How Ukrainian Media Manager Anna Ganopolska Opened Papoila Bar in Lisbon — in her own words

How it began

I started at the Institute of Journalism and from the beginning looked for hands-on experience. My first job was as an administrator for music and entertainment programs at Pershyi Natsionalnyi. Soon after, I started working as a news editor at Obozrevatel. Every morning from six to noon, I edited the news feed. Then I rushed to classes. The TV center was nearby, so after lectures I went straight back to work, arranging interviews with artists and coordinating film crews. This was classic project management. It confirmed what I already suspected: responsibility and process control were my strengths.

One day, I pitched inviting new speakers. I had plenty of contacts in television and could get stars onto the show. The team really wanted to host a web conference with TV personality Katia Osadcha. A friend of mine knew Andrii Nogin, the producer of Svitske Zhyttia, and through her we made it happen.

Later, Andrii invited me to try working as a journalist on Svitske Zhyttia. I said yes but made it clear that I wanted to move into administrative work long-term. Pretty quickly, I became the project’s executive producer and focused entirely on management. That’s when we came up with the idea of creating an online platform about Ukraine’s social scene. In 2008, JetSetter.ua launched.

After a year, the site became a recognized brand, and it was obvious its traffic could be monetized. Advertising became the main revenue source. JetSetter.ua turned into a full commercial media outlet. It still makes money, just not as much as before. Initially, I didn’t have equity in the project. We agreed on my stake later, when we updated the publication’s development strategy.

Working at JetSetter.ua meant total commitment. When you run an online outlet, something can happen any second and you have to respond. I barely had weekends or vacations. In August 2025, I sold my stake and left the project.

About the demo version of the bar

Before Portugal, there was Kyiv. In 2018, my school friend Roman suggested we open a bar in Vozdvyzhenka. We called it Rehub Buher. We funded it ourselves: Roman, me, and Kateryna Nikolaichuk, JetSetter’s art director. Together, we put in around $50,000.

The space ran for a year and a half: evenings as a bar, mornings as a healthy cafe. After the lockdown, our landlord wanted to raise the rent, so we had to close. Vozdvyzhenka is a tricky neighborhood. Locals aren’t exactly welcoming to lively bars. We knew it could break even in five years, but we couldn’t move the concept elsewhere because of quarantine restrictions.

About forced emigration

I’d always loved Portugal, so when the full-scale war began, I knew the only way I could get through it emotionally was to be near the ocean. My son and I left Ukraine on March 1, 2022. We spent the first few weeks with my father in Munich, then we went to Portugal on March 15.

A friend told me about a family in the small town of Peniche who was hosting Ukrainians. I’d always imagined Peniche as where I’d retire someday. We stayed in a small wooden house on the edge of town. My son and I lived there with my friend and her daughter.

Daily life was tough. The trip into town took several hours each day because we had no car. The cold and damp were constant reminders that we were basically living in rough conditions. We went to the ocean often. It was the only place I felt any relief.

After a few months, it became obvious we couldn’t stay there any longer. The plan was to take it step by step: rent something for three months until the end of summer, then find a permanent place in September so the kids could start school.

I began searching for housing. I wrote to about 50 landlords on Airbnb and other platforms, offering partial payment upfront, since we didn’t have enough for the full amount. Only one responded: Ivo, a Brazilian doctor and an incredibly kind person. We spoke on a video call. He listened to everything we’d been through and offered to help. His lawyer arranged for us to see an apartment we could stay in until mid-July, when tourist season started. It was huge, around 300 square meters, part of a gated community with a golf course.

About Papoila Bar

I moved to Lisbon in September 2022 and got involved with the local Ukrainian community pretty quickly. The city had plenty of cafes, but no real spots for evening gatherings.

I started looking for investors. Someone recommended I talk to Vitalii Laptenok, co-founder of Flyer One Ventures and the Genesis fund. The investment team ended up including Vitalii, his wife Nadiia Naimushyna, who’d run venues in Kyiv and Warsaw, and my friend Sashko Kucherov, former Creative Director at Reface and ex-CEO of Snapchat’s Kyiv office. We budgeted €150,000 for the launch, to be paid back over seven years.

Papoila means “poppy flower” in Portuguese. It’s on our logo and has symbolic weight. The name also reflects the floral notes in our cocktails. We signed the lease in February 2023. The biggest expense turned out to be ventilation, a complicated rooftop system that needed specialists and lifting gear.

I kept the rest of the costs down by doing a lot myself. I handled the design, picked materials, drove to marble quarries, found carpenters and workshops. We refurbished furniture too. We bought vintage pieces and reupholstered them ourselves. That let us stretch the budget much further.

Starting a business in Portugal meant getting a tax number and opening a personal bank account first. Then I brought in a lawyer and accountant to handle taxes and licenses, registered the company, and opened a corporate account. At the same time, I was looking for a space to rent. Knowing Portuguese and having local contacts helps enormously with the paperwork.

On August 24, 2023, on Independence Day, we held our first event, a video art show and a pop-up market for Ukrainian brands. The bar was still under construction, but that night, the first big group of Ukrainians gathered in the space. That became our real opening.

About the team

We don’t have any Portuguese employees at the moment. We used to work with Brazilians and one person from Bangladesh, but these days the team is all Ukrainian. In winter, we have three people besides me: a bartender, a cook, and a waiter. For events, we’ve got a group of freelancers we always work with.

I manage the day-to-day. One person handles purchasing, and I help with logistics when needed, especially now that I have my own car. I’ve been lucky with my partners. They’re respectful, ethical, and don’t get involved in things that don’t require their input. We trust each other, check in regularly, and keep each other updated on what we’re responsible for. They’re working on their own projects while I manage the bar. If I need help, I know I can ask, but I try not to take up too much of their time.

About the menu

The head bartender created the menu based on our vision: a focus on floral cocktails, including non-alcoholic ones. We experiment with combining ingredients and alcohol. For example, we infuse saffron into a drink, filter it through milk to adjust the taste, and color it with natural dyes. The goal is to make each drink look and taste like a small piece of art.

Our margin is around 30%. Non-alcoholic cocktails start at €9, alcoholic ones go up to €15, with most drinks around €12. We have snacks too. We tried doing brunch for about four months, but the space was too small, so we dropped the idea.

About guests and events

For business communication, I use Portuguese. I run all operations in it. But our social media is in English so everyone can follow it. About 60% of our guests are Ukrainian, around 35% are tourists and expats who appreciate good bars. Portuguese guests come less often, mostly for beer. Brazilians come to socialize in the evenings.

The space is 50 square meters and has seating for 30. But during Web Summit, the world’s biggest tech conference, we can see up to 1,500 guests in a day. To manage the crowd, we put in multiple bar stations. The summit lasts five days and brings in about three months' worth of income.

Our first Web Summit came just three weeks after we opened the bar. We dealt with all the challenges on the fly. Friends scrambled to get us glasses and drinks when we ran short with hundreds of conference guests pouring in. By the next summit, we were ready. Extra glassware was rented (about a fifth had to be replaced due to breakage), four outdoor stations went up on the terrace, and alcohol brands came on board.

For the third summit this year, we went bigger. Quality polycarbonate glasses replaced regular ones, and we rented a 350-square-meter industrial space just three minutes from the bar for three days. With our music partners Sexto, we turned it into a jazz club: live performances, DJ sets, three bar stations across two floors. It made socializing much more comfortable than standing packed on the lawn outside.

In the first year, we ran 85 events. Year two, we scaled back and focused on large-scale events, two or three a month. The most demanding are seasonal pop-ups, markets, and Web Summit.

About promotion

In Portugal, Instagram isn’t very effective. TikTok has become our main promotion channel, and Google ads work well thanks to low competition. We also gain visibility through features in gastronomy and hospitality media, as well as regular events. Extra attention comes from our co-founders' names, Vitalii Laptenko and Sasha Kucherov, both well known in the IT industry.

About plans

There will be no franchise. Papoila will stay a one-of-a-kind place. A real community space only works when it’s built by the community itself. In our case, that means regular events that I organize. Without my presence here, it would be hard to make it work elsewhere. Still, we’ve already launched mobile bars and events, including music raves, that we can run regularly in different locations. We’re also planning to experiment with street food formats, which are very popular in Portugal.