Freelance reporter and food writer Adam Robb spent 2023 covering the restaurant and bar scene in Ukraine and brings Rough Draft Atlanta this story on the first U.S. location of Lviv Croissants. The story features his conversations over the last year with co-founder Andrii Galitsky and how Lviv Croissants offered a sense of normalcy in war-torn cities throughout Ukraine.
When I first met Andrii Galitsky, co-founder of Ukraine’s most popular fast food franchise, we broke bread in Lviv, the war-torn country’s westernmost big city, about two hours from the border with Poland, give or take a half day at border control. The summer sun was strong in late September last year and terrace season was still in effect at neighboring cafes and bars.
Before the onset of long winter nights and daunting power cuts, officer workers, commuters and students snacking after school ordered to-go meals throughout the day from Lviv Croissants. The overstuffed sandwiches served on comically oversized croissants, including the double cheeseburger, teriyaki chicken, and salmon and cream cheese, are the happy byproduct of an over-proofing accident that inspired Galitsky and his partners to start the bakery sandwich chain in 2015.
Nearly a decade later, more than 175 locations of Lviv Croissants are open across Ukraine serving savory grilled ham-and-eggs croissants at breakfast and fresh chicken Caesar or tuna salad croissants in the afternoon. For dessert, there’s a split powdered croissant slathered with drunk cherry confit and mascarpone–a nod to the homemade wild cherry liqueur local Ukrainian grandmothers keep in their cupboards.
Two years into the war, Lviv Croissants proved a reliable constant in people’s lives, rivaled only by McDonald’s. The American fast-food chain entered Ukraine when the nation signed the 1997 Friendship Treaty with Russia. McDonald’s closed its more than 100 locations for close to seven months when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Not only did Lviv Croissants remain open during those chaotic early days, but the bakery-cafe found a new audience in countries like Poland, which currently includes 11 locations, all opened in the last two years. Earlier this summer, a location of Lviv Croissants opened in Slovenia.
The westward expansion continues with the first location of Lviv Croissants opening in the United States on Aug. 10 in Roswell, Georgia. This location takes over the Dozy Coffee space in the Kohl’s shopping plaza on West Crossville Road.
I’m not the only American who developed a taste for Lviv Croissants. Last year, I began reporting on the hospitality scene across Ukraine. I’d worked in restaurants in New York City when I was younger and as a food and travel writer for the past decade. I understand the impact journalism can have on a business.
When I read a one-off Washington Post story last August addressing the bar business in Kyiv, I realized how restaurant reporting had dried up there. Cooks, bartenders, and servers were doing the best, hardest work of their lives, without any acknowledgment unless they were delivering food and water to victims of another drone or missile strike.
Most stories written by U.S. journalists on the ground covered troop movements and defense spending, not the people making their coffee in the morning and nightcap before the midnight curfew.
As I prepared to uproot my life to cover the Ukrainian dining scene for outlets like New York magazine and Conde Nast Traveler, I found only one restaurant business that went viral and commanded a news cycle during the war. That’s because Angelina Jolie put Lviv Croissants on the map.
On April 30, 2024, the Oscar-winning actress arrived in Lviv. In one of her last acts as Special Envoy with the United Nations’ Refugee Agency, she made an unannounced visit to Ukraine to meet orphaned and displaced children arriving by train from the eastern part of the country. Jolie dropped into Lviv Croissants for lunch. The moment went viral across international media and became a source for endless Ukrainian memes, after a video showed a disaffected teenager, headphones on, never once looking up from his phone during her lunch.
Galitsky was also caught off guard. “We had no notice in advance, but fortunately she and her team stayed over an hour having lunch, so a manager called me and I rushed down,” Galitsky recalled. “Even though we couldn’t open in the U.S. right away, we hope that our visit will be a good omen for us,” he said.
And for his part, Galitsky capitalized as best he could on her visit. He introduced a combo “Star Meal” based on her order: a cappuccino and Korolivskyi Croissant with chicken and Swiss cheese with mustard sauce. “For the next three months we donated 20% of sales to the hospital Angelina visited,” he said.
Galitsky also explained that plans for the first Lviv Croissants in America had been underway for years before the Russian invasion, with a first location initially set to open in the city of Atlanta at Emory Village.
“We first found partners in 2018 in New York, and talked about coming to America for more than two years before COVID,” Galitsky said.
That partner was Brett Larrabee. Now the CEO of Lviv Croissants USA, Larrabee is a longtime franchise whisperer for brands like Famous Dave’s and Five Guys. He started his career with a Subway franchise in Seattle at age 19. Larrabee had his first taste of Lviv Croissants while growing the Little Caesars brand across Eastern Europe and Russia in the 2010s.
“I met my wife in Ukraine, and I remember we would walk past Lviv Croissants all the time, and I was curious what was going on in there, seeing the giant croissant on a sign outside and assuming it was an embellishment, that no croissant is that big,” Larrabee recalled. “But we went inside, the place was packed, and our meal was picture perfect.”
“Ukrainians don’t have a lot of disposable income, so the success of the business just haunted me, the way it expanded during the war and saw its sales go up,” Larrabee said. He understood McDonald’s success in Ukraine was anchored in post-Cold War nostalgia, and was impressed Galtsiky could take a foreign concept—“if anything croissants are French,”—and develop such a loyal following.
When Larrabee found Galitsky promoting Lviv Croissants at an international franchise show in New York in 2018, he saw an opportunity. Finally, last year, Larrabee stepped back from his most recent role relaunching the Quiznos brand.
“The stars aligned and we spent the last few years getting things right, from the ingredients, like the right pistachio cream from Italy, to adapting recipes for a spicier American palate,” said Larrabee. “We were looking for a franchise partner we could scale with, and Atlanta has a diverse and growing population.”
Galitsky and Larrabee found their first American investor, Petro Dudnyk, in Atlanta–a Ukrainian immigrant and outspoken Evangelical pastor whose eastern Ukraine church and parishioners have been the target of violent Russian aggression for the past decade. Dudnyk said he visited Atlanta in 2022 to attend his son’s wedding just days before the invasion. He remained in the U.S. as a refugee, leaving behind his life in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, including a location of Lviv Croissants.
To help children orphaned by the war recover from the trauma and rebuild their lives, Dudnyk’s ministry founded charity Uniting for Ukrainian Kids in Cumming, Georgia.
The Roswell location of Lviv Croissants, part of a franchise partnership with Dudnyk and the Lviv Croissants corporation, features a menu unique to America with savory croissant sandwiches like a pastrami, turkey, avocado BLT and roasted pepper chicken. Look for salads and soups, too, and combo options. All of the croissants served at Lviv Croissants in Roswell are baked on site and proofed at a nearby commissary that was specifically built to serve future locations across the region.
Larrabee said they hope to open “hundreds if not thousands of locations” of Lviv Croissants across the United States, starting with its Metro Atlanta location in Roswell.
“There’s a substantial Ukrainian diaspora here,” Larrabee added. “Atlanta represents America, and offers us the chance to drill down the details before we grow to Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.”
610 W Crossville Rd Suite 200, Roswell. Opening Aug. 10. Open Monday – Friday, 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.