Andrey Nagin, 43, from Karaganda
the founder of the Stella Alpina cheese factory
On the starting point
I love cooking. Five years ago I started cooking cheese at home. That was when I realized that everything found on the Internet is a real nonsense. I started studying technology, found Russian and foreign technologists. Cheese requires constant attention, soon my hobby turned into business.
Three years ago we analyzed the market, conducted a consumer survey and realized that the market was empty. Consumers don’t understand nuances of cheese consumption. I’m good at working with a large audience, so my wife and I decided to teach consumers and make cheese at a professional level.
I started free YouTube classes, we developed a media plan, and teamed up with my current partner who has his own farm. Quality product is the most important. We were engaged in feeding, checking milk, changing the livestock, and finally established the production.
The interior decorations were thoroughly thought over, my wife decorated the room, and our daughter painted the walls. We were aiming at creating a cozy atmosphere, so that people could communicate. Customers usually share tables during the events.
On the store revealing
Many still don’t know the reasons of our popularity. We had people standing outside and eating pizza during the revealing. For the first two weeks there were a great many people. Being engaged in market analysis, we perfectly understand that all methods such as SMM don’t work out at all.
There hadn’t been any single subscriber when we launched the brand. Now there’re more than 1000 of them. Our products have become popular for a fairly short period of time. We don’t need any ads, as we are professionals and know how things are done.
Stinky cheese is different from others. Other types of cheese but not stinky get better with age. We stored a monthly supply of blue and white cheese in Almaty and Almaty region.
We ran out of Gorgonzola on the fourth day after the store revealing, and out of Camembert on the sixth day
Frankly speaking, we hadn’t expected this.
Now we feel a slight recession, but there will be an increase in demand. Everything is going as we’ve planned. Actually, we have an efficient program to enter the market.
On the Stella Alpina factory uniqueness
You can try any cheese you want, as there’s a kitchen in the store. The thing is that many do not understand all the intricacies to be done with cheese, and we respectively help them. For example, we show that Halloumi can be fried.
I don’t deal with the industries not knowing how they produce things. So I know all the features of the products we have here.
We also have chefs cooking cheese dishes with no restaurant technologies.
A cook working in our kitchen cooperates with clients, sees real emotions
We sell today's cheese, which is an ace up our sleeves. The "Mozzarella" we produce is just like true Italian today’s cheese. The cheese produced the day before gets cheaper.
Besides, you cannot buy coffee or tea separately, but you get it for free when you order our dish.
On the product
Our production is unique. Italians and French could not believe that such things could be done. The area we use is small, but we can process up to one and a half tons of milk per day. To date, we produce about 74 types of cheese.
Some wheels of cheese are unique and cannot be found anywhere else. We experiment and get an interesting taste, we name the cheese and sell it. It’s a part of our strategy. I co-work with technologists to create a variety of cheeses, and in fact they are sold below the actual cost price. Therefore, you can always try something unique at the Stella Alpina cheese factory.
Our products do not contain preservatives. Our sellers start their work days with trying cheese. We don’t sell the cheese that changed its taste. We produce different products from milk to seasoned seven-month cheeses.
On plans
We’re ready to expand the output. We’re waiting for the moment to do that. To begin with, we need to work out and identify cheese headliners, the demand for certain types of cheese.
We are constantly working on cheese recipes, because there’re some not liked by consumers. We adapt such types of cheese to make the taste more customary for people.
Ultimately, we need to identify the real demand for cheese headliners to expand the factory. We’re planning to develop certain cheese lines. Anyway, today we cannot do that as the demand for all the cheese types is quite even. People love absolutely different types of cheese, e.g. the stinky one was sold out the fastest.
