Tubetey

A Tatar kitchen behind a fast-food counter

Tubetey (in Tatar, Түбәтәй) is a founder-controlled Tatar halal fast-food group in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan. Safin, its chief executive, founded it with Ainur Kamaliev and Ruslan Gilmutdinov, and the three co-own the management company that holds its trademarks. It runs restaurants co-owned with investor partners, about ten partners by December 2025, supplied from the company’s own central kitchen. Tubetey’s halal certification, from DUM RT, the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan, runs through at least November 2025.

Its size is best read as a range. Business Online counted 17 restaurants in December 2025. A regional profile published the following month counted 11: eight under the Tubetey name, two under the Tatar name and one Zaman. The two counts do not reconcile, so this profile gives between about 11 and 17.

The other measures of its scale are counts too. At its widest, in November 2018, Tubetey had 17 points of its own formats, franchises included, and 82 shops in 20 cities stocked its frozen goods. Three years earlier, in July 2015, six of its pavilions had traded at the world aquatics championships in Kazan. The kitchen began that year as a production unit of 350 square metres. Today its restaurants, between about 11 and 17 on the two published counts, are co-owned with about ten investor partners, and one of them, the Zaman project, has taken the model to Ufa. Each of these numbers describes a different stage of the business, and none of them describes all of it.

A pavilion by the station

The idea came long before the format. Safin, then a geology student in Kazan, has said it came to him on an internship in China in 2010. The next year he and Kamaliev settled on the name, four years before there was anything to put it on. The business itself opened on 14 June 2015, as a single pavilion beside the suburban ticket office at Kazan-1 station, a spot built for people in a hurry.

The first real test of demand came within weeks. Kazan hosted the world aquatics championships that July, and Tubetey had six pavilions trading at them. For a business a month old, it was proof that Tatar pastry could sell at fast-food speed to a crowd that had not come for it.

The proof did not outlast the summer. In August, after the championships, the city froze the arena pavilions, and the company went into several loss-making years. The pavilions had been a format for an event; what the company needed was a format for an ordinary week.

The kitchen dates from the same year. Tubetey began making its frozen goods in 2015 in its own production unit on the outskirts of Kazan, 350 square metres in its first form. The echpochmak and elesh have been shaped there by hand, by Safin’s account, ever since. A fast-food brand that makes its own pastry keeps in its own hands the thing its customers come back for.

In 2016 Tubetey began franchising and put its frozen goods on sale in retail. The two moves pointed the same way: more places selling Tubetey than Tubetey itself could staff.

Growth through pavilions and franchises

Franchising carried the name out of Kazan quickly. The first franchise, a cafeteria on Derbenevskaya embankment in Moscow, opened in 2016. A franchise food court followed in Samara and a franchise in Surgut in 2017, and franchises in Ulyanovsk and Naberezhnye Chelny in 2018. Each new point took the brand to a city the founders did not live in, run by people they did not employ.

Late in 2016 a free franchise held by Tubetey’s franchise partner, Azat Nazmutdinov, was revoked, and his outlet became the first Kystybyi (Кыстыбый), his own venture.

At home the company moved into restaurants. Its first, at Kremlyovskaya 21 in Kazan, opened in 2017; Rustam Minnikhanov, the president of Tatarstan, opened it. A second followed on Baumana Street in 2018, the year the management company set up at Mardzhani 4. The frozen line was tested abroad as well: in May 2017 Tubetey sold from a stall at a Sabantuy festival in Paris, stocked with 1,000 frozen pieces, as a one-off export test.

By November 2018 the network was at its widest. Tubetey had 17 points of its own formats, restaurants, pavilions and franchise outlets among them, and 82 shops in 20 cities stocked its frozen goods. The shops were stockists, not Tubetey outlets. On paper the brand reached across Russia. In practice the standard of what was served under its name now depended on people outside its own kitchen.

When the standard did not travel

What travelled with the franchises was the name. The standard behind it depended on each franchisee, and some could not hold it. In February 2019 Tubetey withdrew its Naberezhnye Chelny franchise after quality failures by a weak local team. The people serving it did not share one idea of what the brand promised.

Safin, looking back in December 2025, did not dress the episode up. Given the company’s finances and its inexperience, he told Business Online, “we got into a franchising adventure and a year later closed it without incident,” because each franchisee understood the model in its own way: “for some, sausage turned up on the shelves.” Kamaliev’s account, as Cafe-Future tells it, is that more experienced entrepreneurs advised the founders to wind the franchise down before it was too late.

In June 2019 the company cut back to what it ran itself. It kept two restaurants and two pavilions of its own, plus two franchise points, in Surgut and Ulyanovsk. The Moscow franchise, the Samara food court and the first pavilion by Kazan-1 station all closed that year. From 17 points in November 2018, franchises included, Tubetey was down to six, and only four of them were its own.

The cut did not touch the kitchen. The production that had supplied the pavilions since 2015 kept making the pastry by hand, now for fewer counters, and the co-founders kept the management company that holds the trademarks. What Tubetey gave up was reach it could not stand behind; what it kept was the product.

What came next was a different way to grow. Instead of licensing the name to franchisees, Tubetey opened restaurants with investor partners as co-owners, supplied from its own kitchen. The outlets multiplied again, and the kitchen stayed with the company.

The rebuilding started in Kazan. A restaurant on Universitetskaya Street opened in 2019, the year of the cut. When COVID arrived in 2020, the company reorganised for the pandemic, moving about 30 people into new roles within two weeks. A company that runs its own restaurants can move its own people; a franchisor would have been relying on someone else’s. Another restaurant opened on Tatarstan Street in 2021, and one trades in the Park House food court on Yamasheva prospekt. The 2017 restaurant on Kremlyovskaya 21 remains the flagship.

Restaurant by restaurant

Since 2019 the company has brought in about ten investor partners as co-owners of its restaurants, instead of licensing the name to franchisees. That is the structural difference from 2018. A franchise could open in a city the founders had never worked in, on its operator’s timetable, with whatever its operator chose to put on the shelves. A restaurant co-owned with an investor partner is supplied from the company’s own kitchen, where the echpochmak and elesh are still shaped by hand. The second arrangement grows more slowly, and it keeps the product in the kitchen that set its standard.

In 2023 the model reached beyond the city. Zaman, an investor-backed Tatar restaurant in Ufa, the capital of neighbouring Bashkortostan, started that year as a ₽100M project. In the same year Tubetey was named best national-cuisine concept in Russia at the Premiya bystrykh (Премия быстрых) quick-service awards.

By December 2025, ten years after the first pavilion, it had about ten investor partners and, on the two published counts, between about 11 and 17 restaurants under the Tubetey, Tatar and Zaman names. Tubetey’s outlets in Kazan serve up to 100,000 guests a month, according to a regional profile. A brand that once sold from a single pavilion by a railway ticket office is now a group of restaurants with several names and several owners.

Who owns and runs it

Tubetey is founder-controlled. Safin has been general director of the management company since 2018, and in 2025 he described his work as leading strategy, product and brand. Kamaliev and Gilmutdinov, his co-founders, co-own with him the company that holds the trademarks; registry snapshots disagree on the present shares. Restaurants co-owned with investor partners add a second layer of ownership.

The two layers do different jobs. The management company holds what makes Tubetey Tubetey: the name, the trademarks and the founders’ direction of the product. The restaurant companies hold the outlets, and that is where the partners come in. A partner who backs a restaurant takes a share in an outlet supplied from the company’s kitchen and trading under its name. The founders, in turn, do not carry the whole cost of each new restaurant alone.

That structure is the clearest record of what the company learned. In 2018 the founders let other people run outlets under their name and found that the standard did not hold. After the 2019 cut they let other people own part of the outlets instead, with the pastry still made in their own kitchen. The first approach spread the brand faster than the kitchen could vouch for it. The second ties each new restaurant to that kitchen.

What it built instead

In 2018 Tubetey’s name reached customers through franchisees’ counters and through the shops in 20 cities that stocked its frozen goods. The group of 2025 is smaller on the map. Its restaurants are in Kazan, with one, Zaman, in Ufa, and they trade under three names rather than one: Tubetey, Tatar and Zaman.

It is wider in another sense. The pavilion that opened by a railway ticket office in June 2015 belonged to its founders alone. Ten years later, investor partners share in the restaurants alongside them. The franchisees have mostly gone: in June 2019 two franchise points, in Surgut and Ulyanovsk, were all that remained of the network. The brand that once lent its name to franchisees in other cities now shares ownership of its restaurants instead.

Last updated: October 19, 2026

Researched 33 sources in Russian.