Snack Attack

WHEN THE MOSCOW McDonald's opened its doors in 1990, it was seen as the beginning of a wave of fast-food restaurants that would conquer the Soviet empire with double cheeseburgers, vanilla milkshakes and french fries to go. But almost three years after McDonald's opened its world-famous Pushkin Square restaurant, Pizza Hut was the only other major foreign food chain to follow.


Now, however, the fast food frenzy seems finally to have begun.


Just as the Russian lifestyle is beginning to take a turn for the West, with its faster-paced, time-is-money ethic, several new Western fast-food restaurants are getting ready to be there with split-second service - with a smile.


"People here are starting to live faster", said Tanya Rudneva, a former McDonald's worker who is now the deputy director of Burger Kveen, which opened in central Moscow this month. "I think there will be a lot of restaurants like this in the future. It's a hard life. Nobody knows if they will even be able to eat tomorrow, but they can come here and eat well, fast and cheap today".


The American firm behind Burger Kveen, Exportex Corp. , is planning to open six more restaurants in Moscow this year. McDonald's will open two more restaurants this summer. Kombi's, a Yugoslav-Russian sandwich shop that opened in January, opened a second shop this month and plans to launch three more by the end of the year. A third Pizza Hut is in the works, as are plans for a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Taco Bell by 1994.


"There's a real need for this kind of service", said Irina Tolpygo, marketing manager for Pizza Hut, where 60 percent of the clients on the hard-currency side of the restaurant are Russian.


The changes in Russian life are also creeping into the cupboard. In foreign-owned supermarkets, Russians are finding an array of goods never before available to them. If they have the money - and, indeed, the percentage of Russians who can afford such goods is still small - Russian consumers can sample such Western products as Planter's peanut butter, Paul Newman spaghetti sauce, Creamette's enriched macaroni and Betty Crocker pineapple upside-down cake.


The scores of hard-currency grocery stores that have opened in Moscow in the past few years were meant to serve the capital's growing foreign community. But to their delight, the owners have found that the majority of their customers are Russian.


At Virginia American Food Store, whose stock of such staples as Cheez Whiz and Nestles Tollhouse chocolate chips has led expatriates to dub the store "the junk food hall of fame", 90 percent of the customers are Russian. Most of Moscow's major hard-currency grocery stores say 60 to 85 percent of their customers are Russian.


The Western goods - of which frozen pizza, salad dressing, sauces, seafood and ice cream are the favorites of Russian consumers - are also accommodating the values of Russia's nouveau riche. I'm eating better than my mother", boasts Yulia Abramova, 20, a Russian housewife whose husband runs a joint venture. "She always waits in lines and even then can't buy what she wants. I buy whatever I want and use the extra time to swim, play tennis, go to the movies, and do whatever I want".


The stores and fast-food restaurants are also used by Russians with limited amounts of hard currency who are looking for an indulgence and a taste of the West. At the Garden Ring supermarket, an Irish-owned store that opened last year, some of the favored items of Russian shoppers are bananas - long considered the pinnacle of exotic luxuries - and tropical imports like kiwis and star fruit.


Ira Monozhon, 22, and her mother, Tatyana Naimovna, 49, go to the hard-currency shops for fresh fruit, vegetables and ice cream.


"We buy for hard currency what we can't get in the markets or anywhere else", Monozhon said during a recent visit to the Garden Ring supermarket. "Of course it's better here, with no lines, but we can't afford to buy anything more".


The appeal of fast-food restaurants is also more than just the desire for a quick snack for the Russians who flock to McDonald's and Pizza Hut.


"We don't just sell pizza", Tolpygo said. "We sell a part of America, another way of life".


But according to Sergei Fotimchenko, head of the dietary laboratory at the All Russian Institute of Food, Russians who frequent hard-currency grocery stores and foreign fast-food restaurants are the exception. The vast majority of Russians are eating what they have always eaten - potatoes, cabbage, bread and meat. He doesn't expect that a few stores selling things like Froot Loops and a handful of restaurants offering hamburgers or burritos with guacamole are going to change that.


"The amount of foreign and fast food is so small that it cant influence Russian habits now or in the near future", Fotimchenko said.


Still, there is a danger of a backlash against the onslaught of things Western. Russians, bombarded by advertisements for goods they cannot afford, may begin to resent them. and society could increasingly become divided by the haves and have-nots, as defined by whether their freezer is stocked with microwave pizzas or boxes of frozen pelmeni.


"This creates a split society", said Vladimir Pivovaro, director of the All Russian Institute of Food. "The negative aspect is that the common consumer will get angry that he can't afford the new goods and services".


Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general who shops at Intercar Colognia, a German hard-currency store in central Moscow, is one of the haves. Loading his basket with frozen vegetables and Campari on a recent shopping trip, he reflected on the many browsers in the hard-currency food shops.


"Stores are packed with curious people even if they can't afford to buy", said Kalugin. "They are like cats sniffing, waiting, until they can taste for themselves".


Indeed, the foreign goods are out of reach for the majority of Russians. A Big Mac, which sells for 945 rubles (roughly $1), is an indulgence in a country where the average monthly salary is 18, 000 rubles ($18).


A visit with pensioners Elsa Kipariseva, 65, and Semyon Konov, 82, makes the point only too clear. The couple lives directly above Burger Kveen's new restaurant on Tsvetnoi Bulvar in a threadbare apartment.


But earning 30, 000 rubles a month in combined pensions, they know they will never be able to afford to pay 850 rubles for a burger and a soda. They watch the young people who have already become regulars at Burger Kveen, but they don't really bemoan what they are missing.


"We don't go there. It's too expensive for us", Kiparesiva said, sitting in her living room. "Yes, there will be more restaurants like this, but not for us. It's neither good nor bad. It's all the same".