"We are going to make losses this year and possibly next year, but we have to see it as an investment," says Xavier Mitats (Barcelona, 1958), founding partner of the Esencia restaurant group. Mitats, a former partner of El Tragaluz, sold his stake last summer, with the entry of the investment fund Miura and set about building a restaurant group from the restaurant Agua, which was left out of the operation with Miura.

Mitats created the Esencia Group, and entrusted the management to his third son Guillem. In November they opened Tierra, in the Ninot market in Barcelona, and they were ready to open the third restaurant, Brisa, in Palau de Mar... Covid-19 has been like a tidal wave that has swept away all plans. "We closed Tierra with the confinement and as it is inside the market we have not been able to reopen it. Brisa opened a few days ago... although at half throttle. Turnover is barely 25% of our forecasts. Or of last year's turnover, at Agua".

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The group invested 4.5 million in the opening of Tierra y Brisa and expected a turnover of 12 million this year with its three stores.

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Mitats already had the experience of landing in a tsunami in the previous crisis: he joined Astroc, Enrique Bañuelos' real estate company, in 2006, to lead its expansion in Brazil. "No one could have imagined that an event like the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy would come along and sweep the world's finances." Now, he points out, governments are making the situation much better, "with ERTEs and ICO credits to finance losses". Thus, Esencia, which should have had some 120 workers, has barely 45 working, with as many in ERTE and others who have not been hired. We businessmen have to make an effort to open up, to keep the city alive. There are entire areas that, if they deteriorate, will never start up again.

Mitats began his professional career as an economist and auditor. After Arthur Andersen ("the best school in the profession") he co-founded Arraut y Asociados ("Javier is one of the people I have learned the most in life") and later, in 1998 he founded with Carlos Puig de Travy a consulting and auditing firm that was the embryo of what today is the Spanish subsidiary of Crowe Horwath International.

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At the same time, however, he started in the leisure and catering sector. "Rosa Esteva and Tomás Tarruella, the founders of El Tragaluz, were clients of Arnaut, and they proposed me to partner with them at Agua," he explains. In 1998, he promoted a tourism project in Cuba with the French group Macumba and the Giró Group, and in those years he began to collaborate with El Tragaluz, providing partners to open restaurants such as Negro and Bestial. Also in Brazil, when he was managing the Quabit subsidiary, he opened a restaurant, which he still manages, in Fortaleza.

"It runs in my family," he acknowledges: his father launched Virmit, a company that sold and exported textile machinery, which was later run by his brother.

"Catering is a very grateful business. People enjoy it, laugh... And in the 1990s it also had a lot of margin, more profit than glamour." The situation is more difficult today for the sector: rising costs of rents, salaries and raw materials, which cannot be passed on in the price. "People want to dine for 30 or 40 euros... like twenty years ago". For this reason, he recognizes that being a group helps: it creates administrative synergies, with suppliers and commercial synergies, because of the confidence that the brand gives. Esencia expected to have a turnover of 12 million in 2021 and to continue adding stores, milestones that will be delayed. "Our priority is to consolidate the two new restaurants," in which the company has invested 4.5 million euros.

Esencia also participates in the restaurant of the Barcelona Tennis Club, managed by Gonzalo Ros and Carles Vera. "I'm from the Llafranc Tennis Club. I love tennis. And in a country that has Nadal it's impossible for there to be people who don't like it."

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Learn more about: Restaurant Tierra Brava

Learn more about: Brisa Restaurant

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