“It’s more than just a group of employees. There’s a lot riding on this”
In Ukraine, “we had a lovely life,” Nataliia Vynohradova recalls.
She, her husband, 16-year-old daughter and 11- and 5-year-old sons, lived in Lviv, one of the country’s largest cities. The couple had a surveying business, successful enough to afford not only a comfortable living in the city but also a vacation property nearby.
But when Russia invaded in February 2022, that life became precarious. Lviv is in the west, roughly 70 kilometres from Poland and about as far from the compromised eastern border as any Ukrainian city or town can be. But the family knew it was only a matter of time.
That April, the first missiles hit – roughly one kilometre from their home. “From my window I saw this black smoke,” says Vynohradova. “After that, my husband said, ‘We can’t wait anymore.’”
By January 2023, the family was living in Edmonton. Vynohradova’s husband found a job in his field, while she set to work helping the family acclimatize to Canada. “Here, will we have the same life?” she wondered. Early attempts at an answer led her downtown, to the Free Store for Ukrainian Newcomers, where refugees from the war could get things to replace items they’d been forced to leave behind.
Among the cofounders of that store were a veteran fundraiser, Janice Krissa, and her daughter, Jorgia Moore (Bachelor of Business Administration – Accounting ’21), a young accountant keen on social enterprise.
As it would turn out, Vynohradova would come away from the Free Store, and Don’Ya Ukraine’s Kitchen, which the shop would lead to, with much more than the necessities of life. Thanks in particular to that unique food and restaurant venture Moore would help build, Vynohradova and her family would get a chance at a new life entirely.
“I didn’t plan to open a food services company”

Don’Ya is something of a secret perogy factory, quietly churning out product in a northeast Edmonton business park.
“Constantly, we have dough ready, we have filling ready, we try to pinch a lot,” says Moore.
She’s seated in the customer-facing side of the facility, a small room that, at the time of our conversation, was a haphazard collection of chairs and equipment awaiting reorganizing into the store and café it is today. There’s a freezer for grab-and-go items that include those perogies, but also borscht, cabbage rolls and more. Across one wall is a painted mural of a girl in a field of sunflowers under a swirling Van Gogh sky. On a counter is an arrangement of glassware and ceramics bearing geometric red-and-black patterns typical of Ukrainian embroidery.
Don’Ya wasn’t exactly the idea of her and her mom, Moore admits. Not to start, at least. It came from the women who now work in the enormous commercial kitchen behind a door at the back of the café. One day, some of them who volunteered at the Free Store suggested a pop-up shop to sell homemade, authentic Ukrainian cooking.
“I didn’t plan to open a food services company,” says Moore.
But she and Krissa didn’t plan on running a store for two years either. Opening it for a couple of weeks to help people to whom their own heritage is linked simply turned into a couple of years. Moore even quit her job as a fund developer with a local non-profit to devote more of her time to it. Why not follow one more possibility to see where it may lead?
"If you do the math, $30,000 is a lot of perogies.”
Where it led was to $30,000 in orders. Moore had begun exploring the potential of expanding the pop up, which saw donors place orders. Through personal and professional connections, she secured day use of the kitchen at Cook County Saloon, thanks largely to chef Matthew Potts, who, as an Indigenous person, sympathized with a group of people whose culture was threatened. The story took off in the media.
“I heard that people heard about us in Ireland,” says Moore. “We had to stop orders. If you do the math, $30,000 is a lot of perogies.”
In the months to come, the venture moved from one larger donated kitchen space to the next, with help from myriad community members. Moore learned as she went, securing licenses, figuring out barcodes, managing what were now paid staff, getting shelf space in grocery stores (the first being the Italian Centre Shop), and anything else required for growth. Without that, her employees wouldn’t get the hours they’d need to apply for permanent residency.
“I thought, ‘We’re going to have to try to find a way to be busy,’” says Moore. “That’s been a huge motivator. It’s more than just a group of employees. There’s a lot riding on this.”
While Moore and her mom continue to set the vision for Don’Ya, the staff of more than a dozen are the ones keeping the operation busy now. They set their schedule, tell their bosses what supplies to buy, and furnish Moore with orders that she herself delivers throughout Edmonton and area.
As we sit, the women occasionally come and go from the back, but never to ask Moore anything. She seems elated about being mostly ignored, joking about an upcoming wedding catering job she’s had no hand in planning. “They told me they don’t need me!”
A courageous path

You get the sense from Moore, however, that she needs them.
Moore needs, in one way or another, to be responsible for people. At NAIT, she served as vice-president internal for the students’ association, advocating for, among other things, the well-being of students. During the COVID shut down, she and a friend organized a drive-in movie to raise money for the University Hospital Foundation.
And at the Free Store, which at its peak served 400 families a week before it closed in August 2024, its services being handed off to other organizations, Moore found herself treating customers and volunteers like family. She shared in their tragedies – women with husbands still fighting in Ukraine, a soldier who’d lost his legs – and the joys – a woman who found among the donations a perfect dress for her upcoming wedding, other women who were relieved to now be raising newborns in the safety of Canada.
“I’d always be holding a Ukrainian baby,” says Moore, nostalgically.
Having followed Moore’s career during and after NAIT as dean of the JR Shaw School of Business, Dennis Sheppard points out the intentionality of her path.
Moore found herself treating customers and volunteers like family.
“You've got somebody who graduates from school and could have slotted herself into a wonderful job working for someone else,” says Sheppard. Instead, he points out, Moore sacrificed stability and risked paycheques for principles.
“I think that shows courage.”
But Moore is also driven; she’s coupled an accountant’s mind with an entrepreneur’s heart. Don’Ya is now converting to a for-profit entity – something that Moore, now in her mid-20s, feels she has years to build.
With the encouragement of mentors who have come to include ex-Oilers CEO Patrick LaForge (Marketing ’74) and even Starbucks Coffee cofounder Zev Seigl, Moore sees the company expanding across Canada and possibly the U.S. And she needs the women in the kitchen to help make that happen.
“But we will always remain a social enterprise,” says Moore. “Our goal is for all of them to have their own cafés eventually.”
The Starbucks of Ukrainian quick serve and grab-and-go? Sheppard, for one, is convinced it could work. He likes the model’s vertical integration and its strong relationships with local grocers and retailers. But there’s also more to it.
“It may seem like another bag of perogies,” Sheppard says, considering a Canadian market generally well supplied with the Eastern European staple. But Don’Ya’s customers, he adds, have already taken note of a difference.
“It comes with a story – and the story is compelling.”
Secrets to success

In many ways, that story is about reconnection. That mural of the sunflowers – one of Ukraine’s major agricultural exports – is as symbolic as it is decorative. For the women who work here, stepping through Don’Ya’s door each day is to step back into a familiar life, even if, like Vynohradova, they were not all cooks in Ukraine.
“It’s not only work, not only a job,” she says. “It’s like part of my country. Here, we are all the same, we speak one language, we understand each other, we have the same traditions.
“The girls, the food that we make, it’s the same as at home.”
Vynohradova and her family would like to stay in Canada – a decision that will ultimately be made by the federal government as visa come up for renewal. She feels invested in what she has helped build, sees herself as part of it.
“We know some secrets. We put our knowledge [into this].”
They’re not just filling dough with potatoes, says Vynohradova. “We know some secrets. We put our knowledge [into this].”
Which is to say that, while there has been so much loss, not everything has been left behind in Ukraine. With Don’Ya, a word that translates to daughter, something new has the possibility to grow from what came before – different in ways, the same in others.
“When they get to share their culture and their recipes and things from home with Canadians and say, ‘We’re not going anywhere, our culture is never going to die, it’s going to be remembered for generations to come,’ I think that’s part of it,” says Moore.
“These are recipes directly from Ukraine. And it feels good when people say your cooking’s good, right?”