Beneath the tablecloth, behind the joy of good food, there is a crisis in the restaurant sector. Both small restaurants and chains. ‘There is a great desire to prosper, starting with a small restaurant, but it is becoming increasingly difficult because we are hyper-regulated in everything’, says Nandu Jubany, chef at Can Jubany, on the second day of Madrid Fusión. ‘There is one issue, that of working hours, which we tailor to suit our needs. But if someone wants to work more, they can't. Only 80 hours of overtime per year are allowed in the same establishment. You can do more if you do it next door’.

These types of regulations reduce the sector's efficiency, according to the chefs gathered at the conference “Self-sustainability and the future of the culinary profession”. ‘Our restaurants should not only be exemplary, but also efficient’, maintains Quique Dacosta, chef at Quique Dacosta Restaurant, who calls for a ‘direct interlocutor’ in order to ‘preserve and care for what represents a historical and cultural heritage, the Spain brand, the product we sell to the world, which is gastronomy’.

When detailing the causes of these problems, they find that ‘legislation lumps a wide variety of cases into one big bag, and generalised solutions do not fix anything’, summarises Ricard Camarena, chef at Restaurante Ricard Camarena, who also refers to the rule that employees work a maximum of 40 hours a day. ‘The problem is that we don't have a place to talk about this openly and express ourselves. It's something we've been dragging along for years. In the end, we spend more time fighting against imposed circumstances than generating real value. We spend more time removing obstacles than moving forward. Trying to include all types of restaurants in a hospitality agreement is impossible’.

Dacosta agrees: ‘We understand that this is about providing jobs and creating a circular economy, but also about helping those who have the power to legislate and don't understand anything about what goes on in our restaurants’. ‘It would be interesting to ask those within the industry what problems we have. The hospitality industry is rotting, and no one is doing anything about it’, affirms Israel Ramírez, maître d' at Saddle. ‘The vocational training curriculum has not been updated for so long that it talks about things that no longer happen and does not mention technologies. When they try to update it, we will not be at the table. Young people today are not inspired with passion’.

Camarena continues: ‘The current legislation does not provide solutions to problems. We have to give up on opening more shifts in restaurants, or we have to close services, because we don't have enough staff. The most important asset is the workers. The employee is the one who holds the reins. Many years ago, we were in a vulnerable situation. That's over now.

When I open a restaurant, my biggest fear is that my staff will be poached. But now the system does not allow people to progress and earn money.’ There are plenty of examples of restaurants that have had to close, say the chefs, including their own.