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There is a growing health-awareness. Russians pay more and more attention to the quality of food, and large retailers have increasing product range. VkusVill is a E-grocery retailing chain and it offers healthy food at affordable prices. At the same time, the company has ambiguous reputation and the chain calls its competitive advantage the freshness and naturalness of the products, but Federal Service for Surveillance on consumer rights protection and human well-being and ordinary buyers found in them both ingredients not indicated in the composition and expired goods.

Once Krivenko, the founder, was driving home from the market and reflected on the fact that every time he was afraid to buy his favorite domestic dairy products: there was not enough information about how and by whom they were produced, where and how much they were stored. So he decided to open a chain of milk stores from responsible manufacturers with simple compositions and short shelf-lives products. Having at its disposal about 1 million rubles at the start, he hired a dairy production engineer and retail outlet manager for a salary of 20 thousand rubles, promising that the business would quickly gain momentum, found a small mill in the Kaluga region and agreed on the first delivery with delayed payment. The first «Izbenka» was opened in May 2009, but at the end of 4 months all stores were operating at a loss. The first 4 VkusVill stores were opened in June 2012 and to draw in customers, the stores organized abundant tastings, launched a loyalty program, and issued loyalty cards to all Izbenka customers free of charge.

VkusVill began to optimize costs: the number of sellers in stores was halved, goods with inadequate retail prices were removed from the assortment, they found smaller areas for new stores and reformatted equipment, which allowed to reduce investments for opening one store from 15-17 million rubles up to 5-6 million rubles.

By the end of 2013, the crisis was over: the assortment, the number of customers and the average bill were growing, but VkusVill managed to really fire only a year later, when the ruble collapsed almost simultaneously and food sanctions were introduced. When essentials or socially significant products disappeared from stores, they actually occupied the niche of quality goods.

The explosive growth was self-financed; from the beginning of 2015 to July 2018 the number of VkusVill stores increased 6 times — to 622 points.

The VkusVilla website looks like competent: the company actively talks about innovative building up strategies, broadcasts weekly flight reviews organized by the management, and responds to customer complaints. Explaining the success of VkusVilla, analysts and market participants agree that striking flexibility allows the selection of audiences from the company’s largest networks. From the very beginning, VkusVilla actively promotes the ideals of self-management and the concept of a horizontal corporate model.