Purchase of birch sap from the population. Procurement and sale of birch sap

To start with his own business idea, it took Alexei Gribin three years and 500,000 rubles. investment. The first batch of birch sap under the brand name "7 birches" appeared on sale only last year, but immediately became noticeable on the market.

Useful technology

To produce such a specific product as birch or maple sap, certain knowledge is required. They are even more important. necessary equipment... “I have been engaged in this production at a fairly serious level for the fourth year already, but I understand that I will get full knowledge on this issue, probably, only in three years,” says Gribin.

At first, Birch juice need to be assembled correctly. And in this case, there are many nuances. For example, Alexey Gribin collects extremely clear juice until a wound on the tree begins to ferment, and this is not so easy to do in the season - you need to do everything in three weeks. Therefore, Gribin improved the technology, which allows collecting for a whole month.

Secondly, you must try to keep the product you received and sell it. The simplest method, which most Russian manufacturers resort to, is preservatives: as insurance, they add sugar and citric acid to the juice. And then the juice is pasteurized, which will certainly reduce its value and change its taste. In Europe, against the backdrop of increasing demand for organic and natural products, manufacturers are trying to make juice without sugar. So Gribin has clearly decided for himself - you need to try to "keep" the natural taste of the juice as much as possible.

What does the technology of collecting birch sap, improved by Gribin, look like in modern conditions? From the outside, everything seems pretty simple. First you need to make a hole in the bark, and then fix a medical dropper in it and attach a medical tube to it, through which the juice will flow. In this case, everything must be sterile. The collected product is cleaned with an ultraviolet lamp and frozen in the freezer to preserve useful properties.

The technology used by Aleksey Gribin is similar to that used in Canada and the United States for collecting maple sap. In the same countries, today they are actively developing the direction of harvesting birch sap. Europe has also joined the trend, which is currently provided with juice for the most part by Latvia and Lithuania. But the small Baltic countries do not have unlimited resources for export. Russian producers can also offer their birch sap to Europe, Gribin is sure.

Tree scarcity

For a novice entrepreneur, the main task today is to organize a permanent farm for collecting sap, but this requires a forest. Only a small part of the trees that Gribin now uses belong to him, some of the sap this year was brought by the pickers, about the use of other trees you have to negotiate with people or organizations directly. The issue with trees and, accordingly, with raw materials is becoming more acute every year, as production is gradually increasing.

“I have 15 hectares in mind, but this plot still needs to be obtained,” explains Aleksey Gribin the essence of the problem. "The fact is that all plots are allocated for a tender, so the fact that you have found a suitable plot does not mean that you will get it."

Another difficulty faced by a novice entrepreneur is the high rate of lease of land for the extraction of tree sap from the state in the Leningrad Region. You will now have to pay 11 rubles for a liter of juice. In Belarus, for example, it costs almost three times cheaper - 4 rubles. per liter of juice.

In order to remove some of the material burden from oneself, one could try to get government grants that are due to novice farmers. But in order to count on them, you need to meet a number of requirements, one of which is the official registration of people on the staff of the company. Alexey Gribin is in no hurry to take advantage of this opportunity, having his own reasons: “The money is allocated for five years, during which time most of it will be spent on salaries. Therefore, not everyone strives to receive these grants, even those who are developing well enough. "

The problem is that the very specifics of the business does not imply the hiring of permanent workers. The entire production process is divided into two stages: the first is the season when harvesting is in progress, the second is the sale, which is carried out throughout the year. Workers are needed just at the procurement stage. “This year the season lasted 2.5 months,” says the entrepreneur. - We started by collecting maple sap, and then we took up birch sap. As a result, we managed to involve a fairly large number of people. "

A total of 10,000 bottles of birch sap and 1,000 maple sap were prepared. It could have been more, Gribin is sure, but so far he is trying to increase volumes gradually so that the product does not lose quality. “We plan to grow two to three times every year. I think it's real, ”says the entrepreneur. But the next few years will definitely be spent on bringing the production of the product to perfection.

Battle of juices

Two years ago, Alexey Gribin organized the first festival of birch sap, and in the summer of 2016 he gave the name to his farm - "Festival of birch sap", where he transferred all production assets. The initiative was supported by the Governor of the Leningrad Region and the head of the Vsevolozhsk District Administration. Now, together with the district, the entrepreneur organizes not only this festival, but also an event in Pereslavl-Zalessky. The purpose of such activities is to popularize birch sap and products derived from it among the population.

“It's hard to say whether the festival is promoting sales,” says Gribin. - Probably, to some extent it contributes, like any mass event. But the main task is to associate the birch sap festival with Russian traditions. " This year, within the framework of the festival, the world battle of birch syrups took place. People from different countries, including from America and Canada, sent birch syrups to the event. Gribin hopes that next year the battle will be even more interesting and that the competition for the best birch syrups he organizes will become the most significant event in the world among product manufacturers.

International interest

Birch sap is one of the few plant-based products sourced directly from trees that, with the right marketing and promotion strategy, could become a $ 2 billion business by 2025, says Juliana Mellentin, director of New Nutrition Business.

In Europe, birch sap is positioned as a good product for detoxifying the body. And taking into account how yoga is now becoming popular in the world, there is a trend here for the promotion of all kinds of wood water and drinks.

Many manufacturers are also represented on the Belarusian market. And some of them are quite successful. “There is a Belarusian product that is even exported to the States,” says Gribin. - But in general, Belarusians supply juices to Russia, although there is still not the product that I would like to see on store shelves - with sugar and citric acid... It is produced mainly by old factories with a Soviet past, which do not have the opportunity to rebuild production. "

Now Gribin's product under the brand name "7 birches" and "6 maples" is sold at farmers' markets and via the Internet. But this year, the entrepreneur plans to receive certificates for a new batch of juice, which will allow him to sell the product in stores and pharmacies. And he plans to enter foreign markets. “Maple syrup, which we make, is in the trend of import substitution now for me,” the entrepreneur argues. “So the challenge now is to find a good area of ​​the forest with a lot of maples.”

In many respects, the growing popularity of the brands of an entrepreneur from St. Petersburg today is facilitated by the great interest of the media in his business. Various publications endlessly write about the production of Alexei Gribin, and TV people shoot reports. Indeed, against the backdrop of success stories in the field of IT, food startups and other familiar businesses, this production story stands out especially.

Birch juice loved by many people in our country. It is very useful for the body, as it contains the substances it needs, and even in a balanced amount. By consuming birch sap, you can easily improve your health and, most importantly, satisfy your need for vitamins.

It seems that every inhabitant of Russia has tasted birch sap. Earlier, back in Soviet times, it was made by forestry enterprises. Nowadays, it is rare to find a company that produces birch sap. It is much more profitable to release carbonated water or alcohol.

But Birch juice it perfectly cleanses the blood, it is drunk for the prevention of oncology, in the postoperative period, it improves the condition of patients with arthritis and rheumatism, and also removes heavy metals from the body.

That's why harvesting birch sap and its further sale is a great way to make money, especially if you revive in people's memory the knowledge about its benefits and positive qualities.

The best option for a novice entrepreneur is to establish contacts with enterprises that are engaged in logging, with hunters, farms, and so on.

You will also need to purchase high-traffic vehicles. Even if you just collect the juice on your own, you can earn decent money - you can get up to 10 liters from one tree per day. And if you swing and create a whole enterprise for the procurement and sale of birch sap, then the income will be very, very high. Prices natural juices are high now, so the idea is promising.

In advance, you must find ways to market the products. You can sell juice through retail chains, restaurants, cafes, and so on.

You must pay maximum attention to the process of processing and storing the finished juice. After all, even if it is stored at temperatures below 5 degrees Celsius, the shelf life is no more than 5 days.

Therefore, if you want to save it for a longer amount of time, then you need to freeze it. You can win up to three months this way. After that, the juice is often processed into wine or kvass. Thus, finished products you can sell all year round.

Pay attention to the place harvesting birch sap... After all, such factors as the proximity of large factories, highways, railways can negatively affect the quality of products.

Foreigners are wary of Russian products. They don't eat buckwheat, they don't understand herring under a fur coat, they don't even try to cook borscht. Yes, at one time the world accepted vodka with delight, but that was already in the 16th century! Since then, there have probably been no examples of such a successful expansion of Russian food and drinks. How did the immigrants from Eastern Europe manage to teach modern London to drink fermented baked milk, buy Borodino bread and order birch sap on the Internet? ZIMA spoke with three entrepreneurs about how to enter the English market with a Russian product.

What to sell

If you ask Russian entrepreneurs who moved to the UK what prompted them to start producing Russian food here, many will answer: they missed the taste familiar from childhood, but they could not find an analogue. So in England, in particular, the production of fermented baked milk appeared - the company launched it first Bio-tiful Dairy... Its head Natasha Bowes had 15 years of experience at KPMG and Barclays in Moscow, Dublin and London and the habit of drinking kefir since childhood. Having moved to England, she was able to find here only Polish kefir, which did not suit her taste at all. After drawing up a business plan and conducting research, Bowes realized that there was practically no competition in the British dairy market.

The first customers of Bio-tiful Dairy were Russian-speaking visitors to Harrods and Whole Foods. This was inevitable, although from the very beginning the product was not positioned as "Russian" in order not to limit the scale of the business. However, Bio-tiful Dairy signed a deal with Ocado and Riverford Organic in 2014, which Bowes said marked the end of the pilot phase of the project and the start of "real work." Since then, Russian-speaking buyers have been in the minority. Today Bio-tiful kefir is available in Sainsbury's, Co-op and Whole Foods chain stores.

Boes believes that when positioning a product, it is important to rely on its fundamental qualities, and not on Russian roots. In the case of fermented baked milk and kefir, three factors turned out to be fundamental: health benefits, pleasant taste and convenient packaging. “Now the main trends all over the world are health and convenience. The demand for organic products in lightweight and convenient packaging is growing rapidly. At the same time, it is obvious that no matter how useful and beautifully packaged a product may be, it will not be successful if it does not taste good, ”Bowes is convinced. Can not argue.

A similar foundation was laid in the basis of her product and Anna Skopets, who founded the company Treevitalise that releases birch sap. The drink turned out to be so unusual and incomprehensible to the British that it took a lot of effort before consumers, retailers and distributors understood what they were offering. To this end, TreeVitalise arranged free tastings in stores and at exhibitions, carefully thought out the packaging and built a pricing policy, realizing that there would be no quick return on investment.

“In England, the very concept of 'forest products' is absent,” says Skopets. - To convince people to try our juice, we had to draw an analogy with maple syrup, which is essentially the same tree sap, only concentrated. With just 10 calories per bottle and lots of beneficial trace elements, birch sap is a good substitute for sugar-rich juices and coconut water. It perfectly quenches thirst, has an anti-inflammatory effect on the body, flushes out toxins, stimulates the liver and kidneys. And at the same time it has a light and fresh taste". Today, two years after starting the TreeVitalise business, the company's products can be found in TK Maxx, Selfridges, HomeSense and Holland & Barrett stores in the UK and Ireland.

How to set up production

Birch sap for TreeVitalise is collected and bottled in the Carpathian region. The need for imports is explained by the fact that the early spring in Eastern Europe is more turbulent. The ground saturated with melt water feeds the birches, and each tree produces about five liters of sap per day, while in England, where the climate is milder, it would take several days to collect the same volume, and it would be difficult to keep the sap fresh - it starts very quickly to roam. In addition, it turns out that only a certain type of tree is suitable for the production of good birch sap - silver birch, the most common in Russia, the Carpathian region, the Baltic states and the Scandinavian countries. After collecting, the juice is packed in glass containers - plastic is not good, bacteria in it multiply faster. “This almost became a problem when working with British distributors who prefer plastic for safety reasons,” says Anna Skopets. “I had to persuade and persuade.”

Bio-tiful Dairy buys starter culture in Russia and produces kefir and fermented baked milk from British milk on a farm in West Sussex. Any food production associated with marketing risks due to the short shelf life of the product: it is necessary that everything is in order with the refrigerators along the entire chain from the source of raw materials to the store, so that the logistics and distribution process is expensive and not easy.

“It turned out to be difficult to work with distributors, as in England they are not engaged in sales - only in logistics. They have a lot of products in the catalog, and you first need to sell the idea to distributors, then sell the product to each store separately, then convince the consumer to buy the product. The latter is often the easiest to convince, ”says Anna Skopets.

The food industry in the UK has a well-established support system for startups, which allows not only finding investors, but also getting valuable advice on scaling and promoting a business.

Nadezhda Genchas, the founder of the Karaway bakery, agrees with this, and her clients include Harrods, Selfridges, Whole Foods, prestigious restaurants The Delaunay, Fischer’s, Le Gavroche, as well as the London office of Gazprom. Having set before her business 12 years ago the modest goal of feeding delicious rye bread to people from the CIS, today Genchas has won recognition not only of the general public, but also of experts: her products were awarded the stars of the national Great Taste Awards, and the Lithuanian custard bread with caraway seeds Lithuanian Scalded Rye bread, which is baked on dried reed leaves, was awarded the title of one of 50 best products Great Britain. “The chefs and buyers are very conservative and are afraid to change something, we have to break the ice,” Genchas says. - It is much easier with the end consumer. Customers evaluate the product instantly for taste and quality and immediately make a decision whether to take it or not. And retailers want it to be cheaper, simpler, and hassle-free. Therefore, after a break in August, our store will reopen in the Westfield Stratford Mall, where all our products will be collected - not only bread, but also rolls, cookies and cakes. "

Natural Rye bread Karaway manufactures in London. It is made by hand using old-fashioned sourdoughs by natural fermentation, the dough ripens for several days and is baked for more than an hour, unlike ordinary bread, which is baked in the store in 20 minutes from quick mixes. This is reflected in the price: Karaway bread is several times more expensive than store-bought loaves. But, according to Genchas, there is a stable demand for the products: “There are only 10-15 artisan bakeries in London. And most produce predominantly wheat bread, their rye is very expensive, and the choice is not great. For them, rye bread is an additional assortment, for us, on the contrary, it is the main one. "

Where to get money

The production and sale of Russian food in England does not bring quick returns. So, in addition to solving other problems, entrepreneurs have to look for an answer to the question of where to get money from.

For the first three and a half years, Natasha Bowes financed Bio-tiful Dairy from her own funds (she does not disclose the amount spent). Last year, Natasha took part in the cult business and start-up program Dragons' Den, which has been broadcast on BBC Two for many years. There she received an offer from British businessmen to sell 45% of the company for£ 250 thousand, but to the great surprise of both the "dragons" and the audience, she refused. But six months later, she attracted investments in the company on the conditions that she considered right for herself.

Anna Skopets also started a business on her own, then attracted multi-stage investments. To search for investors, she advises to actively make acquaintances in her business area, go to consulting forums and meet with famous entrepreneurs. The UK food industry has a well-established startup support system, which allows not only finding investors, but also getting valuable advice on scaling and promoting a business. In particular, for those who, like her, intends to turn food into a business, Skopets advises to pay attention to the startup accelerators Cinnamon Bridge and Bread and Butter.

How to get to shops

This is perhaps the main question. “You can promote your product in the media as much as you want, but if people cannot find it on the shelf of the nearest store, then it's all in vain,” says Natasha Boes.

She admits that at the beginning she had no idea how competitive the UK food industry would be. At the initial stage, it is quite possible to achieve success. Difficulties begin further, when you need to get on the shelves of chain stores and somehow stand out from the huge variety of products that appear on the market every day: “This is an industry where 97% of the market is concentrated in the hands of four or five large chains, and it is almost impossible to get there. People say that the Waitrose buyer's e-mail receives 500 new offers a day. Huge flow. And the buyers who make decisions about your product niche in these stores are very conservative. "

There is no definite answer to the question of what exactly needs to be done in order to be guaranteed to break into large supermarkets. “We ourselves do not know what worked, which of our team's tireless efforts resulted in Bio-tiful Dairy's kefir and fermented baked milk, in particular, on the shelves at Sainsbury's. We talked to one part of the industry, and the offer to deliver the product came from another. Yes, they communicated with each other, but this clearly did not happen directly, says Bowes and adds: One thing is for sure: in our area, it is very important to be able to build business relationships with people at every level, from employees and customers to suppliers and regulators. ... In England one cannot but be a person who is pleasant to talk to. So, if we learn to add English politeness and courtesy to our natural qualities, this combination can create a very winning combination. "

Alexei Gribin, a 35-year-old graduate of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University, has been collecting birch sap since childhood at a 35-hectare summer cottage in the village of Voeikovo in the Leningrad Region. Four years ago, he bought a bottle of birch sap in one of the cafes. He did not like the taste: "Water with sugar and citric acid, not birch sap."

It was then that the outraged Gribin decided to release birch sap not only for his own use, but also for sale: people need to know what a real birch drink is. In 2013, the entrepreneur resigned from the position of chief specialist in the Committee for Energy and Engineering Support of the Administration of St. Petersburg and created the company "7 Birches". And last year he started making maple syrup under the 6 Maple brand.

The new business required minimal investment. For several thousand rubles, Gribin bought 60 five-liter cans of water, poured water out of them (it was convenient to collect juice in them) and another 30,000 rubles. spent on organizing a festival of birch sap in the Vsevolozhsk region of the Leningrad region. The technology was elementary - Gribin hung five-liter bottles on the trunks at his dacha (he has 70 birches) and in a nearby forest. Later, he expanded the grove to almost 400 trunks, in agreement with the nearby Geophysical Laboratory. A.I. Voeikova. “In America, juice is collected right in the parks,” says Gribin.

If in 2013 the revenue of "7 birches" amounted to only a few tens of thousands of rubles, then in 2015 it increased 10 times to 600,000 rubles. The product turned out to be quite popular, says Gribin. And the net profit margin is about 30%. Last year, Gribin collected 10 tons of juice, and this year he plans to harvest four times more - if he finds a suitable number of trees: on average, 3 liters of juice can be collected from one tree per day.

Dropper and ultraviolet

Gribin makes a hole in the bark of a tree, inserts a disposable medical dropper into it, then attaches a sterile medical tube to it. Several of these tubes, going at an angle from different trunks, are combined into one more, the juice flows into the canister. Then the entrepreneur cleans the collected liquid with a special ultraviolet lamp and freezes it in the freezer (Gribin has previously frozen mushroom berries for his own use in large quantities). Freezing is considered to be the most cost-effective and beneficial way of processing, says Anatoly Gavrilyuk, General Director of the Absolute Nature Group of Companies ("Live Juices"). Other options are sterilization or pasteurization at a temperature of 70–80 ° C, followed by the manufacture of a concentrate.

Fatherland juice

According to the Union of Producers of Soft Drinks and mineral waters, the market capacity of soft drinks in 2015 amounted to 6 billion liters. However, birch sap, according to Anatoly Gavrilyuk from Absolute Nature, accounts for less than 1%.

The service life of the juice pipeline is short - about three weeks, then you have to change the tubes to new sterile ones. Gribin spied the idea of ​​such a system on the Internet from Canadian and American farmers.

There are only 3-4 producers of birch sap in Russia, estimates Mikhail Chetvertakov, general director of Dobrye Vody (has been producing birch sap since 1998). And a company with a sales volume of a birch drink of 1 million rubles. per year is considered a large producer, say Gavrilyuk and Chetvertakov.

In the Soviet Union, birch sap was produced in large batches and was inexpensive, and because of this, the consumer still considers this drink second-rate, comments Anatoly Gavrilyuk, general director of the Absolute Nature Group ("Live juices"). But abroad, birch sap is considered fashionable. organic product and not cheap, says the expert. For example, a 250 ml bottle of juice on Amazon.com costs about 830 rubles in terms of rubles. And 0.5 l of birch sap "7 birches" costs 100 rubles.

Festival channel

The main distribution channel is mass events and festivals. An active political life helped Gribin to establish supplies. He twice participated in municipal elections as a self-nominated candidate. Both attempts ended in failure, but Gribin managed to get to know the Governor of the Leningrad Region, Alexander Drozdenko. And when in the spring of 2014 Gribin planned to organize the first festival of birch sap on the territory of the Geophysical Laboratory named after V.I. A.I. Voeikov, then he turned for support to Drozdenko and the head of the Vsevolozhsky district administration, Vladimir Drachev. And they supported him - as the initiator of an interesting cultural and patriotic event. Gribin built his own branded juice pipeline and poured juice from a tree into plastic cups to suitable guests of the festival. All of Gribin's expenses (about 30,000 rubles) were paid off through sales. Gribin expects that this year more than 1000 people will come to the festival.

At another festival “Oh yes! Food!" in June 2015, on Elagin Island, Gribin earned 110,000 rubles in two days, having paid a participation fee of 40,000 rubles. According to Gribin, the benefit of fairs and festivals is that the sale of products from personal subsidiary plots is not taxed and does not require the use of cash registers. True, it is necessary to provide quality documents. Gribin has them: the birch sap has passed laboratory research and received the conclusion of Rospotrebnadzor (a copy is available from Vedomosti).

Canadian chef and Russian syrup

In 2015, Gribin began experimenting with other natural products - birch and maple syrups. According to Gribin, three years ago it was unprofitable to cook maple syrup: it was cheaper to buy from Canadian and American producers. But the devaluation of the ruble gave the entrepreneur a chance. He borrowed the recipes from colleagues from Canada and the United States. At first, he cooked syrups on a stove from juice collected in the same grove, but this was ineffective, Gribin admits. Now he uses a custom-made juice evaporator. To obtain 1 liter of maple syrup you need 40–70 liters of juice, and for 1 liter of birch syrup - 60–150 liters. Now Gribin can process up to 1000 liters of juice per day.

According to the entrepreneur, in the summer of 2015, at the food festival, the brand-chef of the restaurant holding Ginza Project Alexander Belkovich entered the entrepreneur. Now Gribin is negotiating with Ginza about regular deliveries and hopes to be in time for Maslenitsa. A Ginza spokesman confirmed the talks. The entrepreneur also plans to sell 100 liters of maple syrup at farmers' markets this year.

Now 150 g of 6 maple syrup costs 300 rubles. - 1.5-2 times lower compared to the imported product, says Gribin. And the other day, says Gribin, Canadian Ian Minnis, the chef of the restaurant at the Grand Hotel Europe, became interested in maple syrup. The hotel representative confirmed the scheduled meeting between Minnis and Gribin. Almost all of Gribin's revenue comes from retail, but he expects to increase the share of restaurants. But first, Gribin will have to certify the products.

Too few trees

Last summer, Gribin attended the first international conference of birch sap and syrup producers in the state of New York. And there he came up with the idea to supply products to the foreign market. Back in the summer, the Slovak smoothie manufacturer Acaimania wanted to buy a batch of juice, but the entrepreneur did not have enough volume. Birch sap is also used in the production of cosmetics, but manufacturers need a certificate of the organic origin of Gribin's products. “The problem is that there are no such standards in Russia yet. I even turned to the "Support of Russia" - he says.

This year, Gribin hopes to receive European quality certificates, and now he is registering his business as a peasant farm. He wants to lease a forest in the Leningrad region, but it is expensive and eats up profits, says the farmer. According to government decree No. 310 of 05/22/2007 "On rates of payment per unit volume of forest resources and rates of payment per unit area of ​​a forest plot in federal ownership" for each liter of birch sap, he will be forced to pay a fee of 10 rubles. in the Leningrad region. “If I cannot defeat the system and change this rule, then I will go to work in another region,” says Gribin. Growth prospects for an entrepreneur in Russia are limited. To become a large producer, you need large reserves of raw materials, that is, trees, says Gavrilyuk.