Friends, sisters and now business partners, we both come from a corporate past. We childhood up together, we grew up together and it seems that we continue together. My passion for a healthy lifestyle began in a turbulent time, both for me and for my sister Roxana. I worked hard from morning to night in a bank holding a management position in a branch, working every day with clients and I was overloaded in tasks. I was starting to have health problems, I felt tired, asleep, exhausted and generally without energy. At the same time, I started to gain weight, I started to dislike anything and I went from doctor to doctor until I discovered in 2012 that I had problems with the thyroid gland, I mention that I was a performance gymnast for 10 years and I didn't know where the thyroid gland was. I started to document myself, to search, to read, I read a lot every day after work about how to do well on my own, without taking the pills that the doctors prescribed for me “for life", I actually refused the synthetic drugs, I set out to do well on my own, said and done, through food and thought. At each check-up I was getting better and better, the doctors tacitly stated to continue as I know, that I do well what I do. Starting to read a lot about gluten-free / dairy-free / sugar-free diet, so slowly I laid the foundations of an extremely rigorous diet, so I attracted the business in my life on an emotional level, wanting very much to change my life professional but also emotional. During this time, Roxana was going through equally demanding moments, she also held a management position in a multinational company that refurbished hydropower plants, was in a job change and was intensely looking for a new job. I had a revelation, a dream, we can even say a dream. Both Roxana and I felt that what we were doing in the corporation no longer defined or fulfilled us. One evening I said to Roxana, “Roxy, aren't we doing something with these seeds that have restored my health and well-being?" Honestly, Roxana's first answer was: “how, what… no way .. but we don't know anything about what a bistro is, especially on the specific, raw & vegan", but we insisted on doing something together, anything but together. The answer was “let's do something small, we have nothing to lose but a few pennies" which we were willing to beat at the opening of the bistro. In 2015, with crazy courage, we actually both jumped into the ocean of entrepreneurship, opening a niche business, a business in which we were not given any chance, we were told that if you want to open on the Romanian market in 2015 something without meat / without dairy / without sugar, it was something crazy, unbelievable.

Like all beginnings considering that our contact with the Horeca industry was just going to the restaurant …… we threw ourselves into the ocean and learned to swim on our own.Considering that I was looking for a job, I said stop searching and started looking for a space in the area where we live Cismigiu Park, central area, here we grew up and here we both wanted to build our small business. I quickly found a small space of 16 square meters and in a month I opened it. Given that I worked for 11 years in several departments from financial assistant to commercial director, this background helped me a lot from opening a company, to being orderly, conscientious to negotiating contracts and many other skills.I quickly created a site with a friend and that's how it all started and the pictures dishes were made also by a friend.After a month we realized that the space we were in was too small, obviously the lack of experience immediately spoke for itself and then we moved to a space of almost 30 square meters, believe me 14 square meters extra is a lot.

First of all, bureaucracy. Nothing is easy and the entire Romanian legal and financial system does not seem to encourage new beginnings, especially when your wallet is restricted and you do not have access to business consulting in the Horeca field. I didn't know where to start, what kind of documents we need, authorizations, what it means to start hiring yourself, to join the employer and to pay a salary. Not to mention all the steps you have to take to have a functional, up-to-date kitchen. The first challenges were those related to authorizations, I found it difficult to find information on the internet, because you no longer understand anything in the sense that theory is theory, practice kills you. Then came the supply challenges, real estimates of financial plans, fortunately we both had a background in finance and quickly understood the numbers. My sister, Vilarina was always by my side, we consulted non-stop in any decision that had to be made, she was still working in the bank not having the right time to plan her resignation, and every day after the program she came to Bistro where she worked with me until late in the evening. It was not easy at all, our whole life was changed, we dedicate every second to the new business.Of course, like any entrepreneur, at the beginning, you don't have a salary, you work a lot overtime, weekends and you try to use all your own resources more and more until you manage to stabilize the company. In the evening we went home and for a long time we worked until 2:00 at night to better understand this industry.Our family supported us morally and with an active presence. For example, our retired father took care of the deliveries, while I learned to cook.After 1 and a half years in which we didn't pay at all, here you have to have a very well developed emotional system so as not to lower your self-esteem and it's time for Vilarina to leave her career in the bank for good, the bistro has started to grow and that's how we managed to create our own salaries.We built a niche business and it was obviously hard to find people who wanted to eat vegan and raw dishes. In fact, they changed their lives for the better by switching to a different level of nutrition. Only today we can say, after almost 6 years of activity, that we have built a base of constant and long-term clients, thanks to them but also to us, being a beautiful community, we arrived here. All their daily praises, encouraged us to move on, all the diet tips for the thyroid gland reached our customers, here finding that many people have thyroid disease or diabetes and through raw and vegan food customers and- they improved and changed lives for the better.

Probably all entrepreneurs talk about the fact that you have to have a strong personality so that you don't fall down in the first months when you don't know what you will pay your employees with, so we will continue to support this cliché. Of course, I overcame them with a strong personality and a crazy desire to get things done. I learned so much in my own business that I didn't both learn in all the years of my corporate career. We are involved in all aspects of the company, from accounting, procurement, documentation, pricing, customer relations, product creation, private corporate events, birthdays, special occasions, catering for events or part of communication and advertising, marketing, delivery to table service because the most important thing in a business is your relationship with the customer. An entrepreneur will overcome any challenge as long as he is involved in solving it and will not postpone his responsibilities. It is important to know your business very well because there will be a time when you will not be involved on all levels and then it is good to know what know how you will pass on to your employees.

Currently our bistro is digital – online it has been like since the beginning, in 2018 we moved to a space of 110 square meters, on Str Transilvaniei no. 11 near Cismigiu Park, so customers can order our dishes online, with delivery in all areas of Bucharest but can also visit us at our bistro near Cismigiu.We want to show those around us that health is not a series of restrictions, a diet or a detox program, but a tasty balance. It's simple: you eat healthy, you feel good, the energy you receive helps you to continue your daily plans with gusto.Unfortunately, when you want to make healthy choices, you have little choice. If you don't have time to cook, lunch at the office is often a compromise. We want to change that. We have weekly or monthly subscriptions that include lunch, spreads, dinner, juice and dessert and over 300 healthy dishes.Our menu is 95% gluten-free from spreads, soups, platters, main courses, cooked meals and our specialty, 100% gluten-free raw desserts, we are ready today to meet any request.We work with companies and provide catering services for their business events, important events in the lives of our clients: weddings, baptisms, birthdays.In the future we intend to continue what we do now, but with a greater capacity and workforce to find out about us all customers who need us, we like to do good, to bring joy to people's souls and health their life.All our dishes are cooked on the same day, because we like freshness, as my sister Roxana says: “a special taste with the smell of health".

Get to know your customer first, then build the business around it. We started the other way around, we gave birth to the Bistro only then we started to see what kind of customers cross our threshold.

Until a month ago we were like logo the Bistro Raw & Vegan, but we expressly wanted to give our true identity and now after 6 years we are Vyro Raw & Vegan Bistro, with our initials, the registered trademark.

After this continuous struggle to create and maintain this business that is actually our baby, I can say together with my sister Vilarina, that we have created beautiful friendships with many of our clients, some of them coming to my wedding, I learned that the most important thing is to find your purpose in life and what makes you happy every day.Through the food and cakes we create every day, we help people who need to eat healthy, we give them hope in regaining their health, the best example being Vilarina which has spectacular results …she it is declared with thyroid gland disease in remission due to vegan and raw food.There are many other satisfactions, in your own business you rediscover yourself, every day you have to be like a sucker in taking over the information and every day you have to perform for what will follow. We are in peace because we have clients who are extremely happy that we exist, we receive amazing messages from them, which anoint our souls, because of them our energy grows even more.In conclusion, we want to thank every client who crossed our threshold, who was with us step by step in our continuous development and who helped us to overcome the current pandemic with flying colors. People finally understood that “we are what we eat and think."

Virtual hugs!

Roxana Boghean & Vilarina Petre