David contra Goliath
I'll tell you right now, from the first line, that the giant is winning. There was a time when the hospitality industry was dominated by Davids, small, self-taught business owners who made ends meet by putting in long hours behind the bar, involving every member of the family, and cultivating a practically familial relationship with their regular customers. In their town or neighborhood, everyone
That corner bar or that modest eatery, painstakingly built by everyday heroes, would make the current bigwigs of the industry laugh out loud, looking down their noses at them as they tried to make ends meet. But the truth is, many of them managed, with that humble work, to give their children a university education that kept them away from the bar, comfortably pay their rent, and even buy a small apartment in Benidorm to enjoy their retirement.
Today, the hospitality industry is ceasing to be a business for small entrepreneurs—with a few notable exceptions that we try to highlight in these pages—and is becoming a sector populated by proletarians working for corporate groups that simultaneously control dozens of establishments. It's no wonder that leaning on a bar and being served by the owner has become an almost extinct luxury.
These Goliaths avoid the negative image associated with franchises by giving each establishment its own name and image—I was tempted to say personality, but that's a bit of a stretch. They've divided up the best locations in the liveliest areas, cover all the bases in the culinary scene, and have managed to seduce a public that, mesmerized by the eye-catching decor, prefers to ignore the consequences of this inexorable process of consolidation.
The most outrageous thing is that many of these giants have adopted, in order to sell themselves, a jargon that evokes the memory of grandmothers –who knows whose–, the little pots of homemade recipes –even if they are prepared in an industrial kitchen– or the traditional atmosphere of those modest taverns that they are leaving without air.
