Russians in cold sweat with mobile saunas for rent

Forget ride-hailing apps and home-delivery dinner services. A Russian company has found a new niche: saunas-on-wheels that you can rent and summon right to your doorstep. Mobitruck, which makes food trucks, has built a prototype mobile sauna and took it for a promotional spin in the capital this month, firing up the steam room outside the government's headquarters.

Known as the banya, the traditional Russian sauna is popular in the country and many Russians regularly while away afternoons there with friends over snacks like dried fish and kvass. The truck contains a custom-designed wood burner and wood-paneled steam room. It comes with the accouterments of any normal banya: sauna whisks (known as veniks), dressing gowns, towels, and slippers.

It costs 90,000 roubles ($1,420) to rent for the day, a price that includes a banya attendant who will thrash clients with sauna whisks or dish out massages. Mobitruck will also sell their saunas-on-wheels for between 3.5 million and 5.7 million roubles, depending on the specific features it has.

The company has only just launched its saunas-on-wheels and, as such, says it has no sales data, but owner Rafael Khabirov said there was keen interest. "We have a lot of requests to rent the banya, first of all. Second, many people are interested in buying this kind of thing. It's a handy solution for those who don't have their own banya," he said.

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