Day in the Life: Kiosk Merchant

Many people give Natalia Kvachenko flowers and boxes

of chocolates. Some even send her cards on holidays. They recognize her face in the neighborhood when she walks down the street

and greet her with kind words.

No, Natalia is not a movie star. Rather, she owns a dairy kiosk at the Dorogomilovsky wholesale food market in Moscow. “Wholesale” (optovy) food markets bursting with kiosks came of age in Russia in the late 1990s. Today, your typical Russian prefers to shop at these food bazaars instead of at the glittering food stores or supermarkets where everything is more expensive.

At the maelstrom of capitalism that is Dorogomilovsky market, there are over 250 kiosks. Everything is on sale here: beer, kefir, salt, matches, salmon, malosol herring, you name it. If you can eat it, you’re bound to find it at a wholesale market. It’s cheaper here because the overhead is lower and because many people buy in bulk. But you don’t have to.

Every day, Natalia Kvachenko sells 600-700 liters of milk, 200 liters of kefir, and 100 kilos of cottage cheese and sour cream. She hawks over 200 brands to between 400 and 500 clients daily, serving everyone from restaurant buyers to lawyers, from journalists to artists and teachers. But the bulk of Natalia’s clients are pensioners—retirees who cannot afford to shop at more expensive places.

Kvachenko, 36, has earned the love and respect of her clients because she always manages to find a smile or a pleasant joke for everyone. Her happy combination of kindheartedness and shrewd common sense makes her a pro in customer service. “One must win over and charm the customer,” Natalia says. And Kvachenko’s charm is no act.

Born in the ancient town of Zlatoust in the Urals, Natalia began working in the food service industry at an early age. After graduating from high school, she enrolled in a technical college, specializing in public catering. She later worked as master-chef in a café and ever since has dreamed of opening her own private café.

Instead, Natalia married Igor, a sportsman who brought her to the town of Korolyov, Moscow region. When their two daughters had grown (they are now 16 and 11), Natalia said she had to somehow vent the “boiling energy” inside her. Private business had become a possibility and she decided to jump back into the food business.

But, as the Russian proverb has it, “The first pancake is always lumpy.” Kvachenko invested all her family’s savings in renting a market stall, then went to a dairy kombinat and bought her first wholesale lot of dairy products, picking out the most eye-catching packages. “And there I was, standing idle with this nicely-packaged moloko and smetana from dusk to dawn,” Natalia recalled. “While other sellers were serving long lines of clients, I didn’t serve any. So I learned my first lesson the hard way: one must look for good yet inexpensive milk.”

A sociable, outgoing person, Natalia shortly found the right suppliers. Confident of her product’s quality, she would call out to passersby: “Good milk is here!” Soon, customers were lining up by Natalia’s kiosk—they found she sold better tasting and slightly cheaper brands. In six years, Kvachenko has moved her kiosk around the market six times. Yet her customers are loyal and follow her handwritten signs—“See you over in kiosk #324, row #23, Natasha”—like a thread follows a needle.

Today Natalia’s business is running smoothly. Needless to say, her days start early. By 8 am, she is getting deliveries from her suppliers—some 29 dairy factories in Kemerovo, Samara, Vladimir and Suzdal, among others (milk from ecologically clean Suzdal has long been a favorite with Muscovites). And then there is the recently-launched Novaya Izida Dairy Farm in Moscow region. Once called “Lenin’s Way,” in Soviet times it supplied the Masters in the Kremlin with top quality kefir.

Today, Natalia is a well-respected merchant and both producers and suppliers are shelling her with offers of cooperation. “I love honesty in business relations,” Natalia says. She said she immediately severs relations with anyone who fails to honor their commitments. This, she said, is because she cherishes her good name and truly loves what she is doing. “The most important things in life,” she said, “are to feed, teach and cure people.”

The economics of kiosk merchantry offer hard realities. But, as Natalia notes, “it is always hard to do real work.” Those who trade in “socially sensitive products” like bread and milk are freed from charging the 5% sales tax, but Kvachenko pays what she calls the “non-negligible, yet acceptable” 13% flat tax. Her main fiscal burden is her kiosk rent, and there is usually very little left to invest back into the enterprise—all her money is working to bring in new products to sell. Her family does not even dare buy a car. But Natalia says she has a decent lifestyle and has “enough to live on.” For, she said, she feels that the main thing in life is to make sure “everything is neat and nice: family relations, clothing—everything. I also like it when our table is nicely dressed and is full of meals.”

Like any small businessperson, Natalia is a “jack-of-all-trades.” She juggles many jobs at once: manager, economist, jurist, bookkeeper, salesperson. And she continually works on “upgrading” her business education; she enrolled in the Moscow Law Institute at the night faculty of economics, where she is specializing in management. She is proud to say that, in her studies, “the mother is not lagging behind the daughters” (both are top students) and will be ready to defend her diplom (master’s degree) next year.

But there is no rest for the weary. Tomorrow, Natalia will be getting up early again to go visit the town of Gus-Khrustalny, a two-hour ride from Moscow. She has ordered a trial lot of milk from a kombinat there. The sample was tasted and approved by her “test group”—her own family. And now she wants to visit the factory in person, to see the farms and the cows, to take a look at the dairy workshop and to talk to the dairy workers. By lunchtime, she will be back at the market, to meet with the market’s administration to negotiate more favorable terms for her rent.

“I keep writing letters to these market administrators,” Natalia said. “I am trying to convince them that the smaller the rent, the lower my prices will be, thus making them affordable for the elderly. Who else would think of them, if not us, the young ones?!”

On her way back from that meeting, Natalia needs to have a private chat with her colleagues. She has heard complaints from customers that, in the neighboring kiosk, the sales assistants are cheating customers by inflating the weight of products sold—the old thumb on the scales scam. “Well, yes, such things happen,” she says, “so I need to call these guys to order. I work in the same market, and my reputation is at stake too.”

Then come her “working” hours. Even now, Natalia continues to spend a few hours a day behind the counter. For her, it’s more than just a part of her job—it is also irreplaceable “direct marketing research.” She finds out first hand what the customers like and don’t like. Plus it is a good way to socialize with people and warm them up.

Then the afternoon deliveries arrive, so Kvachenko spends time checking product quality. It is May now, so one must begin to anticipate the summer heat. Natalia expects the electrician to come around tonight to check her refrigeration units. At 6 pm, there is the flood of clients stopping in at the market on the way home from work.

Natalia’s two daughters will have cooked dinner by now and are waiting for their mother to come home. But she won’t be back before nine, eleven if she has classes at the institute.

It makes for a long day, but Natalia is not one to complain, wishing she had “26 hours in a day” so she could spend more time with her daughters.

Meanwhile, Natalia Kvachenko’s dream of opening a café can wait. Interviewed on the eve of May 9—Victory Day—Natalia said she has another dream that is even more important: opening a store for war veterans and pensioners, those hardest hit by Russia’s transition. It is hard to doubt that the young and energetic milk merchant has the energy and will to realize the dream someday soon.

— Eleonora Sutotskaya