Business Ideas in Romania

lunch break

• Posted by Sinziana on October 4th, 2007 filed in General

Opportunity: Ready-made homelike food for office areas

It is already 12.00-12.30 and you are at work. After a busy morning, the only thing on your mind is: what shall I eat today?

The times when lunch packages were carefully put together in the morning for a long-day’s work seem mostly a thing of the past for the growing class of white collar professionals populating the busy office areas in Bucharest. People don’t have the time, patience or will to bring food from home anymore. They would much rather eat something fast, tasty and reasonably priced at or around work.

As a consequence, catering or restaurants doing home delivery have become quite a popular and well represented business in Bucharest. But many times food delivered at your office might not seem the best idea. More often than not, in the middle of your work day, with many more hours to spend in that tall steel building in front of your computer, the one thing that you want to do in your lunch-break is get away for a bit.

And what could be nicer than going to a close-by restaurant and taking some half an hour/ 45 minutes to really enjoy your lunch? Well, but the problem is that it usually takes more than half an hour to get your food, eat and pay for it, and you end up spending considerably more than you wanted in the fancy restaurants or cafes around your office building. A fast and, somewhat cheap, solution is of course the McDonalds, KFCs and shawermas that are now flourishing. But despite its growing popularity, the fast food industry cannot replace the more traditional culinary preferences of Romanians: homelike cooked meals.

The other week I went with Sara at the nearby Turkish Restaurant, Idomemos, and was pleasantly impressed by the wide range of appetising ready-made salads, soups and cooked meals steaming at us. It was exactly what we needed: a wide range of cooked dishes to choose from, good and fast service, ok atmosphere and all just 10 minutes away from the office. So why not extend this model and create a chain of restaurants providing ready-made cooked meals of Romanian and international cuisine, addressing the growing number of office buildings in Bucharest. The “lunch-time break” restaurant could offer the advantages of a fast food restaurant while providing a more balanced and healthier diet at a lower price than the average restaurants in the area. Choose your food on the spot from a wide and appetizing variety, sit down and enjoy your meal and take some extra to have for tonight’s dinner. I already like this place!