proposed our strategic approach for solving this problem.
In 2019 our company implemented two major projects in the livestock sector. The goal was to lay the foundation for our company’s new business development concept and try to ensure an entirely closed-cycle for our organization’s operations.
We opened a pig farm in Dilijan; we imported purebred Canadian types of pig breeds – Landrace, Yorkshire and Duroc. We have 380 sows on the farm and total productivity of 10000 pigs a year. The farm can house between 3,5 to 4 thousand pigs at once.
We have launched a livestock farm in Jermuk also, where cattle – purebred Fleckvieh, Holstein and angus – are kept. Today we have 320 dairy cattle and 100 beef cattle types here, and during this time we have already had 120 calves. In terms of milk production, the figures are very impressive – 3000 litres of milk a day, the cattle farm's yearly result is 1 050 000 litres of milk and 270 calves.
These figures aren’t presented coincidentally. For many years a stereotype has been intentionally or unintentionally circulating in Armenia claiming that agriculture is a non-profitable and costly business. Basically, we proved otherwise with the examples of our two farms. Thanks to effective management, accurate calculations and sophisticated organization of work we already have results today.
Our farms comply with all international standards of production and quality. From this perspective, our farm is exemplary for those carrying out similar activities or business, and we are sincerely willing to share our experience. We started a very important process by launching the feed mill , which enabled us to ensure that the feed supplied to the farms is ecologically clean, selected from correct ingredients and has passed special processing.
At our farms, animals aren’t simply well fed; they are kept in high-level sanitary conditions: disinfection, automated water supply systems, filters, powerful air conditioning.
In addition, we have a genetic laboratory, a powerful refrigerating business in the farms, and we have also built a slaughterhouse in line with all sanitary-hygienic norms.
For quality control:
Through opening the livestock farms, we are factually able to supervise the quality of the meat and dairy supplied to our restaurants. In addition to this, our goal was to create an exemplary business in Armenia, which can boost the development of farming businesses and, of course, develop local production.
The next important step for realizing our new development concept “From Seed to Table” was the re-launch project of the “Artsakh” kitchen-plant. We are completely re-constructing and upgrading it. We have added 3000 square meters of territory to the kitchen-factory’s area, we have founded and launched three new plants – milk production, sausage production and cannery. We have also increased the number of personnel – approximately 50-100 new workplaces.
Entirely closed-cycle: Final Touch
Overall, these projects required 5 million dollars in investments, but the result is invaluable – basically, we laid the foundation and launched the new business model of our organization's future by ensuring an entirely closed cycle.
Look, today we are able to get the most sophisticated, most delicious meals in our restaurants from the very seed itself. This is the essence of the From Seed to Table concept, a model which isn't quite popular, and very few organizations around the world are guided by such an approach.
We are sowing the seeds, from which we get the animal feed, which then undergoes respective processing in the feed mill and is supplied to the livestock in the farms. The meat and dairy are then transported to the “Artsakh” kitchen-factory where it undergoes necessary processing and gets supplied to restaurants and handed over to the skilled and talented chefs.
Dream Academy
Let me speak about the chefs in more details. This complete cycle model of our business-development has another important circle, which was also one of the most demanded and interesting projects of 2019 of our company: the Yeremyan Projects Culinary Art and Hospitality Academy, which is the exclusive partner of Great Britain’s City of Oxford College.
Today the Academy is responsible for shaping new, professional staff, relaying modern and in-demand skills to our cooks and training them. The Academy hasn't marked its first anniversary yet but already has graduates of a number of programs which have joined both Yeremyan Projects and the staff of HoReCa companies in the country.
So, by completing our business model, we are basically creating vertical expansion opportunities for our future development. We will open new conceptual restaurants in the future, we will increase agricultural projects, and this will all find its rightful place in our value chain. We already have very bold projects, and I can clearly say that 2020 will be a breakthrough.