The FINANCIAL — Entrée, bakery chain in Tbilisi is adding up fourth shop in the middle of June on Pekini Street.
Entrée was born in December 2008 and at present operates three shops in central districts.
“Initially we started the business with two shops. We have imported the high quality modern technologies from Europe, which gives us possibility to offer high quality fresh bread and pastry each day for our customers. Moreover, we import mostly all ingredients from France,” says Jean-Michel Charles, co-founder of Entrée in the interview with The FINANCIAL.
The total turnover for the company was approximately 1 million EURO in 2009.
“Entrée is a French word and means welcome, moreover in Georgia it sounds quite well, so naming the chain Entrée seems to be the right decision,” says Charles.
“The idea of creating Entrée chain came from my Georgian friend, who was my customer.
The main focus while setting the business was on high quality image, which means quality of the product, quality of the design, quality of personnel, and this all together is the business,” says Charles.
Jean-Michel has been working in the field of bakery and pastry for 20 years in countries: Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Russia and more than 3 years in Georgia. His main activity is to implement and create the projects of bakery and pastry.
“The strong brand in Georgia together with obtained observation from foreign markets gives us the confidence to expend Entrée chain in neighbor countries, such as Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan,” says Charles.
Entrée offers wide assortment of French products, as well as the chain includes local products.
“As we are in Georgia and we have to satisfy everybody,” says Charles.
The French products include wide range of the breads, pastry, salads, confectionary, chocolate, their produced ice cream.
The mostly popular among people are French sandwiches, moreover, there is high demand on cappuccino due to its high quality and its preparation way. Coffee is one of the best sales in Entree.
“The potential of coffee house chain development is high in Georgia. Particular there are already few coffee houses in Tbilisi, and they turn out to be quite successful anyway. Together with high quality product you need to have nice comfortable atmosphere,” says Charles.
Charles says the main factor of their success is attributed to the quality. Entree checks the quality of production at each stage.
“All the ingredients we use are imported from France, all the delivery is checked to get the high quality ingredients, we have two French masters- one is head pastry chef and second head of confectionary kitchen, who are checking the process of production.
All our products are fresh and are produced the same day, at the end of the day we take out all the products, and the next day sell the new ones, so we do not keep the product for two-three days.
Moreover, we employee French girl, professional in sales, who is actively training our girls in how to show the products, how to prepare, organize, and how to give smiling to the consumer,” says Charles.
Entrée employees around 50 people in its three shops, the majority are locals and only three are French.
“We try to provide our employees with the best conditions of working, we try to teach them and they are proud to be working in Entrée as it’s a good image now , having right good fresh products all personal enjoys to come here and the customer is also satisfied with the smile and happiness of our staff,” says Charles.
Entrée was opened after post-war period in Georgia, Charles says that the environment was risky.
“Initially we planned to open Entrée before war period. However, due to the war we postponed the opening.
We believe in Georgia we believe in the economy of the country, believe in the politics of the country, good freedom of the country and we are looking for the future,” says Jean-Michel.
“We are looking for middle and high income people. We did not set our price very high. You should know what is the maximum product you can sell to satisfy maximum customers. We have lots of students coming here, as well as schoolchildren, working people, our clients are not only high income people,” says Charles.
