Today in “Business of the Post-Apocalypse” the story of a Novosibirsk businessman who discovered kindergarten for adults. Respectable people rent at the entrance Cell phones, eat casserole all day and play children's games. And, apparently, they feel great.
“Hello, my name is Misha and I’m thirty years old.” This is roughly how every morning begins in the “City of Childhood” - a kindergarten for adults, which was opened a week ago by Novosibirsk entrepreneur Evgeny Pyatkovsky. Pupils come here at eight in the morning and leave at six in the evening - everything happens approximately the same as in a regular kindergarten. First of all, everyone gets to know each other (usually they come here for one day, so the group is formed anew every day). Then breakfast with tea and casserole, and then games and activities. Visitors make applique flowers from millet, pasta and glue, draw pictures, sculpt from plasticine, sing songs and play with toys. After classes there is lunch and a quiet hour, then an afternoon snack and games, and in the evening the whole group gathers and sums up the day. By and large, there is only one difference from a real kindergarten: at the entrance you have to take away mobile phones from all pupils.
As Evgeniy says, the evening summing up is the funniest point in the day's schedule. Guests receive their drawings and applications and laugh at them together.
According to my observations, adults draw worse than children,” says the entrepreneur. - And by the way, I am no exception. My two-year-old daughter once brought home a caterpillar made from colored paper from the garden. I tried to make the same one, and my caterpillar turned out much scarier.
Not even a month had passed since the opening of the “City of Childhood,” but by the third day of work, a queue of eighty people had signed up there, and there had never been a single time when the full group—ten people—wasn’t there in the morning. The entrepreneur is confident that interest in his kindergarten for adults will continue to grow:
“There is a child inside every person,” he reasons. - This is especially noticeable in men, of whom, by the way, we have much more than women - the ratio is approximately seventy to thirty.
Mostly, pupils aged from twenty-five to forty come to the “City of Childhood”; as a rule, fairly wealthy people who need to relax a little and relieve stress. “But the women who come to us are looking not for emotional relief, but for new acquaintances,” the entrepreneur says about his observations. “One said it straight out: “I’m more interested in meeting an adult child than some alcoholic.”
One day in kindergarten for adults costs 3,000 rubles. The price is not too high, but this pleasure cannot be called cheap either.
This is approximately the same as the daily cost of a hotel with breakfast, explains the entrepreneur. - Only they feed you four times here, not once. So I don't think it's expensive. And besides, this price allows you to cut off antisocial elements. After all, in every city there are many inadequate people who, in fact, are much more interested in taking a five-liter beer and sitting drinking while eating a cat in the basement (when asked what the cat has to do with it, Evgeniy replied that this is such an “old joke”).
The entrepreneur calls himself an ideological slacker and admits that his slogan in life is: “What can you come up with, as long as you don’t have to work.” Before opening a kindergarten for adults, he had already tried to launch several projects, some of which even became resonant. For example, the Anti-collector application, which blocked calls from collectors and initially aroused distrust not only among the collectors themselves, but also among debtors. True, in the end, as Evgeniy claims, Anti-collector nevertheless became a full-fledged business:
“At first everyone said that this was useless nonsense,” he recalls. - People on banking forums wrote that there are already many such applications and another analogue is not needed. And yet the project took off. After all, it’s not even about the idea itself, but about how to present it. For example, if you simply say “Kindergarten for adults,” who is interested? And if you present it as such an island of nostalgia for childhood, then people become curious.
The entrepreneur explains that this is the same story as with the iPhone: in fact, it’s just a phone, but for some reason people line up at six in the morning for the new model. This is because they are being sold not just a gadget, but some kind of involvement in the latest technologies, and they present it in exactly that way. It’s the same with Uber: a person does not buy taxi services, but the opportunity to quickly get into a car and get to his destination without spending very much money.
“If you find such a trick, you can immediately start a cool business,” says Evgeniy. - And to find it, you need to think that people are generally ready to buy. And, of course, every idea needs to be promoted and talked about.
True, not all of Pyatkovsky’s previous projects were successful. He tried to launch the “500 Natural Products” website, through which farmers would contact buyers, and the “Alkota” application, where illegal alcohol outlets could be marked on a map so that this information would be sent to the police.
“Many of my projects died because I didn’t do much about them,” admits Evgeniy. - But the ideas themselves were actually cool. Today, many interesting projects end like this: they die because people don’t know how to monetize them, although there are ways. A simple example: I was one of those who first brought . Back then, they were presented as assistant devices for those who wanted to quit smoking, and were not exactly very popular. And now people are making huge money from them. They just successfully transformed the idea itself: they moved away from trying to quit smoking to smoking safely. They guessed that people don't want to quit smoking, they just want it to be less harmful. And look how this business has blossomed.
When Pyatkovsky announced that he was opening a kindergarten for adults in Novosibirsk, it immediately caused a stir: it turned out that people miss the time when teachers sent them to breakfast and quiet time, they miss those feelings. Before launching the project, the entrepreneur visited several kindergartens in his hometown: he was looking for experts who could tell him how kindergartens in Soviet times were organized. As a result, we found teachers who gave advice and helped us find manuals and recipes for the kitchen. Now specially trained educators work in the “City of Childhood”, and the work is organized according to the unified educational program of the USSR.
I decided to copy the Soviet system not because it is better than others,” explains Pyatkovsky, “but because our clients were brought up in the Soviet Union under this program. If we built the work like in modern gardens, it would be strange and incomprehensible to them.
They wouldn't feel nostalgic.
The entrepreneur says that he is already planning to open kindergartens for adults in Moscow and St. Petersburg on a franchise basis and that he has also been offered to open another “City of Childhood” in Yekaterinburg.
“Before launching the project, I consulted with about a hundred acquaintances,” says Evgeniy. - And of all of them, only one told me that he would never go to “this madhouse.” But he is still a deputy, he probably already has enough of his madhouse at work. And everyone else agreed that the idea was great and told me that they themselves would be happy to come to my kindergarten.
Pyatkovsky believes that his project is something like a quest, only not for an hour, but for the whole day. Even if visitors feel awkward at first, after half an hour they get used to the role and begin to feel like children, forgetting that they have an “adult” life.
True, there is a sad moment in all this. When I ask the entrepreneur how he came up with the idea for such a project, he says:
“Once we were sitting with friends and discussing what happiness was and whether we had ever had it. We came to the conclusion that it was possible to be happy only when there were no worries and we were not responsible for anything. But, starting from school, we constantly owe something to someone: lessons, lectures, exams, work, when we have to be responsible for every decision. And we realized that a person can only be truly happy in kindergarten.
A kindergarten for adults has opened in Novosibirsk!
It turns out that people are nostalgic not only for kindergarten food, but in general for that state of carefree, calm existence that everyone has left in distant childhood. Especially, probably, now (during the crisis).
Especially people who are busy making money hard.
This kindergarten was opened by programmer Evgeny Pyatkovsky (he is also the creator of the once sensational Anti-collector application).
I may have spotted the idea in America - a similar kindergarten opened there a year ago: michellejoni.com/preschool-mastermind/:
There, adults gather once a week in a cluttered two-room apartment in Brooklyn, dress up, fool around, do arts and crafts, have a little snack and sleep a little:
A course in an American kindergarten for adults lasts one month and costs from 333 to 999 dollars (depending on the program chosen by each kindergartener). But these “kids” gather only once a week and only in the evenings.
And, by the way, this garden attracted a lot of the creative professional elite of New York: from photographers, writers to lawyers. Everyone comes here for the opportunity to forget their stress, feel like a liberated child and, perhaps, get a new dose of inspiration.
Our entrepreneur took a slightly different path. He decided to create his own kindergarten based on the beloved and not yet completely forgotten Soviet kindergarten (when the teachers were kind, the food was tasty, and creativity was simple and uncomplicated).
I rented a room of 120 square meters on the ground floor of this nice building in the Zeleny Bor microdistrict of Novosibirsk:
I found former heads of kindergartens from Soviet times so that they could tell how everything really was: what the children ate during their days, and the like. I learned recipes for traditional kindergarten dishes: porridge, casseroles, borscht, etc.
He decorated the kindergarten group in the spirit of a Soviet kindergarten.
Developed game programs for future kindergarteners (who must comply with them).
Hired teaching staff from existing kindergartens. And began to accept the first clients.
The first to arrive, surprisingly, were employees of Novosibirsk banks. It is they who, apparently, suffer most from the daily routine work and need urgent innocent emancipation.
The program for older children includes breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea. and even naps during the day! As well as games and handicrafts (you can take your handicrafts with you later). Kindergarten children are prohibited from using gadgets. But on the other hand, they receive exceptional treatment, like a child.
This pleasure costs 3,000 rubles per person (per day in kindergarten). The daily recruited group is no more than 10 people (you can read more on the website of the kindergarten for adults - dsvz.ru).
This is not the kind of kindergarten you need to go to every day. This is a one day session. Therefore, any adult can afford to go to this kindergarten at least once.
Personally, I don’t know if I would dare to go to this establishment (I’m kind of shy). But the fact that sometimes you want to be in the wide arms of a stronger and more intelligent participant in the game called “life” - yes, this happens.
I, too, like many other participants in this game, was too abruptly and irrevocably thrown out of my parents’ nest at one time. We took off, but never found any other support. We are still flying and rushing about in search of our fortress, where we can feel like we are behind a stone wall (and it no longer exists).
Although for someone else, returning to the past means meeting the child self, when everything seemed possible, and transferring a new free state into today's reality. This opens up new horizons for a person.
As the creator of a kindergarten for adults noted, one day of a session in a kindergarten is like an appointment with a psychologist. This is a return to a certain point of support, which can give a person new strength. And therefore it is very important in further development person.
That's why his kindergarten is not just a new entertainment for adults. This is team building, massive stress relief and rediscovery of yourself.
And that’s why companies go to it.
And thanks to this (including) it can become a successful project.
Its creator has no doubt about this and therefore offers a franchise to everyone from other cities.
Business Economics
According to the calculations (and practice) of Evgeniy Pyatkovsky, the cost of staying one client in a kindergarten is 1000 rubles. Margin - 2000 rubles.
With only 10 groups recruited per month, the project pays for itself in a month (that is, the garden only needs to work 10 days out of 30).
When fully loaded (full group every day), it will bring a profit of 600 thousand rubles per month.
And since this business is new, it has no competitors and will receive increased attention from the media (both federal and local).
The lump sum contribution (currently) is 200 thousand rubles. This includes the purchase necessary materials(from dismountable furniture to carpet and toys) and instructions (from food recipes to methods for organizing comfortable sleep for pets).
A preliminary estimate of the profitability of the business is 400 thousand rubles per month.
For detailed information on the franchise, contact Evgeny Pyatkovsky in a personal message - vk.com/anticoll - or on his page dedicated to the franchise - dsvz.ru/index.php/franschiza (but there is no detailed information there yet).
Novosibirsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg are already occupied. The rest of the cities are FREE! (still free)
P.S. Before I had time to tell the world about the Novosibirsk kindergarten for adults, a wave of messages appeared on the Internet that a similar garden had opened in the Kazakh city of Aktau (152 thousand inhabitants). It started working only on weekends so far, and in the first days of work, 20 people signed up for it!
Look, soon similar kindergartens will open in every Russian city!
In adult kindergarten
What is happiness?
Evgeny Pyatkovsky, a Novosibirsk programmer and entrepreneur, decided to “relapse into childhood.” Adults sometimes really need to disconnect from reality and throw off the burden of responsibility, at least for a while. Eat a casserole, sculpt a horse out of plasticine and go, as expected, for a quiet hour in the afternoon. The reboot takes place in the “City of Childhood” kindergarten for adults.
“We once sat down with friends and started talking - what is happiness anyway?
For some it’s just eating ice cream, but for others it’s the moment of buying a new iPhone...
And you know, in the end we realized that the happiest people are at kindergarten age. After all, then you study, work, raise children... And in kindergarten you are the real one. You're carefree. And everything is fine,” this is how Evgeniy Pyatkovsky explained his idea to a Mercy correspondent.
Evgeniy is 36 years old, he is a programmer and entrepreneur. And he constantly comes up with a variety of social projects. The Anticollector software application he launched has been running for two years now; more than half a million people have already used it. “Literally today we released a version of this application for iPhones,” says Evgeniy. – The essence of the application is an antivirus. If a collector calls you, you tell us, we check whether this person is really engaged in collection activities. If yes, then we block him, and after that neither you nor thousands of other people will receive a call from him.”
This year Evgeniy also came up with the Alkota project. “I had an idea to activate society in the fight against alcohol abuse. We invited people to report illegal points of sale of alcohol - the program was launched throughout Russia. But our citizens are still afraid to report such information, while we have received about 200 calls.”
Is it any wonder that such an active citizen came up with another social start-up? By the way, Evgeniy was largely inspired by his two-year-old daughter. “My daughter really loves going to kindergarten, and if she is not allowed there, she will be very upset.” So a resident of Novosibirsk decided to help his fellow countrymen have a blast - not in bars, karaoke or at home in front of the TV, but over semolina porridge and drawing and sculpting. “These are not some kind of quests!” – warn the creators of the project.
Evgeny Pyatkovsky, programmer, Novosibirsk entrepreneur, author of the idea of “Cities of Childhood”
Real childhood
“City of Childhood” started last week. The unusual kindergarten occupies 100 square meters, everything here is as it should be - a playroom, a sleeping area, a kitchen.
“Among our adult children – that’s what we call our visitors – 70 percent are men, 30 percent are women,” says Evgeny Pyatkovsky. “The other day, leaving kindergarten, one of our visitors said: “It’s better to have an adult child from kindergarten than a reveler from a bar.”
The author of the project notes: if men often come here to really get away from everything, to get away from business, then women do not lose the opportunity to meet each other. The kindergarten population is men on average 25-40 years old and women 23-30 years old. “Who are their professions, where do they work? We never ask and we forbid journalists from filming them or communicating with them. People want to escape their everyday worries.”
“Everyone just wants to forget about everything for at least one day. By the way, we have a mandatory rule: no contact with reality from morning to evening, phones are turned off,” says Evgeniy.
By the way, discipline is monitored here too. This is expressed in the fact that citizens with a hangover, much less in a state of alcoholic intoxication, will not be accepted into kindergarten.
The group consists of up to 10 people. For one visit, lasting from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., the client pays 3 thousand rubles. “And we don’t think it’s expensive. In any average hotel, a night's stay costs the same. And here you have four nutritious meals a day, healthy sleep, and educational games!” - notes Evgeniy.
“A spoon for mom, a spoon for dad!”
Impeccable interior authenticity
It all starts with getting to know each other. “Children, this is Ivan. He will be with you all day,” this is how the teachers introduce each participant to the group.
By the way, let us note: the teachers here are professional. Evgeniy recruited staff from real kindergartens, so the teachers have experience working with children's groups and conducting various active and educational games. But for the rest, children and adults are one and the same, Evgeniy is convinced. “We adults are just grown-up children. We are no different,” says the author of the idea.
Evgeny decided that the food in his establishment should be a real kindergarten - he wants to feel nostalgic for his childhood, Soviet times. Therefore, here the “children” are fed the well-known casserole and semolina porridge, fish cakes, and are given boiled milk. Customers, by the way, are delighted - they claim that this is how real, absolutely healthy food should be.
A mandatory item in the daily routine is quiet time. “This is just a godsend for an office worker or businessman - they either have irregular working hours or a continuous routine. And they rarely manage to sleep during the day. So we all happily lie down to take a nap for an hour,” explains Evgeniy.
Once, Evgeniy says, he tried to make a caterpillar out of colored paper, like his daughter - they make such things in kindergarten. But he didn't do it so cleverly. I would like to! Here in this unusual kindergarten You can try yourself in different genres: educators can offer a group of “children” a choice of more than 100 different games and activities. The games are chosen by the teacher depending on the age and composition of the group. It can be anything - playing town, modeling, drawing, applique, assembling castles from ordinary children's cubes... You can just play with dolls and cars. By the way, at the end of the day, all participants receive souvenirs: the same works that they made or painted in their kindergarten. Everyone will be pleased to hang their own picture in a frame over their desktop with the caption “Kolya. 35 years".
“I also experienced the role of a kindergarten student. You have no idea how great it is - all day without any responsibility! As in childhood. I was so distracted that even during the day I never smoked a cigarette - I simply forgot,” Evgeniy Pyatkovsky shared his impressions with “Mercy”. — This is better than any team building. By the way, we also held it - the other day a group came in full force, 12 people from one company. Psychologists note that it is useful for the adult psyche to relax in this way. Do you know how much laughter we have here at the end of the day?! This is such a small childhood holiday for everyone,” says Evgeniy.
A whole line of people who want to be a child has already formed in the “City of Childhood” - there are already more than 80 such adult “children”. And Evgeny Pyatkovsky is offering a franchise for his new business, and literally in the near future such kindergartens for adults will open in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk, Yekaterinburg... So get ready for the Festival of Obedience!
Similar projects are being implemented abroad. For example, American Michelle Joni Lapidos created an adult day care center in Brooklyn. The kindergarten clients read, play, do creative work, fight with pillows, dress up carnival costumes, play lotto and crocodile, hide and seek and tag, sing and recite poems, go for a walk and play in the sandbox with toys. You can sleep here directly on large soft pillows, sitting on the floor. Those who wish can talk privately with a professional psychologist. According to the owner of the kindergarten, this is a kind of psychological training for adults tired of their business life.
“The question is to make a person feel like a child, and this is only possible when they communicate with him like a child,” the creator of the “City of Childhood” project, Novosibirsk programmer Evgeny Pyatkovsky told Business FM
A kindergarten for adults has opened in Novosibirsk. For 3,000 rubles, you can spend a day there following the routine of a real kindergarten: exercise, breakfast with casseroles and porridge, playing outside, drawing, singing and, of course, quiet time.
All the client’s gadgets will be taken away from the client immediately at the entrance, so that he will forget about work at least for a day. No calls, not a single business piece of paper - just a carefree childhood, as stated on the cheerfully designed website of the City of Childhood project. This is psychological relief, an escape from reality, the project’s creator, Novosibirsk programmer Evgeny Pyatkovsky, explained to Business FM.
Evgeny Pyatkovskyprogrammer, creator of the “City of Childhood” project“We sat and thought about what happiness is and whether it ever existed at all. We came to the general opinion that happiness was in kindergarten. At school they were already forced to study, and the most carefree time was just in kindergarten. There are so many courses, trainings, quests, and whatnot. In essence, all this is a desire to renounce reality, from reality, emotional unloading, a whole day without a phone and with a quiet hour. I assure you, you will have the same relaxation as a month in Goa. Yesterday we opened for the first day, until the 15th everything was packed, ten people a day. My daughter brought me a caterpillar made from colored paper about a month ago, which she made in kindergarten. I tried to make the same one, but it turned out worse. You can then take a souvenir with you. In the drawing they write: “Masha, 30 years old.” There are more men, 70 percent. Age - from 25 to 40 years. The existing ones are working or former teachers kindergartens, that is, they know their job. The question is to make a person feel like a child. And you can feel like a child only when you communicate with him like a child, that’s all.”
Programmer Evgeny Pyatkovsky is confident in the success of his project and is thinking about opening similar gardens for adults in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They will be in demand, but not for long and among a very narrow circle of people, says psychologist and business coach Grigory Kramskoy.
Grigory Kramskoypsychologist, business coach“The Japanese were the first in such innovation. This is in demand to some extent. Interest in this is manifested at the level of trying something interesting, new, trendy. There are always a certain number of people who try something new, such experimenters in the consumer market. The second class of consumers of such a service are people who have a tremendous desire to reduce the level of responsibility in their lives, to be irresponsible at least for a while. There is an illusion that this is typical for people like top managers who have an overload of responsibility. Here, rather, the organizers will be disappointed. These are people who were forced into very responsible conditions and do not really want to be responsible everywhere and always, it’s just that here they have a legal opportunity to be irresponsible. People who run big businesses and build careers like to be responsible.”
There are similar kindergartens without children in the USA, but you can spend whole weeks there and even stay overnight. In addition, the client is picked up in the evening by a fake parent-actor.
14:00 / 07 Oct. 2016It is possible that in the future such a garden will appear in Yekaterinburg. Businessman Evgeny Pyatkovsky used to keep his store here.
Programmer Evgeny Pyatkovsky, who previously worked in Yekaterinburg, recently opened a kindergarten for adults in Novosibirsk. It went live on Thursday, October 6th.
The institution employs former and current kindergarten teachers. There are three people in total: two teachers and one cook. Visitors to the adult kindergarten do the same things there as kids. They sing, sculpt from plasticine and play. They prepare for them the same dishes that were prepared in Soviet gardens: porridge, casseroles and cocoa. They are fed exactly the same number of times as in the garden. And there is also an indispensable nap hour.
According to Evgeniy Pyatkovsky, the kindergarten for adults will be open every day. He doesn't expect any one visitor to stay there for more than one day.
I understand that everyone is working. For a longer holiday you need a vacation. And on vacation I want to go to completely different places,” Evgeny Pyatkovsky told NASHA journalist.
On the first day of operation of the kindergarten for adults, 10 people visited it. This is the number of people they are ready to accept into one group. But there are now 80 more people in line. We used the word queue for a reason. You can’t just get into an adult kindergarten, just like a regular kindergarten, from the street. Accepted strictly by appointment.
It’s interesting that people are now interested in kindergarten more than a man than women. Today, 70 percent of those enrolled in the institution are men. Their average age is from 25 to 40 years. The age of ladies seeking to enter the garden is younger - from 22 to 30 years. Evgeny Pyatkovsky suggests that some girls expect to find love there.
– Think about who you would choose: a man-child or an alcoholic? – adds Evgeniy.
The idea to create a kindergarten for adults came to him from his daughter.
– My daughter enjoys going to kindergarten. My friends and I also talked about when we felt happy, and agreed that happiness existed a long time ago in childhood,” says Evgeny Pyatkovsky.
Visiting kindergarten and feeling like a child again is not a cheap pleasure. One day will cost 3,000 rubles. This price is based on the costs of food, staff, rent and GBR. In the “kindergarten” there is a panic button installed just in case, otherwise you never know. But so far I haven't had to use it.
By the way, staying in the garden is strictly anonymous. Evgeny Pyatkovsky notes that no one will ever see photographs of visitors. Unless they themselves come to place them somewhere.
- For now, the kindergarten for adults operates only in Novosibirsk. Evgeniy plans to open similar establishments in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He does not rule out that perhaps a similar garden will appear in Yekaterinburg. The Novosibirsk resident has visited the Ural capital more than once and even opened a store here.
- In Novosibirsk, Evgeny Pyatkovsky is known as the creator of the Anti-collector application. It blocks calls to debtors that come from collection agencies.
