Dmitry Borisov sold his restaurants in Slovenia, losing hundreds of thousands of euros

Ukrainian restaurateur Dmytro Borysov has completely closed and sold his two restaurants in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, describing the experience as a costly lesson in running a restaurant business in Europe. 

The main reasons for the closures and the projects’ unprofitability were the specifics of the local market, lengthy and costly logistics, the absence of large food suppliers like Metro, and high labor costs compared to Ukraine. The businessman estimated his total financial losses from these European ventures at hundreds of thousands of euros.

In Slovenia, the restaurateur developed the Roll to Door sushi bar, which specialized in delivering rolls and bowls, as well as the Bubbles Dogs bar, modeled after “Bilyi Naliv.” The entrepreneur found that the number of sales in Ljubljana did not meet his expectations, as he was accustomed to the scale of the Ukrainian market with lines on the streets and hundreds of orders a day. This is not the restaurateur’s first attempt at working abroad—he previously launched and later sold two establishments in Spain, in Valencia and Barcelona, where he invested approximately 400,000 euros each.

At the end of 2024, Dmytro Borysov officially announced his departure from the Ukrainian restaurant business due to forced emigration and transferred management rights to the GastroFamily chain to his partner Olena Borysova. Currently, GastroFamily comprises 17 brands and 84 establishments across five countries, including “Bilyi Naliv,” Mushlya Cafe, and “Ostannya Barikada.” The restaurateur himself plans to pursue new projects exclusively outside Ukraine, shifting his focus to opening food trucks in Poland and Germany and developing the BorisOfAcademy educational platform to train future franchisees.

Source: Business Story.

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