Merab Elashvili is widely revered in business circles as the man who brought vision and style to the franchising business in Russia.
Shy, soft-spoken and thoughtful, little in his appearance betrays his growing prominence or testifies to the ease and rapidity with which his franchisee mushrooms across Europe.
In 1997, at the age of 23, Elashvili took an unusual step for those post-Cold War days: he applied for an exclusive franchise of Sbarro Inc., a U.S.-based chain of Italian fast-food restaurants, to develop the chain in Russia.
“Initially, Sbarro Inc. executives did not know what to make of the request by a young Soviet man with no experience in the restaurant business, so they foot-dragged as long as they could,” he said, adjusting his composure in a plush leather chair.
His perseverance and persistence was rewarded, when Sbarro “decided it was worth a try,” issuing the budding businessman the exclusive rights to the food chain’s franchising development in Russia.
His business, Brothers and Company, is now the exclusive franchisee of Sbarro not only in Russia but in the other Commonwealth of Independent States countries, as well as the Baltic states and Central and Eastern Europe.
The venture that would make Elashvili Russia’s king of franchising, as friends fondly call him, was a child of circumstances.
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