After nearly seven months since making their investment pitch on the Canadian reality-competition show Dragons’ Den, co-founder of Don’ya Ukraine’s Kitchen Janice Krissa had the chance to watch her own experience with the other kitchen members on Thursday. “We went to Toronto, we went to the big studios to face the dragons and it was life-changing.” Krissa and fellow co-founder Jorgia Moore, along with three other members, travelled east for the pitch to the dragons back in May. “I don’t think we even imagined we’d be chosen that quickly. We heard that people, on average, audition four times and we got on on our first audition,” said Krissa. Don’ya Ukraine’s Kitchen began as a donation centre providing support for newcomers fleeing the war in Ukraine. The team started making and selling modern Ukrainian food at Cook County Saloon in January 2023, then the operation expanded with the opening of two locations in Edmonton. Moore says watching their segment on Dragons’ Den feels like ‘a lifetime ago’ because their business has grown so fast since making their pitch. “I don’t even know what CPG was when we went on Dragons’ Den, which is consumer packaged goods. That’s what the dragons kept really stressing us to focus on. “Arlene Dickinson actually invited us to her Venturepark accelerator in Calgary which is focused solely on consumer packaged goods, so now we say CPG every single day. We’ve learned so much from this,” Moore added. Both co-founders believe their experience on Dragons’ Den helped scale their business and it’s done so in a way that the Kitchen will be launching Sunterra foods right before Christmas. “We never thought that we could do something like this,” said Krissa. “We doubled our sales from last year and we have focus again. It feels so good to be building our business with these amazing mentors through Venturepark.” Don’ya Ukraine’s Kitchen will begin working with the Alberta Food Centre in Leduc in the new year to change some things with the operation’s production, according to Krissa. Both co-founders say they believe they’ll have all their stores fully operational in the next five years and the Dragons believe in them too. “Michelle said this will exist. You will have both a successful franchise restaurant and successful consumer packaged goods and restaurants and in a couple years, we will take this business to the moon because it’s so amazing,” said Moore. “We’re way closer in the last seven months to being there than we’ve ever been. The end of December will mark our very first year as a for-profit business.” “They love the product. They love the mission. It was very clear and they just really want to see us succeed. They asked us to come back in two years, so that could be another option. We’ll see what happens,” Krissa added. Don’ya Ukraine’s Kitchen is now hosting what they call Dragons’ Den Week, by serving the same meal that the Dragons ate for this whole week. “We got one of the best investments of all, which is learning and mentorship. I think that you cannot quantify that in money, just the experience in total.”
