This is why they call leisure time precious — it has become so very rare. But for the few of us who have the pleasure to stop by a cinema, tea house or coffee place from time to time – there is Raluk.ro: your ultimate digital guide to making time off pleasurable.

Raluk.ro is a project started by Raluca Georgescu – Country Manager Allegro Group Romania, entrepreneur, movie enthusiast and dear friend of mine. In time and with effort, energy and talent Raluk.ro has became a great team with the desire to generate original & innovative experiences for the time-off community.

Since by job and heart, I am a very curious person, I challenged Ioanina Pavel – Project Manager Raluk.ro to a couple of questions on the evolution of Raluk.ro and their ambitions for the following months. As always, enjoy!

VC: Tell us a little bit more – what’s Raluk.ro and how did the project start?

IP: Raluk.ro is meant to be your personal coolhunter for Bucharest. Our team is constantly walking the streets of Bucharest looking for new venues, shows, shops and other fun activities, trying them out, evaluating them and trying to give the best possible recommendations to our audience. We are a community of coolhunters and the best source of reviews for Bucharest activities, shows and bars or restaurants.

VC: Raluk.ro is a project started out of passion. Has it become a profitable business?

IP: Raluk.ro is most of all a passion and a project we believe in and believe should exist. It has also become a business, but we are not yet profitable. This is because we focus on quality content and do not accept paid content or reviews on the website. Therefore we must try to be creative and find new revenue sources.

VC: Each time I hear of a new project, I’m curious to meet the team. Who works behind the review lines at Raluk.ro?

IP: There are 30 contributors in our team – coolhunters, movie critics, theatre critics and food critics. They are part-time editors who search for cool new stuff to do in the capital city and who write these reviews for us. Raluk.ro has a core 3-person team, backed by all our collaborators and friends. Dana is our Events Organiser (we also have thematic parties and other cool events organised under the Raluk.ro brand), Andreea is our Editor-in-Chief coordinating the coolhunters, Dorin is our Marketing & PR guy and I am the Editor-in-Chief for all the content written on the website.

VC: This summer, you had one of the most appreciated initiatives: KoolHunt. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you came up with the idea, how the hunting turned out and if have any similar plans this autumn?

IP: KoolHunt was the first big event we organised. KoolHunt was actually the Long Night of the Best Bucharest Bars & Restaurants. We selected 24 of the best venues in the capital city and asked them to serve their best drink or dish for free to all the people participating in the event. The event was organised on a Saturday night and it started somewhere around 10 PM and finished around 4 AM. We had close to 1000 people participants and it was wonderful to see how everyone was running on streets in Bucharest in groups of 4 or more looking for the new cool places on the map we presented them with.

VC: As project manager, how does your work day start?

IP: With a huge cup of latte macchiato and a smile. It starts very early in the morning reading all the international movie press and finding out cinema news for our audience. I publish them on Facebook immediately. Then I usually talk to our contributors and set up brainstorming meetings in order to choose what our next activity will be or what great piece of content we should be writing.

6. Now this is an obvious question since Raluk.ro helps us spend our free time wisely, how do you spend yours?

IP: I watch movies all the time! I especially love going to the cinema during the week at 10 AM in the morning and enjoying a Starbucks coffee. It’s a break from work and one of the advantages of having flexible work hours. I also love hanging around with friends in clubs and concerts.

VC: Future plans with Raluk.ro — where do you see the platform by the end of this year?

IP: We want it to become more and more interactive and give our users the possibility to express themselves more and give us more feedback about the venues and shows we are rating. We will also focus more and more on creative events. Being the ones rating Bucharest nightlife, we can see that there are not as many great events as we would like them to be. Therefore, we believe this is a great opportunity and we consider that we have the experience and intuition to be the best to come up with thematic concepts for parties and cool things to do.

VC: Considering that the weekend is coming [oh boy, am I counting the days…], what should we do?

IP: Well, Woody Allen’s new movie will be in cinemas – “To Rome With Love” – and I definitely wouldn’t miss it.