CaixaBank and elBullifoundation present a guide to the strategic keys to the restaurant business

• Food and Beverage, the second guide produced by the two organisations, sets out to make entrepreneurs aware of the key strategic key factors to set up their project with prospects for success and take the right steps to keep their business going.
• With this initiative, CaixaBank aims to add differential value for its clients and cement its position as the leading bank for professionals in the restaurant sector.

CaixaBank and elBullifoundation have today published a new guide entitled Food and Beverage, the intention of which is to advise small and medium-sized restaurant businesses on how to set up and maintain a high-quality, profitable establishment that lasts over time.
The new book published by the two organisations, the follow-up to Mise en Place, published in 2016, outlines the key factors in running a restaurant dining room properly, focusing on the important of the dining room staff and on drinks, drawing on the knowledge of Lluís Garcia, manager of elBulli, and Ferran Centelles, somellier at elBulli. According to Ferrán Adrià: “The next revolution will not be in the kitchen, it will be in the dining room.”

The aim of the book is to make people in charge of restaurants aware of the key factors in running their businesses properly, starting with the dining room and moving on to handling drinks, as this has an impact across different economic sectors. The guide does this by outlining the main requirements to assess before opening a restaurant business, listing the risks to avoid, explaining the paperwork needed, proposing business models, offering successful business strategies, making suggestions for the financial plan, presenting procedural manuals for organising and training staff and laying down basic principles for surviving over time. “Many businesses open without even having a business model, a business plan or a budget to guide the profit and loss account in order to establish the way to go to open and stay open. This means most businesses don't last a year or don't survive the first five years, and very few last over time. It's essential to carry out a detailed analysis,” states Adrià.

Among the most important issues, the book concentrates on discussing innovation, financial sustainability, values, structures and leadership, efficiency and planning and strategic vision. All this is explained in detail, giving guidelines and specific examples to help entrepreneurs to understand each of the steps to follow.

Finally, the book gives a prominent place to drinks within the framework of high-class restaurants. The guide sets out to provide overall knowledge for entrepreneurs, from the farmer who grows the grapes to the wine served in the restaurant. To this end, Food and Beverage discusses the types of drinks a business needs to have, the history and development of these drinks, their presence and presentation in restaurants, how to classify them, order them and store them, how to set the price and the functions in drinks management.

CaixaBank, the leading bank in the restaurant industry

This initiative run by elBullifoundation enables the bank to offers its clients differential value in addition to the comprehensive range of financial products CaixaBank makes available to professionals in the restaurant business.

The launch of Food and Beverage shows how important the restaurant sector is to CaixaBank which, through CaixaBank Business, offers professionals in the trade products and services designed to help them run their business by offering them the finance and the protection they need. To do this, CaixaBank has a team of specialist advisers who visit the client's premises so that the latter does not have to travel or even leave their establishment.

Agreement between CaixaBank and elBullifoundation

CaixaBank and elBullifoundation joined forces in 2015 to carry out joint projects with a single unifying principle: innovation.

Cooperation between the two organisations sought a new formula to drive innovative projects, and to this end CaixaBankLAB was set up, a portal containing information of use to entrepreneurs about projects and activities run jointly by CaixaBank and elBullifoundation. This initiative, the aim of which is to apply creativity to specific projects that result in innovation, is aimed at supporting professional initiatives in the fine food and drink business and related sectors.

Since the two organisations joined forces, CaixaBank has made an active contribution to, among other things, the Bullipedia, a project in which elBullifoundation is working on a scientific and historical study to support farming (a segment on which CaixaBank is also currently focused through AgroBank) and other sectors concerned with specific products.