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Vadim Valentinovich Lapin
Co-founder and Managing Partner
A shoe manufacturer who 'accidentally' entered restaurants at 40, Vadim Lapin spent his early career importing Dolce & Gabbana while his father built Soviet rockets. When a landlord called about a sushi boom, Lapin opened his first restaurant with no experience. Twenty years later, he controls 150 venues—because he learned every POS transaction personally.
Transformation Arc
At forty years old, Vadim Lapin had never run a restaurant. He manufactured shoes, imported Italian fashion, and operated Dolce & Gabbana stores on Nevsky Prospect. Then his landlord called from Moscow with an observation about sushi, and Lapin invested $600,000 in an industry he knew nothing about.
For me, difficulties are not an obstacle but rather a stimulus.
The Accidental Restaurateur #
The origin story defies the typical founder narrative. There was no childhood passion for hospitality, no culinary training, no master plan. Dmitry Sergeev—Lapin’s landlord for the fashion store—spotted a “crazy sushi boom” in Moscow and asked a simple question: “Can we develop this in St. Petersburg?” Friends opening a fitness complex needed someone to run the adjacent restaurant space. Lapin, for reasons he still describes as accidental, took it on.
The first Ginza restaurant cost approximately $600,000 and opened to empty tables. Moscow’s Hotel Slavyanskaya provided the chefs. For three months, Lapin wondered if he’d made a catastrophic mistake. Then word spread, and the accidental venture became a sensation.
What followed revealed the founder’s distinctive approach. Rather than delegate operations to experienced restaurateurs, Lapin enrolled himself in r_keeper POS system training. He learned how every transaction flowed through the business. Twenty years later, he maintains that granular awareness: “Not a single cup of coffee passes me by. I still personally watch all expenses, from salaries to food cost.”
Generational Distance #
The generational divide that shaped Lapin’s worldview preceded restaurants entirely. His father worked as a “red director” at a Soviet defense enterprise—the generation that built rockets and believed in central planning. Young Vadim attended lectures by reformer Anatoly Chubais at the Leningrad Engineering-Economics Institute and absorbed a different philosophy. “He thought about rockets, I thought about Chubais’s lectures,” Lapin later reflected. “We had nothing to talk about.”
That intellectual distance from Soviet orthodoxy positioned Lapin for the chaotic opportunities of perestroika and its aftermath. While others saw only collapse, Lapin saw ventures: cooperative consumer goods production, shoe manufacturing, Italian fashion importing. Each built capital. Each taught operational discipline. None suggested restaurants.
The Philosophy of Difficulties #
The Latin motto that Lapin adopted early—Labor omnia vincit improbus, persistent work conquers all—became more than branding during the 2008 financial crisis. As Russian consumer spending contracted and competitors closed venues, Lapin articulated the philosophy that would define his approach through three more national crises.
“None of my victories would have happened without difficulties along the way,” he told Restoranoved in 2009. “It’s precisely problems that make us stronger, temper us, give us will and strengthen our drive for success. For me, difficulties are not an obstacle but rather a stimulus.”
The words sound like motivational rhetoric until measured against actions. During the 2008 crisis, Ginza Project doubled its restaurant count—from 25 to 50+ venues—while competitors retreated. When the 2014 Crimea sanctions banned European ingredients and collapsed the ruble by 50%, Lapin pivoted menus toward Georgian and Uzbek cuisines that sourced domestically. When COVID-19 locked down Russian cities in 2020, Ginza’s delivery service—operating since 2007—provided continuity.
The personal tests ran deeper than business metrics suggest. Multi-year lawsuits with former partner Vladimir Spirin consumed attention across ~20 legal proceedings. A personal bankruptcy petition was filed in 2019. Co-founder Dmitry Sergeev—the landlord who first called about sushi—sued Lapin for $1.2 million loan repayment and won a 204 million ruble judgment in 2018.
Through these struggles, Lapin maintained the public visibility that defines his leadership style. “In St. Petersburg, almost everyone knows Vadim Lapin,” one profile noted. “You can only catch him on the run and, of course, in one of his dozens of restaurants. He’s always talking to someone there.”
The Trust Equation #
The COVID crisis tested something beyond financial resilience: whether 4,000 employees would return after lockdowns lifted. In an industry where 40% of Russian restaurants closed permanently, the question had existential weight. Lapin’s answer came in the form of a simple statistic: all 4,000 returned.
“4,000 people work at Ginza, and after the crisis they all returned—isn’t that an indicator?” he asked rhetorically in a 2021 interview. The loyalty reflected two decades of operational choices: compensation practices, working conditions, and the visible presence of a founder who personally monitored every transaction rather than disappearing into corporate abstractions.
Succession Without Dynasty #
At 61, Lapin has begun transferring ownership to the next generation while explicitly rejecting dynasty language. Son Mark Lapin, a law school graduate, now partners in the holding and operates independent concepts—Grecco and Mercado del Sol—under the Ginza umbrella. In 2021, Grecco won “Best Restaurant St. Petersburg,” validating Mark’s capabilities independent of family name. Daughter Karina holds ownership shares in family businesses.
The asset transfers began in 2014-2018, when Lapin restructured 38 companies to include his children. But the philosophy differs from typical succession planning. “I don’t consider you an ‘heir’ or us a ‘dynasty,’” Lapin has stated publicly. The distinction matters: earned partnership versus inherited position.
Whether the next generation can replicate the counter-cyclical instincts that defined the founder’s crisis responses remains uncertain. The stoic philosophy—difficulties as stimulus, not obstacle—emerged from Lapin’s specific experience: perestroika’s chaos, the 1998 default, the 2008 crash. Mark and Karina grew up differently.
The Detail Discipline #
The founder’s most distinctive trait appears in a small operational choice made two decades ago. Enrolling personally in r_keeper POS training wasn’t about distrust of employees—it was about understanding what he was building before delegating it. That detail discipline created the standards that enabled scale.
“Restaurant success isn’t in any one thing, especially in Russia,” Lapin observed. “Success is most often made of nuances.” The insight applies beyond hospitality. Systematic operators who master details before delegating them build organizations capable of surviving founder absence. Lapin’s 150-venue empire runs on principles established when he personally tracked every cup of coffee in a single St. Petersburg restaurant.
His formula, offered simply: “Success is love for your work and respect for people.” Twenty years after accidentally entering restaurants, the shoe manufacturer who learned cash registers has built an empire on that foundation.