Home-cooked taste you can trust

I spent my childhood summers in the village with my sister. At noon we had a rule — us kids had to nap for an hour or two. While we slept, grandma baked her cookies, and whoever woke up last got the biggest one as a prize. So sometimes we would lie there for hours, refusing to get up.

Those cookies were bland, dry, sugarless and shapeless — and the most delicious of my childhood. That taste will never come back. This is exactly why I created Ulupa: to bring the real taste of home back, and to give trusted home cooks a real income.

I came up through restaurants the long way — from waiter to F&B and purchasing manager in hotels and restaurants. Today I run my own business in food.

For me Ulupa is not only a business. In every neighbourhood there is someone who cooks better than any restaurant, yet spends a lifetime feeding only their own family — because your own kitchen does not count as work. Ulupa gives those people an income, a name and guests of their own; and it gives everyone who misses home food a plate that takes them back home. This is the work I want to make my main one, and in time take beyond Georgia: the taste of home is needed everywhere.