Iryna became one of eight entrepreneurs awarded a grant through a UWF competition aimed at expanding businesses in the Khmelnytskyi and Lviv regions. The aim was to create new jobs for women, demobilised service members, veterans and their families, as well as internally displaced persons (IDPs), as part of the project “Women. Peace. Security: Acting Together”, implemented by the UWF with support from the British government.
One day, in the family kitchen where she and her mother kept the culinary traditions of Halychyna alive, Iryna found herself talking about life and how women are expected to survive on a pension. That conversation sparked the idea for a family business – an online bun bakery where older women who still have the strength and desire to work could improve their livelihoods. After a short discussion, they decided to bake the buns Iryna remembered from her childhood visits to her grandmother’s village.
Iryna’s mother, a third-generation cook, had always prepared delicious meals for the family and collected recipes. With her own background in marketing, Iryna decided to start a business producing buns to order and delivering them to customers. The first treats she made were the cheese buns from her childhood, and that is how everything began.
“I submitted several applications to different donors. My idea was supported, and I also enrolled in social entrepreneurship training, gradually refining my business model – my online bun bakery. I made my first sales and received my first orders,” Iryna recalls.
In July, she applied for a grant to expand her business and create jobs for women in the Khmelnytskyi and Lviv regions as part of the UWF’s “Women. Peace. Security: Acting Together” project. On the very last day of the application deadline, the electricity went out, and Iryna took her laptop to a petrol station to finish the proposal. The UWF selected her application from among forty submissions.
With the grant funds, Iryna purchased essential equipment: two refrigerators, a blast chiller, a combi oven, a coffee machine and an extractor hood, which allowed her to organise kitchen processes efficiently and create the conditions needed for bun production.
“When I applied, I already had some experience and had completed training. But I lacked equipment. What I have now has really helped me set up my bun production. In general, grants are a great foundation for launching a business, but after that you must continue to develop it,” Iryna says.
Now the rented kitchen fills with the smell of dough every day, as buns are baked to order by women of retirement age. Four of them are displaced from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and one is the widow of a fallen soldier. The oldest employee is 70. Not all of them have kitchen experience, but each came with a strong desire to work.
One of the kitchen workers, Olena Laskava, originally from Donetsk and living in Lviv since 2022, is an engineer by profession who has always loved cooking at home and had dreamed of living in Lviv all her life.
“Cheese buns are a novelty to me. We didn’t make them in our region. We had buns, but they were different, made with yeast dough. At home, I baked buns according to my mother’s recipe. I felt like a real chef in my own kitchen. Now I’m adapting to something completely different,” says Olena.
With cheese, chocolate, raisins, beef, sweet and savoury fillings, the range is constantly expanding. There are traditional cheese buns as well as savoury versions reminiscent of pizza. For now, most customers are individuals, but Iryna aims to enter the B2B market.
“Our buns are rooted in tradition, because all our recipes have stood the test of time. For many people in Halychyna, buns are associated with Christmas, but we promote a wide selection so that they can be enjoyed not only on holidays, but on any day of the year. That is what we are working toward,” Iryna explains.
She says her main target audience includes people who travel frequently or spend long hours on the road. That made her wonder how to deliver buns to them, and inspired the idea of cooperation with the OKKO petrol station chain. She is now working to meet the network’s requirements and establish a long-term partnership.
One of the conditions was the ability to shock-freeze products and store them for up to 14 days, as well as to present them in attractive, high-quality packaging. Iryna is currently working on fulfilling these conditions and believes that soon her buns will be available at OKKO stations.
She also plans to open production facilities in Kyiv and Vinnytsia, and to offer franchise opportunities to those interested.
“In my view, many people underestimate women, but we have enormous strength and potential. Women can do almost anything – I prove this with my own example. What matters is the drive and the readiness to seek out opportunities.” Iryna says.