How EBRD and donors support young entrepreneurs in the Western Balkans
Starting is one challenge, growth is another
A business can begin in many ways, from a personal frustration, a family tradition, a gap in the market, or years spent learning an industry from the inside. What happens next is often less visible. As a business grows, decisions become more complex, pressure builds across operations, and what once worked smoothly no longer feels sufficient. This is the point where business growth hinges on a different set of factors, including stronger systems, better planning, access to finance and the ability to manage increasing demand.
Across the Western Balkans, the EBRD’s Youth in Business programme supports young entrepreneurs at this stage, combining finance with advisory services, training and networking opportunities designed to strengthen businesses over time. The programme is supported by the European Union, Italy and Luxembourg.
By mid-2025, the programme had helped channel €31.6 million in funding to more than 2,500 businesses, supporting young entrepreneurs to invest and grow. Beyond finance, over 1,000 entrepreneurs have also benefitted from training, advice and networking. These results point not only to scale, but to sustainability, with very low levels of loan default showing that the businesses supported are growing in a stable and resilient way.
The figures reflect the scale of the programme and the level of support available to young entrepreneurs across the region. What they do not show is what growth actually looks like inside a business: the pressure, the decisions and the adjustments that come with it.
Nikola Ivanović, founder of Fabrika Coffee in Montenegro, came to entrepreneurship after more than a decade in hospitality, working across bars, cafes and restaurants before deciding to create a brand of his own. "I started the company because I believed Montenegro deserved a modern coffee brand that could combine high quality products, strong systems, consistency, and authentic customer experience," he explains. The vision became the foundation for Fabrika Coffee, a modern hospitality business built around product quality, customer experience and strong operational standards.
Maintaining those standards became more difficult as the company expanded. In a hospitality business, expanding the number of locations is only part of the story: maintaining a consistent customer experience across them is what defines real growth. That was the pressure Nikola identifies most clearly. As he recalls, “One of the biggest challenges was managing rapid growth while maintaining quality and operational consistency.” As Fabrika Coffee expanded, maintaining those standards required stronger planning, clearer processes and a structure capable of supporting further growth.
Our long-term goal is to continue strengthening Fabrika Coffee as one of the leading modern hospitality brands in the region.
Support from the Youth in Business programme helped strengthen the internal structure of the business. “The cooperation with the EBRD helped us professionalise certain aspects of the business, improve planning and organisation, and better position the company for future growth,” he confirms.
That shift from a successful concept to a more organised business is central to Nikola’s story. The company is now looking to open new locations, explore franchising opportunities and further invest in systems and sustainability. As Nikola puts it, “Our long-term goal is to continue strengthening Fabrika Coffee as one of the leading modern hospitality brands in the region.”
For him, growth has meant learning how to replicate quality, and how to make a brand repeatable without losing what made it distinctive in the first place.