Three Ukrainians founded a startup in six months that solves the problem of thousands of restaurants with a digital solution that is still missing in Ukraine. The startups told dev.ua how Omni automates the entire ordering process between a restaurant and a supplier, and when the solution will be available.
Three Ukrainians founded a startup in six months that solves the problem of thousands of restaurants with a digital solution that is still missing in Ukraine. The startups told dev.ua how Omni automates the entire ordering process between a restaurant and a supplier, and when the solution will be available.
Omni was founded by Rostyslav Volchak (30), Yasemin Ibrahimagoglu (26), and Zakhar Turchynovsky (23), who met while working at the product design agency Rasa Design Team. It was there that they spent 4 years creating digital products for startups around the world.
Rostyslav is an agency manager with over 10 years of experience in team management. Yasemin is a product designer who also mentors designers at Mate Academy. Zakhar is a marketer with experience in B2B sales and communications.
Rostyslav and Zakhar studied at the Business School of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Yasemin studied at the Ivan Franko University of Lviv, majoring in international management.
While working on early product solutions for startups from the US and Europe, one day the startupers came across a British ordering app for chefs called REKKI.
«At first we were interested in design and marketing, but the more we delved into the essence, the more we felt the potential of such an idea for the Ukrainian market,» recall the founders of Omni.
Then they began to work out the hypothesis. And in a conversation with dozens of restaurateurs, chefs and managers, they learned that the problem of purchasing in Ukrainian restaurants is large-scale and daily. Currently, restaurateurs solve this chaos in purchasing mainly through dozens of chats in Viber or Telegram messengers, or by calls or notes. Everything is mainly based on people and memory. So, if the chef or administrator goes on vacation, the team has to «reinvent the wheel» anew, risking losing time, money and making mistakes.
Startups realized that the market needed a digital tool that would improve the lives of people who work in kitchens every day and support businesses.
«We were driven not only by the business potential, and although we have no experience in HoReCa, all three of us have a great love for restaurant culture,» Omni says.
Omni’s solution solves two problems for restaurants: ordering ingredients, which is mostly done manually, and communicating with suppliers, who receive dozens of unstructured messages every day, sometimes in the form of photos, voice messages, or Excel files.
«They don’t have a single place to see orders and analytics to see if the sales team is working effectively,» explain the startup’s founders.
The digital platform they developed automates the entire ordering process between the restaurant and the supplier:
«This is not just automation — we are bringing modern technologies to a large, but still outdated market,» say the startupers.
After six months of working on the Omni project, the founders already have a ready-made MVP — the startups tested the design, conducted interviews with restaurant employees, and based on this, created the first version of the product.
With the existing solution, restaurants can create orders in a few clicks, selecting the desired supplier, products and quantity. After confirming the order, a unique link is generated that can be sent to the supplier in any messenger. The supplier sees the order without logging in, can confirm it and download it in PDF. The order status is immediately updated in the restaurant interface. In addition, the platform will integrate with POS products for restaurants and ERP products for suppliers.
«This is a convenient way to structure the process, reduce the number of errors, store purchase history, and, most importantly, everything works in a way that doesn’t drastically change user habits,» the developers explain.
MVP Omni is launching in Ukraine. «This is a market that we know well and where the problem of unstructured procurement is particularly acute,» they explain. The first users will be five well-known restaurants from Lviv and Kyiv, with which the startups worked the most during the study.
Next, they plan to gradually open access to new users. In particular, almost all restaurants (currently about 50) that the startups spoke with during the interview want to join the testing. And new interviews with restaurants are held every week, so the absolute number of these restaurants is growing and this is 92% of the conversion from the interview to the waitlist.
«We are confident that if we create a truly convenient and stable product, the market will open the doors on its own. Attracting the first users is not our main concern. The main thing is to give them a tool that they want to use every day,» they note.
The team of three founders completely covers product design, user research, marketing, and sales. This, they say, allowed them to quickly go from idea to prototype and confirm demand through interviews with restaurateurs.
To launch the first version of the product, the team only needed technical implementation. So Omni was joined by two developers — friends of the startupers who joined the project outside of their main work.
Advisor Vladyslav Kovtun also helped the startups work on the project.
Omni is currently a bootstrap project. The founders cover all expenses, which is close to their own, with their own money, and the team operates without external funding. The founders do not disclose the figures for the invested funds, but emphasize that all the necessary expertise to create the product, including research, UX design, development, brand design, and marketing, is within the team, so they do not spend significant funds, only their time.
The startups are currently undergoing the Mission Possible acceleration program. On April 25, the Demo Day was held, where Omni’s first public presentation to investors took place. During the event, the startups announced the start of a pre-seed round and focused on finding partners for further development.
«We plan to use the funds raised to form a full-fledged technical team — first of all, to attract full-time developers,» the founders noted. They also added that they were satisfied with the event, in particular because they received a lot of positive feedback from experts and the audience. The startups also had several conversations with Ukrainian funds and agreed on future meetings. «We are not ready to announce the names of the funds — now our main focus is on developing the product and distributing it to our users. All funds want to see good traction,» the startups added.
The monetization model has already been defined. The product will be paid for suppliers, who will receive CRM, order accounting, analytics, and tools for sales growth. For restaurants, the basic functionality, in particular, fast order generation, convenient work with a team, order history, and communication with suppliers, will remain free. According to the chosen monetization model, the startups plan that for suppliers it will be a monthly subscription, the size of which will depend on the number of restaurants they serve ($#/restaurant/month).
«We cannot announce the price yet, but it will be significantly lower for the Ukrainian market than for the European market,» Omni adds.
The startups have already formed a clear vision for development and ambitious plans, but emphasize that they may change depending on feedback from real users.
«Since there are still no digital products in Ukraine that solve this problem, our first ambition is to capture a significant share of the restaurant market, create effective solutions for suppliers, and optimize processes between them,» the participants say about their priority plans.
Omni plans to gradually create a unified infrastructure for procurement: with CRM for suppliers, smart payment tools, analytics capabilities, order history, and a marketplace where restaurants can discover new suppliers at transparent prices. As a first step, startups will provide value to restaurants and suppliers through products created for them. Over time, as the number of users on the platform grows, developers will be able to combine them into a marketplace.
At the same time, they are preparing to enter international markets. The exact region has not yet been chosen — they are currently exploring various options. But they are primarily focused on those countries where there are no major European competitors — such as Choco or REKKI — and at the same time there is a developed gastronomic culture.
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