So, what’s this article about? It’s not just a typical success story where we tell you how things were bad in the beginning, then we realized something, and suddenly everything turned out fine. We’ve written a huge long read where we’ve collected a lot of useful cases and interesting events from the last few years. It’s also going to be part of a series of materials that we’re going to include in the onboarding of new employees and also use as introductory material for investors. We know that these long reads are often saved to bookmarks.

Since we started TIMELESS four years ago, we’ve been through a rollercoaster of changes. We’ve changed our name, built a new location during a pandemic, grown our team fourfold, and opened a new location during the special military operation. All this, while working on a big IT product.

When we wrote our last article, we’d just opened a second location on Mayakovskaya. The first profit came after five months, but its size inspired both us and the investors to move on with even greater ambitions. We began developing a third location on Okhotny Ryad, which represented an unprecedented challenge for our entire team.

As you know, the commercial real estate rental market in Moscow is a total nightmare, right? Well, this time our team knew about all the “nuances” and quickly found an excellent place at Nikitsky Lane.

The construction started, and the first thing we did was break a wall to access the place because there were windows and a system of underground communications at the site of the future entrance. Breaking a wall in a building on Okhotny Ryad requires a lot of permits, and we had too many. So, we started going through the government agencies, and it was a bit of a journey. We went back and forth, over and over, like in the song “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC, knocking on every door. It took months to get all the signatures and approvals.

Losing 40 Million Rubles, Investors and Faith in the Future

Two weeks after the construction began, the city declared a lockdown, and that was the most dramatic thing to happen. What did it mean for us? — A disaster. The investors thought that “in such turbulent times, it’s better to lose 40 than all 100 million already invested in the project.” “There is no money, but you hold” on”—that’s how we kept each other’s spirits up. It seemed like the whole team was losing faith in the project and our future. Did we have a plan? Nope. There could’ve been all these nice words about enthusiasm, motivation, and our “Dream Team,” but there weren’t. Believe me, we were exhausted.

We approached everyone we knew, from venture capitalists to restaurateurs, looking for someone who had a lot of money and, most importantly, someone who was willing to wait. At the same time, we worked on the design, looked for furniture and decor elements, and made posts for our guests on social networks. There was a lot of routine work, like calls, letters, presentations, and meetings. It seemed like it would never end. We could write a whole other article just about that. But in the end, we did find the money—but at what cost?

What have We Achieved in the Last 2 Years?

The revenue and profits have increased by 400% (year over year).They say you can look at three things forever, but we disagree—four.

Our facilities and office team has grown by 4x to 170 people, and now we’re in this active growth phase, so we’re always on the lookout for top talent. Just last month, we set up a whole new marketing department, with a mix of in-house and outsourced staff.

We’ve also rebranded, giving our corporate identity, menu, and website a complete makeover. Even our values and brand positioning have been revamped.

We’ve hired a CTO and developers and opened a full-fledged IT department. Why? Because our team’s got a cutting-edge product in the works, something that’s set to become one of the best solutions for HoReCa. We’re already using separate modules of the system, and by September, we’ll have a brand-new payroll system and an app for tracking shifts.

The company has started its own knowledge base, which was a huge improvement over all the multi-page presentations of regulations that we had before. Timeless Wiki was launched in the summer of 2021, and it’s been a game-changer. It’s a sleek and handy site with everything you need for work, plus some extra goodies. The articles are written in a way that feels like real life, not like some boring legal stuff (which, let’s face it, can be a bit of a drag sometimes). Now, there are almost 200 pages in the knowledge base, organized into seven large sections.

Team Expansion

Our TIMELESS ideology is built on five key values: People, Wow, Virtue, Scale, and Design. The most important of these is the people who interact with our brand. This includes guests, employees, partners, investors, and our loved ones. People will always come first for us. That’s why we take a careful approach to finding new talent for the team. Every vacancy, whether for senior managers or line employees, has these values in it. One of the first things we ask in an interview is, “Tell us what they mean to you.” We’re looking for candidates who are “class A,” meaning they’re at least a small star in their field.

We’ve come up with our own system for selecting candidates. It’s based on Jeff Smart and Randy Street’s book, “Who: Solve Your #1 Problem.” Now, each candidate goes through several stages, including 3 rounds of interviews and references from former colleagues and managers. We record the results for each stage on a scorecard based on our key criteria.

The first person in the office to be interviewed under this new system was the Operations Director. The interview for this position was prepared for almost 4 months because the COO was supposed to be the first person hired from the market in the company’s history.

The hiring process had several steps and took about 16 hours altogether:

·        An online screening;

·        A face-to-face interview with the CEO;

·        Two tests to take (one in the office and one from home);

·        A chat with each employee who was supposed to start reporting to the COO;

·        A casual lunch to bond a bit;

·        A final discussion about the job terms and other important details.

Overall, the first interview didn’t go so well, but we were lucky enough to get a cool manager with experience in one of the largest IT companies in Russia.

All the later interviews had a less complicated process, but our approach has reliably shown its success over time. We’ve found some incredibly talented people! They’ve been instrumental in helping us create a brand new, holistic image of TIMELESS.

Rebranding

Up until about the middle 2021, most establishments had that old-fashioned vibe going on, with cheap-looking menus and a pretty provocative design. They had these bright visuals on social media and their websites, and honestly, it was a bit much. I mean, the gold back then was literally blinding, and it all came from business out of the basement (click here). It was good for its time, I guess. But there’s a big difference between the brand then, at the beginning, and now. Last June, we felt it was the right time to make a change, so we started rebranding.

The main issue, of course, was money. Even though the company was doing well financially, rebranding seemed like a very costly undertaking, to put it mildly. But it was worth it. At the end of the day, we wanted our new identity to reflect our position as premium lounge bars, not just to be called so.

Do you think we started a global search for designers? No, we knew exactly who we wanted to turn to — our art director had been following the projects of this cool American design bureau for several years. They specialize in brand identity and architectural design in the premium segment, and have received international recognition many times. Despite the “titularity” of these guys, it turned out that we could afford their services.

We decided on a concept that was elegant and minimalist. We got the finished project a month and a half later, which was really fast. Usually, it takes three times as long to develop an identity. Besides the basic branding elements—like Pantone colors, graphics, and fonts—the team presented a concept for merchandise that we can implement in the future.

What About the Money?

·        We spent 1.5 million rubles on rebranding.

·        The new website cost 2 million rubles.

·        The complete renewal of the menu cost 500,000 rubles.

·        Other expenses related to the rebranding—such as replacing branded elements in all establishments, reprinting menus, replacing staff uniforms, and replacing signage—add up to 1.5 million rubles.

The rebranding didn’t just affect the design; it also changed the menu. Since TIMELESS first opened, the menu hadn’t really changed, so a lot had to be done. We changed everything: from signature hookahs and bar lists to lemonades and snacks. In just three months, we got it all done, and the new menu launched in October. For each signature item, we created its own concept. For example, the cocktail list was divided into musical styles, and the hookah menu was split into two trends: Botanica and Creativia.

Design. Architecture. TIMELESS

We’re setting the bar high, raising the bar, and raising it some more. We’re choosing the best locations, increasing the size of the premises, and spending more money on design, materials, furniture, and equipment. Every new establishment must be better than the previous one, and we’re making sure that’s the case.

We’re not tied down to a single style—each of our venues is curated to be one of a kind. But at the heart of it all, it’s all about premium and cozy vibes. Our first TIMELESS spot started as a simple chamber loft, built from the ground up by a passionate team of four. The second one became themed. Here, you can choose to spend your evening immersed in the world of antiquity or cyberpunk, transported to the Looking Glass, or part of the vibrant entourage of Foggy Albion. The third establishment draws inspiration from the timeless classic, The Great Gatsby, making it a place where fun, carefree days and parties are always in the air.

After the rebrand, we decided to shake things up and embrace a fresh direction in architectural design. The project for the fourth TIMELESS location was the perfect way to switch things over to elegance and minimalism. (By the way, minimalism didn’t quite work out as planned, but we’re trying to bring this concept to life in the fifth place.)

Two other big changes happened at the same time. First, we decided to build two establishments in parallel. We were in the middle of negotiating the lease of some premises at the Trichogornaya Manufactory when we got the chance to build TIMELESS on Novy Arbat. We jumped at the chance, and construction at Arbat began. But we didn’t give up on our dream of opening several venues at the same time. We found an amazing space on Bolshaya Yakimanka  in the “Gimenei” mall, and that’s how we ended up with two amazing projects called TL 45 and TL 54 (if you thought there was a reference to the iconic Studio 54, you got it right).

Note:

Why TIMELESS 45? Because TIMELESS 54!

In China and Japan, the number 4 is thought to be an unlucky one, so we decided not to risk checking what the consequences of Asian superstitions might be. We named the new place “45” to avoid any potential negative associations. The next one will be its mirror twin, “54.”

Spoiler: Our little trick worked, but not immediately—we were six months late with the opening and opened with 20 million rubles in debt.

The second big change was setting up a full-fledged development department, which now has 8 people on staff, instead of 4, working on new projects. The architectural design project was taken on by the guys from the design bureau, who we’d already worked with to build a venue on Okhotny Ryad.

The plan was to have the openings ready by the end of 2021 and the start of 2022. But things didn’t go as planned, and construction took way longer than expected. Let me give you an example of TIMELESS 45. We picked a tough spot on the level below the ground floor in an old building (built in 1961) on Novy Arbat. The obvious advantages were the location in the heart of the capital and the short distance to top-tier restaurants and hotels—perfect for our target audience.

Here are the challenges we faced:

1. The ceilings in the place weren’t high enough. It’s important for us to have a spacious feel so that our guests feel comfortable. So, we deepened the floor by almost a meter.
2. There were some delivery delays from abroad. Most of the furniture and equipment is ordered and manufactured abroad. To keep things unique, we mix and match a bit, getting one or two items from different places around the world. We had a funny story with designer tables—they travelled halfway around the world and were delayed at all the borders before reaching us just one day before the opening. And such stumbles followed us everywhere. 
3. The unique interior details were so complex that manufacturers refused to produce them. Take that troublesome wave-shaped ceiling, for example, made of natural wood. No craftsman wanted to take on such a project. It was completely new for the Russian market.

These are just a few of the many challenges we overcame to create TIMELESS 45. We assembled it bit by bit to make it the flagship of the chain and one of the best lounge bars in the country.

The place has subdued lighting, designer furniture, and art objects. Cubist and abstractionist figures are combined with black-and-white photographs. We spent months finding the right paintings and statues, selecting them from thousands of works. Many interior elements were created from scratch based on our sketches.

As with each of our places, there are unique features, and one of them is the personal street elevators that lead directly into the lounge. Just think about it: street elevators going to the basement on Novy Arbat! When we started working on this idea, we realized that no one in Moscow, and probably in Russia, has ever done anything like this. One elevator is designed for the convenience of all guests, leading to the common areas, while a second, discreet elevator is reserved for VIP guests.

TIMELESS on Novy Arbat opened at the end of March, and we’re currently working on the Yakimanka venue, set to open in the fall. Once we do, we’ll put our energy into securing a spot in Moscow City. We’re also developing an international direction. Our team has already visited Dubai to study the market and laws, and we’re looking for a good spot for the business. All these steps bring us closer to one goal: to create our own IT system and bring it onto the world stage.

Where It Got Started

After graduating from Oxford, I had plans to become a game developer. I wanted to start some cool business in IT, but there weren’t any opportunities at the time. I also tried to get employed, but that didn’t work out either. I still wanted to use my professional skills, so I decided to compromise: I would go offline, but I would code there.

We’ve been working on our own IT system for almost five years. The first prototype appeared in the early days of TIMELESS. It was an iOS app for taking orders that I created. However, when developing it, I missed an important detail: market research. After the first review, I found several interesting and suitable solutions for automating lounge bars. One of these is Poster, which is a cloud-based system for managing restaurants. This cooled my ardor and made me look more closely at existing products and start developing the ones that really weren’t there.

For example, I had a much more informed approach to a multi-part payroll system and a cash flow accounting unit (CFU). Since I had no experience in web development, I found an easy way to realize my ideas. Google Sheets and Google App Script were a tacky crutch solution at the time.

I realized that it would be difficult to scale with tables alone, so I started developing a pilot version of the IT system while the second establishment on Mayakovskaya was being built.

The first attempt was a total flop. We tried an unusual way of running the project using Zerocracy, a platform where the client only contacts the architect. The architect splits a large task into smaller pieces and sends requests to free performers. The idea is interesting, but it didn’t work for us. Since developers write separate small pieces of code, they don’t see the big picture. Later, these pieces couldn’t be united to make the system work. In the end, the experiment cost us 2 months and 700 thousand rubles.

After that, we tried classic custom development. We found wemake.services, and together, we created the first pilot project without a backend. We spent two months and about 800 thousand rubles on the project but eventually decided not to develop it further. Still, it turned out to be useful. Thanks to this experience, we were able to get a feel for the market, understand the processes, estimate the investment, and figure out who we’d need to get our own team together.

Searching for a CTO

The third place finally gave us the resources we needed to hire a CTO. At first, we used personal connections, thinking that it was the best way to find the right person for the job. We hunted people from large foreign tech companies and one well-known online bank. After 2.5 months, we hadn’t found anyone, and we realized we needed to change our strategy and start looking in the market.

It took us almost a month and a half to draw up the vacancy, and we had to check every word to make it appealing to the top candidates. We posted on hh, habr, and vc. The salary offered for the technical director ranged from 500 to 700 thousand rubles. And best of all, after a year of work, the candidate would get an official share of up to 5% of the profit in each new place. Why so much? We realised that we wanted to get the best specialist on the team, for whom hookah story might not be that prestigious. We knew the high terms might have made it feel like a scam project, but it was the only chance we had to find the star we so desperately needed.

Hiring Funnel:

600 CVs -> 20 Zoom screenings -> 5 face-to-face interviews -> 2 technical interviews -> 1 offer.

It took us almost 4 months to find the perfect candidate, and we were lucky to meet such a short deadline. We started searching through personal contacts in June, switched to mass search in the middle of August, and the offer was accepted only at the end of September. The technical director of TIMELESS became Alexander, a third-generation Bauman graduate.

Alexander’s Profile:

• Participated in a secret project to develop a cross-platform document editor at mail.ru;
• Created and launched a teamwork application for the US market that combines the functionality of Task Tracker, Telegram and Slack;
• Launched a chat platform for the hotel business, which helps hotels communicate effectively with guests;
• Created his own development studio, where he launched startups and developed applications, including ones for the foreign market;
• Led several courses at Netology, for example, on the React framework for frontend developers or on backend development on Node.js.

And this is only a small part of his achievements.

He stumbled across TIMELESS by chance when the job started appearing regularly on vc and habr. At that time, Alexander was already looking for a new job because he wanted to work on his own big project, not just create technological products to order.

Forming the Team

Just like with the CTO, we started by checking out our personal networks to get some top senior developers on board. But we made a few major mistakes that seem pretty obvious now. Firstly, they didn’t consider that a lot of people don’t understand what kind of IT system can be created for a lounge bar. Even now, even though we’ve got working modules, people don’t get what else can be automated in an offline business. It’s like all the tools are already out there. Secondly, not many people want to trade stability and work in a big technology company like Yandex or VK for a risky project by an unknown company like TIMELESS. One developer told us, “Mum, I’m coming from XX to automate hookah places: D”.

We looked through our personal contacts, and we also posted the job on some specialized sites and got recruitment agencies involved. At the same time, we started getting the technical documentation ready and began developing the design system. We found a really great design bureau that specializes in UI/UX/motion design really quickly, mainly thanks to my experience in prototype development and a “good eye” (if you want their contact info, send a DM.)

The first guys—frontend and backend developers—joined the IT department team in November last year. A little later, in December 2021-February 2022, we teamed up with Alexander’s former colleagues. They had worked with him on a project to create a chat platform for hotels.

Now, the IT team has 9 people: 2 senior frontend developers, a senior backend and a senior full-stack developer, a middle backend developer, a junior front-end and QA engineer, managed by the CTO, and me as the CEO.

Grading and Gamification: How We Create One of the Best Solutions for HoReCa Automation

Once we brought on a CTO, we started building a design system. At that time, the designers had two goals:

1.   To make the UI in the style of spaceship consoles, like in sci-fi movies.

2.   To create a cutting-edge design so that users would feel like they’re holding the future in their hands. At the same time, we didn’t want the system to become old-fashioned or irrelevant in the next 10 years.

My experience in game development and my passion for games, which I’d always wanted to incorporate into my work, directly influenced the final version. It takes forever to make a cool frontend for a system. Developers can grab an off-the-shelf component, but they spend weeks creating their own. For example, developing one type of Select component took about a month.

People often ask, “Why go to all that trouble?” when they’re seeing the system for the first time. Here’s the deal:

1.   That’s our way to show we care about our users. We hope that they’ll enjoy using our product instead of being buried in boring lists and tables every day. This will help them to stay passionate about their work and not burn out by getting too caught up in a routine.

2.   We’re creating a super complex system, probably the most complex on the market. That’s why we’re putting an intuitive and elegant interface between the user and the business logic of the application. We believe that our design will awaken a person’s inner child and immerse them in the processes without them even realizing it.

3.   What’s particularly exciting is that we get to create a truly exceptional product that’s not only stunning in its design but also incredibly functional.

4.   This is great for MarHR—HR Marketing. We can position TIMELESS as a great place to work for potential talent. The external “cover” perfectly demonstrates our internal quality standards.

5.   A good-looking system is easier to sell.

We’re working on UI/UX and motion with the design studio pretty much every day. We’re developing new blocks and improving the existing ones. As of today, we’ve refined 3,000 comments in Figma alone.

System Functionality

Everything that needs to be implemented in the system is recorded in a huge technical documentation. It contains information about sections, available pages, and user flow; about entities in the database; the logic of storage and processing at the backend level; the rules of interaction with the interface; and components for frontend developers. And to manage this gigantic project, we use the YouTrack platform.

We kicked things off with the login, locations, users, and roles modules. Then, the team got to work on the payroll system. However, this February “slightly” changed our plans because we were handling all the finances in Poster, which cut itself off from the Russian market after the start of the special operation. We couldn’t find a good alternative, so we decided to create our own financial system right away, and it was released a month later. Then, the IT team went back to the roadmap, specifically the payroll block. I’ll fill you in on all the details, but it’s going to be a bit complicated.

Our payroll system is made up of a few different components, like fixed rates per hour, shift, or month; percentage of profit and revenue of the location (only for management staff); shares of personal sales and sales per shift, which can be customized for specific categories or products.

The system is pretty unique in that exam bonuses and (pay attention!) quest bonuses are also taken into account when calculating salaries. These can modify any of the base parameters. Quests are tasks with conditions and time limits. Employees are rewarded in percentage and/or cash for their fulfillment. You can think of exams as a special case of a quest that happens on a permanent basis every three months.

There are three types of quests now:

·        Selling a specific product or a product from a given category;

·        Fulfilling a sales plan for a selected period;

·        Controlling transactions for a certain category of financial expenses.

The number of quests will increase in the future. We get new ideas thanks to feedback from the managing staff of the venues. This way, the system will never lose its relevance and will meet the needs of users.

Depending on the role and grade of the employee, you can set different basic parameters. Exams and quests allow you to improve the starting indicators, thereby significantly increasing the salary. To avoid overwhelming the user with too many parameters, the personal account will display multi-level details, including shift performance, bonuses, fines, and quests.

What’s Next?

Salaries are just one part of the system, and it’s set to be released in early September. After that, we’re planning to add an analyst and a couple more developers to the team. This’ll let us split the team into groups that’ll work on two or even three big projects at once: booking, paid leave and sick leave, and checklists. Altogether, the roadmap has 25 big projects in it, and it’s designed to take about five years to develop.

Plans And The World

Every step we took brought us closer to our global goal of becoming an IT company of international level. We built the first establishment practically by our own hands and then went on to develop a network of premium lounge bars. We also developed our own system, starting with Google scripts. To help us achieve this goal (or at least try to), we came up with three development strategies; let’s call them B, A, and AAA.

Strategy B: Offline Business Development

This is the most basic strategy (a kind of “plan B”), and it consists of building and launching new establishments all over the world. We’re considering Dubai, New York, Monaco, Shanghai, and others as potential cities. The main emphasis is on systematization and automation of openings, as well as operational management of the network. And, of course, we’re always looking for ways to improve the quality of design, product, and service.

The more new locations we have, the more money we have to create tech products. The thing is, we build new locations with private investments, and we get money to work on IT projects directly from the turnover of locations in the form of royalties. So, by developing offline business, we are less dependent on the influence of investors when developing our own digital products. International expansion is a challenge, and it’s not just about construction. Each country has its own laws, products, and ways of marketing, and we have to think about all that. We think it’d be a good idea to open our own production facilities, but without serious experience and international expertise, it could take a year or more.

Strategy A: Selling Saas Solutions

There are two options. The first is the launch of a comprehensive B2B solution for retail and HoReCa. The final version of our system will automate almost all operational areas of any retail chain or enterprise. We realize that mass sale of such a large “monster,” also customized for us, is unlikely but still possible. The second option is to sell our IT product in parts. In this case, the user will receive only the solutions necessary for their business. For example, one of our investors expressed an interest in implementing our financial module for their own network of medical clinics.

Strategy Aaa: Creating a Digital Product Incubator for the International Arena

This plan is equally ambitious and challenging, but TIMELESS has a few advantages over the competition. For starters, we have our own offline expertise and understanding of the real market situation, and it’s constantly growing. To create the incubator, we’re going to gather several R& D teams (research and development) and invest money to help them grow from the strategies we’ve already mentioned. Preliminary estimates say that such a large-scale project may take 10-15 years to complete.

The best part about all these strategies is that they’re self-sufficient and can be used to develop different areas at the same time. For example, we could open lounge bars around the world and sell parts of the system. We’re currently working on the project of the first establishment abroad, both remotely and locally. So, in early July, our team went on a business trip to Dubai to check out the market and start looking for a good location.

We get that some (okay, almost all) of our plans sound ambitious, but TIMELESS itself started in a basement with crazy ideas. And in just 4 years since we started, we’ve grown 25 times, and in 2022, we’re projected to exceed 1 billion rubles in annual sales.