Natalie Utkina has a background as a financial analyst, journalist and entrepreneur. When living in Ukraine, she started a company that operates double decker tourist buses in Kyiv. She currently works as product manager at eFarmer, an agritech company started by her husband. This is what brought her to the Netherlands.

Getting an MBA degree

Natalie decided to get her MBA degree here in order to gain new knowledge in business administration, improve her English and get to know new people. Natalie: 'During my studies at the Amsterdam Business School, I liked courses such as Entrepreneurship and Innovations. After graduation, I decided to help my husband developing his business. I started as a sales and marketing manager and helped growing the sales from 0 to 1 million euro, using the knowledge that I had learned about entrepreneurship, strategy and marketing.'

Evacuations in Ukraine

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Natalie has been very active in supporting her home country. According to her, it happened spontaneously. 'We had a plan prepared to evacuate our employees and their families and pets in case of the war - that none of us believed would start in the first place - to a safe part of Ukraine. We used one of my tourist double decker buses for this purpose. When the war started, the driver of the bus collected employees and drove them to the hotel. It took him 24 hours instead of 8.'

After that, Natalie and a team of 5 volunteers started to organise evacuations from Kyiv, helped them cross the border and brought humanitarian aid back to Kyiv from the border. They relocated around 1,500 people.

Bringing Ukrainian cuisine to the Netherlands

Many Ukrainian women and children found refuge in the Netherlands. However, finding a job to provide for their family can be hard, as many of them don't speak Dutch or English. Natalie and her friend thought about how to help these women. The answer? Food!

'Almost every Ukrainian woman is a good cook. Plus: Ukrainian food is very delicious. Therefore, we wanted to create a place where those women can cook and earn money. This way, we provide jobs for Ukrainian women, and at the same time help promote Ukrainian food in the Netherlands.'

Providing jobs through food

In order to arrange our plans, Natalie contacted the franchiser Vesela Pani in Ukraine. Their concept is a shop with an open kitchen where you can see women cook dishes. The dishes are then frozen and sold in the shop.

'We visited them in Poland and tried the food. It turned out to be very tasty. After this meeting, we started to like the idea even more, because a place like this can provide up to 20 jobs for women. They don't need to know languages, they can be of any age. The only requirement is that they know how to cook.'

With help of the franchisor, they have prepared a business- and marketing plan. After finding a suitable location in Aalsmeer, with all the needed permissions, they could start preparing the business. They are currently renovating the building, and opened a crowdfunding campaign to be able to open this year.

Balancing a job and entrepreneurship

Setting up a food franchise in addition to a full-time job is no small matter, but Natalie states that it wasn't too hard for her. 'I am an experienced entrepreneur and professional manager. In any business, it is very important to have the right partner, and luckily my business partner is great. She is available fulltime, and she has a lot of experience in the restaurant business. My part is to organise sales. I have a lot of experience in that, so it is not taking up a lot of my time.'

Natalie is happy with the response to the Dutch franchise of Vesela Pani so far. 'We get a lot of help and support from different people.' Among them are people from Ukraine renovating the shop's location. They prioritised the project and in addition only charged the cost price. There are also many people supporting the project with money, advice and free or discounted professional services. 'It is truly amazing,' says Natalie. 'We are very thankful to all of them. We are also happy to already have a list of 2000 people waiting for our opening.'

Vareniky, golubci and zrazy

Ukrainian food is relatively unknown in the Netherlands. From the 170 recipes of the parent company, Vesela Pani Netherlands will start selling the 50 that are expected to appeal the most to customers here. One example is vareniky, the most popular dish in Ukraine, which consists of dough with different kinds of stuffing, such as potatoes and mushrooms, fried cabbage, cottage cheese, or cooked meat with onion. Other dishes include golubci, minced meat with rice inside a cooked cabbage leaf, and zrazy, a dough with cooked potato filled with fried mushrooms, cabbage or boiled meat. The dishes will be available both at the shop in Aalsmeer or through online delivery.

Natalie is confident that the cuisine from her home country will win the hearts of Dutch customers. 'When I ran my tourist sightseeing bus operator in Kyiv, I was dealing with tourists from different countries. They all loved the Ukrainian food.'