Lana Chikhladze
Most marketing agencies don't understand Georgian restaurants. Lana does — because she IS Georgian. Born in Tbilisi, raised in the Georgian tradition, with 20+ years building and running restaurants, hotels, and nightlife venues. She didn't learn Georgian hospitality from a book. She lived it.
Lana grew up in Tbilisi, Georgia — the ancient capital city, where centuries of culture and tradition converge, where the smell of freshly baked khachapuri drifts through every neighborhood and the supra table is the center of family life. Hospitality was not a career she chose. It was the air she breathed. In Georgia, feeding someone well is not a business — it is a sacred obligation. The way you host, the way you pour wine, the way you make a stranger feel like family — these things define who you are as a person. Lana understood this before she ever stepped foot in a professional kitchen.
She started young, working in Tbilisi's vibrant hospitality scene as international tourism transformed the city. Over 20+ years, she built and managed restaurants, boutique hotels, rooftop bars, and nightclubs across Georgia. She launched over 30 nightlife and restaurant concepts. She developed more than 50 food and beverage concepts. She consulted for 40+ restaurant properties. She didn't just manage these operations — she built them from the ground up, from lease negotiations to menu development to staff training to opening night.
The results speak for themselves: more than $10 million in combined revenue generated across her client portfolio. Not from one lucky property. From dozens of operations, each with its own challenges, its own market, its own personality. Lana learned that every restaurant is different, but the principles of Georgian hospitality — generosity, precision, reading the room, making every guest feel extraordinary — are universal.
Then she earned her MBA in Executive Management, combining the operational instincts she had spent two decades sharpening with formal business strategy. She studied revenue modeling, organizational leadership, and financial architecture — and she layered all of it on top of the real-world knowledge that no classroom can teach. The MBA didn't make her a better operator. It gave her the language and frameworks to scale what she already knew.
When Lana came to America, she saw something that broke her heart: Georgian restaurants struggling. Not because the food was bad — Georgian food is extraordinary. Not because the owners didn't care — Georgian restaurant owners care more than almost anyone in this industry. They were struggling because no one was helping them tell their story. American marketing agencies didn't understand what a supra was. They didn't know why the tamada matters. They didn't understand that a Georgian restaurant isn't just a place to eat — it's an embassy of Georgian culture, a gathering place, a piece of home for every Georgian in America.
These agencies would come in with generic restaurant marketing playbooks — the same strategies they use for Italian restaurants, Mexican restaurants, sushi bars. They would miss everything that makes Georgian dining special: the communal nature of the meal, the ritual of the toast, the pride in handmade khinkali, the theater of cheese bread pulled fresh from a tone oven. They didn't speak the language. They didn't understand the culture. And they certainly didn't understand the customers — both the Georgian diaspora longing for a taste of home and the American diners discovering Georgian cuisine for the first time.
Lana decided to fix this. She founded Tamada Group with a single, clear mission: be the marketing agency that Georgian restaurants in America actually deserve. One that speaks Georgian. One that understands the supra. One that knows the difference between Imeretian and Sulguni cheese, that respects the craft behind churchkhela, and that can communicate the magic of Georgian hospitality to an American audience without diluting what makes it special.
Today, Tamada Group combines Lana's 20+ years of hands-on restaurant experience with AI-powered marketing tools that amplify everything she knows. The AI didn't replace her instincts — it supercharged them. Social media strategies that would take weeks to develop now deploy in days. Menu photography direction informed by engagement data. Content calendars built around Georgian holidays, feast days, and cultural moments that generic agencies don't even know exist. Digital advertising optimized by machine learning but guided by someone who actually understands what she's advertising.
The combination is unlike anything else in the market: deep Georgian cultural knowledge, two decades of real restaurant operations, an MBA in Executive Management, and AI-powered marketing precision. No other agency has this. No other agency can have this — because no other agency was founded by someone who grew up in Tbilisi, built restaurants across Georgia, and then dedicated her career to helping Georgian restaurants succeed worldwide.
