Chef Ferran Adrià started a debate about what traditional cuisine is. What is it? ‘They could troll me in the past, because I hadn’t done much research’, he began his eagerly awaited speech at Dreams Madrid Fusión. Dressed in a black T-shirt and trousers, jacket off after a few minutes and a bottle of water in his hand, he asked for a blackboard to write down the answers the audience gave to his questions. ‘I'm going to be provocative’, he warned.

He was joined by chefs Joan Roca and Nacho Manzano, Adrià's surprise guests, to whom he said: ‘Don't worry, I'm not going to give you a hard time’. A ‘friend of gin and tonic’ to Roca and an admirer of Manzano, whom he says is the creator of ‘some of the best creative dishes of the last ten years’, he questioned them too. ‘What kind of customers are we talking about?’ ‘Gastronomy is quality and pleasure’, he later declared in a talk that progressed through rhetorical questions. ‘And what is a restaurant?’ Someone ventured an answer, and he said no, that ‘it is a snobbery that people are saying now’.

Most restaurants do not make business plans and close within three years in a sector that contributes between four and six billion euros to the Spanish economy, according to the Bullipedia volume entitled “Plan Genhesis. Business plan for gastronomic catering”, which he will present in the coming days. He questioned them again. ‘What is a business model?’ Someone started an idea: ‘It's the strategy...’ ‘Out, let someone else come in, with all due respect’, Adrià continued: ‘It's how you're going to make money’, and without pause, ‘what is a financial plan?’ He stated: ‘How much money am I going to make? Will I be able to pay for the investments with what I earn?’

Few customers

Agile, standing, microphone in hand, distributing his location among the three tiers of the audience, Adrià continued: "How much does someone have to earn to go to a gastronomic restaurant, from a pizzeria to a higher range? 60,000? If there are four of you, in a three-star restaurant you won't pay less than €600 per person. You have to go all out, or else you might as well not go. And if it's abroad... my goodness! In Spain, only 0.73% earn more than €150,000 gross. You can go every so often", he explained the real picture.

He paused. ‘I could buy a porsche, but I spend that money on restaurants. I don't have a car’, and he returned to the subject: "Who knows restaurants? Very few, for economic reasons. If you go once a year, you can't appreciate it. Only 7.6% can go to a restaurant with a €15 menu. Why? Because you can't even afford that. You can't afford it every day. It's 400 bucks a month. If you earn 1,200, tell me what you do. (To open a restaurant business) you must look at this first. It's the economy. If I have a restaurant that costs more than €30, only 1.2% of Spaniards will be able to go. If it's more than €150, you're very limited in the number of customers, if they're only Spanish. The average annual expenditure is €1,040 per person.

And with this data on the table, ‘the question is: how many people can go to a gourmet restaurant per week and how many to a creative haute cuisine restaurant? You can debate this with me as much as you like’. On the other hand, he said, ‘I also like cheap restaurants, but there is a limit’. More data: there are some 8 million restaurants in the world and Michelin stars are the benchmark in every country, ‘whether you like it or not’, with just over 18,000 recommended. There are 3,100 with one star, 525 with two and 157 with three stars. In Spain, there are 3,000 gourmet restaurants. With these figures, Adrià does the maths live: I need 240,000 covers a day (for the business to be profitable), about 54 million a year. ‘With less than 70% occupancy, it's hardly going to be profitable’.

On a tightrope ‘When I started working in the kitchen in 1980, there were no set hours. You could buy prawns without any problems’, he recalled of his time as chef and owner of elBulli. "But now, with inflation, the price of produce has risen by 40% since the pandemic. The cost of a seafood restaurant is 60% of the cost of the product. A kilo of barnacles, prawns, baby octopus. The last time I bought seafood for my home, it cost me €350 per person to eat. You have to calculate the rent, the energy. There are many restaurants that have survived on off-the-books (money). ‘This is unviable for small restaurants’.

He gave the floor to his chef friends. ‘We must not be pessimistic, but, as Ferrán says, you have to know where you're stepping before you open’, said Manzano. ‘You sell on Saturday and Sunday, but you carry a deficit on the other days and you are dead, you don't make it in life. If you don't cover your fixed costs every day, you're doomed. If you open your doors in the red, especially in recent months, which has been the final straw. We can't cheat ourselves’.

Regarding restaurants that offer a seven- or eight-course tasting menu, Roca shared his view, which coincided with that of his colleagues. ‘The model you choose has to be very well thought out and measured, and you must know your target audience. They say that you have to make the money you pay in rent every day. If you pay two thousand, you have to make that money every day. It's a fact to know if you can afford it’.

‘Who wants to open a restaurant in the future?’ Adrià asked his audience. Only one person raised their hand, a young man who now works as a waiter. Adrià advised him to take all this into account, to look at premises that are profitable, and gave an example of a success story where someone set up a bar with an investment of 30,000 euros. ‘It was shabby and he made it even shabbier. That's the crux of the matter. A really cool, designer place? No, later. At the beginning, minimal investment. When you are the owner, there are no hours, no Saturdays or Sundays. Not like a chef or a maître d', who can switch off and go home’. And a word of advice: ‘Business model: the first thing you have to be clear about is the menu. If you get the premises first and then think about what you are going to serve, you are doing it wrong’.