Arkady Rotenberg’s Red Square Media Group, which produces TV shows for Channel One, has entered a new market. Her subsidiary opened a cafe in Ostankino and started catering on television. In the sphere of television production there is a demand for corporate catering, and profile companies are units, market participants say.

Catering Technologies in the Square opened the Food in Glass cafe on the site of the central canteen in the Ostankino TV Center. 25% of the company is owned by Krasny Kvadrat, 75% is issued for the deputy general director of the same television studio, Alexei Dergunov. The project is fully managed by Red Square, in the future it will consolidate the remaining 75%, said a source close to the company.

Red Square is one of the largest television studios in the country. Her main customer is Channel One, for which she produces Let's Get Married, Voice, Fashion Verdict and other shows. The company also made content for ITS and Yandex, conducted events for the Public Chamber, the Federation of Dance Sport and Acrobatic Rock and Roll, etc.

As told to Kommersant, the interlocutor in the company, Krasny Kvadrat has been engaged in catering for some time, organizing food on the set of television and film projects in Time for Lunch food trades (also called the culinary show with Natasha Koroleva, which the studio produced for Channel One "until 2014). Over time, the range of food in cafes-vans expanded, and the "Red Square" decided to feed the employees of the television center "Ostankino", where he rents studios. His cafe sells homemade food: cereals, soups, salads, pastries and drinks, packaged in paper cups so that they can be taken to the workplace.

The situation with the public catering in Ostankino is unsatisfactory, several employees of the television center complain to “Kommersant”. Register an institution there is not easy, so the competition is low, according to one of the interlocutors. None of the major restaurant projects do not see Ostankino as a platform for business, a source in Red Square said. Of the major brands, only Mu-Mu cafe is represented in the television center, there are also several independent food outlets.

“If before the dining rooms were monopolists, now cooking, fast-casual and even fast food are competing with them,” says Maria Vanifatova, head of NPD in Russia, “The success of the project in the telecentre will depend on the quality of the food and the average check. People are not willing to spend a lot on lunch during the working day. ”

In the TV industry there is a noticeable demand for corporate catering, says Catery Executive Director Andrei Cherepanov. “There are few highly specialized catering, which work only for this sphere, literally a few. In general, in this area with corporate catering, things are still not very good: there are not enough places within walking distance where you can order quality food, ”he explains.

At the same time, a judicial conflict continues between Ostankino and Krasny Kvadrat: the telecentre requires from the studio debts for the services of tele-production. As reported by “Kommersant” on December 25, in total, in 2018, Ostankino filed 11 lawsuits against Krasny Svad with a total of 62.74 million rubles. In 2018, the Moscow Arbitration Court registered six more claims for 87.5 million rubles. Red Square rents premises for offices and filming studios in the telecentre and orders technical services, but Channel One pays him “all the worse”, and the studio’s debt to the television center, respectively, is increasing, Kommersant sources explained earlier.