Gastroeconomy CULINARY ACTION SEVILLA Mayo15
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Culinary Action Seville 18th MAY 2015 Culinary Action Seville, 6 enterprising cases and the advice of 3 experts On 18th May 2015 the Basque Culinary Center held, at the Gambrinus-Heineken School in Seville, a workshop to analyse 6 success stories of entrepreneur chefs and restaurateurs in Andalusia: Dani García (Dani García Restaurante), Paco Morales (Noor), José Carlos García (José Carlos García), Diego Gallegos (Sollo), Curro Noriega and Mario Ríos (Besana Tapas) and Laura López and José Fuentes (Trasteo). The programme is completed with three themed workshops with group dynamics, led by experts in hospitality management and entrepreneurship, on legal advice for entrepreneurship, financial management, marketing and social networks in hotel and catering CONCLUSIONS CULINARY ACTION SEVILLE: 10 IDEAS FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP 1. Gastronomy businesses have so many different and uncontrollable parameters that there is no magic recipe for their success. 2. Gastronomy is a profession, a business or a sector in which the human factor is a highly determining factor. 3. In any personal environment, you must have faith in what you do. When you fail, you must get back up and look ahead; reflect on the reasons and apply the lessons learned. You must always dream, fall down and get back up again. 4. To start a business, you must ask questions and seek advice. There is nothing wrong with asking; it is the position you must take to enterprise in gastronomy. 5. Haute cuisine chefs are a new species, a new profession, for which being professionally successful does not mean being successful in business. 6. The idea that haute cuisine is not profitable is false, it is a myth fed by all the agents in the sector, in which it seems like we aimed to make haute cuisine unprofitable. 7. When creating a company to set up a catering business, if you want your investment to have a long life, you should sign a partnership agreement that makes each partner's role, and their rights and obligations, clear. 8. The target, the public, the customer, is the greatest source of inspiration of a business, this is also true in hotel and catering. 9. You must make the decisions calmly, but that should not imply a lack of risk. If an entrepreneur does not take risks, in the end, they will not make progress. In any case, the person the entrepreneur most relies on is himself. 10. Everyone has the same opportunities. Of course luck is also involved, but you must be ready to take it. THE MESSAGES OF CULINARY ACTION SEVILLE PRESENTATION Jesús Barrio Director of the Gambrinus-Heineken School "Culinary Action connects gastronomy with management, the viability of the business and the undertaking". José Luis Galiana Director of Communication of the Basque Culinary Center * "Culinary Action is related to entrepreneurship, enterprising spirits and the future". * "The objective of this initiative is to look at the world of the gastronomy and food from a management and future perspective". CHEF-SPEAKERS and EXPERTS DANI GARCÍA Positioned as one of the key chefs of avant-garde Andalusian cuisine, he has developed his career between Ronda (in Tragabuches) and Marbella, where a little over a year ago he moved to the Hotel Puente Romano to open Dani Garcia Restaurante. This gastronomic space, with two Michelin stars, serves as his headquarters, while Bibo is a bistro with an 'informal' offer. He also has his own catering and events business. * "There was a time when people began to appear in the world of haute cuisine offering money and projects. A large group came and asked me to open a tapas bar in Malaga, Lamoraga; then another group came and wanted me to do the same in Puerto Banus and many around the world. I realised that I didn't like the idea because the openings become meaningless and I sold the brand I started to learn how not to do things. It was the worst time of my life. At the same time , Sol Meliá decided it didn't want to continue with Calima [its gastronomic space located in the Hotel Meliá Don Pepe, where García went from being advisor to tenant], just as I received the second star, and they rented the space to me. I decided to accept the decision with some unfair conditions. The restaurant was profitable the months in which it was open, but not when it closed. They then asked us for twice what we already paid for a place that opened six months a year". * "I decided to move to the Hotel Puente Romano [in April 2014] and that changed my life. Puente Romano gives you a lot of added value and, therefore, the rent was reduced to a seventh and the customers I used to get in two months I now get in one day. We manage to make a very profitable restaurant”. * In February 2014, García's restaurant in NYC closed (on the decision of its partners in the US). "Everyone loves to criticise other people's failure, but I am the only one who has tried to run a restaurant in New York". * “The haute cuisine chef is a new species, a new profession, in which being professionally successful does not necessarily mean you will be successful in business. First we were dreamers, all we cared about was cooking, doing things differently and changing the world. That cost us money. It is the most admirable aspect of this type of profession. In the end, you have to keep moving until you find your place, but to get there, I have had to do thousands of things. I managed to make haute cuisine profitable when it seemed like a myth , when the only difference is investment. Now I need an hour and a half a day to make the restaurant profitable; before I needed a month”. * “Saying that haute cuisine is not profitable is a lie, the fact is we wanted to make it unprofitable. This year we will reach a turnover of between 4.5 and 5 million Euros [total of his businesses in Dani García Restaurante and BiBo]; in Calima, at best, we reached 1.5 million in six months and the other six months we were losing money. Today we do things differently; We have information about what has happened in the last 15 years; that gives us different numbers”. Chefs use an app to see on their mobile the expenses and revenue from each table in their restaurants. * “When you make a concept profitable, there are billions of circumstances. I do the same as three years ago and I earn a lot more ‘dough’. With the same effort and work, before I was losing money and now I am not. We’re 800 metres from where we were before, but we turn over 3 or 4 times more than before. That portrays haute cuisine well”. * “There is always a part of chance or luck, but you have to minimise it. Bill Gates said that if you know the business plan one hundred percent it's too late for that business and I don’t know who said that excessive reflection leads you to paralysis”. * “Now I'm really happy. I've been through everything. You have to dream, fall down and get back up again. These are the best two years of my life. In any personal environment, you must have faith in what you do. When you fail in any situation, you have to get back up and look to the future; reflect on the reason and keep it under lock and key; that is experience and it should be kept inside you for next time”. * “Catering businesses are really risky; You win as much as you lose. Eventually, a catering business is the sum of a lot of circumstances”. * About the design of a burger for McDonald's: “It involved a two-million Euro investment in marketing. What chef has the capacity to invest in marketing? In March and April, we're turning over the figures from July last year. It must be related somehow. People see your face every day on the street for a month and a half or two months. I am a chef and being a chef is everything. If I only worked in haute cuisine, I would get bored, my job is to make people happy and sell happiness, whether this is with haute cuisine, a burger or some anchovies”. PACO MORALES He trained at Guggenheim Bilbao, Mugaritz and El Bulli and after passing through Madrid and Bocairent (where Paco Morales Restaurante received a Michelin star), Paco Morales is currently immersed in a one hundred percent personal project, which will get under way in a few months in Cordoba, his home city. Noor will combine a gourmet restaurant and a creative space, with a strategic theme: its speciality in Andalusian cuisine. * "18 years ago, my parents opened a ready meal business in Cordoba, El Asador de Nati. When I decided to go to the Basque Country, I had a fight with my father, who didn’t understand me. In a family business, there is an established hierarchy; you can have your place, but it's complicated”. * “Everyone has to find their path. There are no magic wands, it is impossible. Many people want to help you, but, in the end, you are on your own, surrounded by family and friends". * "At home I was taught the value of effort, which is something that seems to be undervalued. Television cooking contests are positive because they bring cooking to society, but they also promote a very powerful media phenomenon.