Blog for restaurant owners
17 articles on what running a venue in Spain really costs: plate costs, cash close, legal obligations. With the sources cited and no form standing between you and reading them.
Management
The numbers: costs, margins and pricing.
- How to cost a dishWhat dish costing is, how to work it out with wastage included and what margin each dish leaves. With a full worked example and the usual mistakes.
- Table turnover and average spendHow to work out table turnover and average spend in your restaurant, what values are normal, and which of the two is worth putting the effort into.
- Labour cost in a restaurantHow to work out labour cost as a share of sales, what always gets left out of the sum, and what to do when it climbs without laying anybody off.
- How to price a set lunch menuHow to price a set lunch menu without losing money: cost weighted by what people actually order, and what to do with the dish that eats the margin.
- Menu engineeringHow to cross what sells most with what leaves the most margin, to decide which dishes to keep, which to redesign and which to take off the menu.
- What it costs to open a barWhat goes into the opening budget for a bar in Spain, which items always get forgotten, and why the money for the first months closes the most venues.
Operations
What happens in the dining room, the kitchen and the till.
- Why the till does not balanceThe seven real causes of a till discrepancy in hospitality, how to track each one down, and how to stop balancing depending on somebody's memory.
- How to run courses in the kitchenWhat a course is, how it gets fired, why dessert should not leave with the starters, and how to coordinate floor and kitchen when the table sets the pace.
- How to cut waiting timesWhere the minutes really go in a service and what can be shortened without rushing: taking the order, the dead time between courses, and payment.
Compliance
What the law requires, with the regulation cited.
- The 14 allergens you must declareWhich 14 allergens must be declared, what the rules require from a bar or restaurant in Spain, and the valid ways of telling the customer.
- VAT in hospitality: 10 % or 21 %The real VAT rule for bars and restaurants in Spain: service goes at 10 %, alcoholic drinks included. The 21 % is the exception and almost nobody applies it right.
- Free tap water: what the rule actually requiresSince 2022 every bar and restaurant in Spain must offer free unpackaged water. What that means exactly, what you can still charge for, and how to avoid friction.
- Spain's food waste law in hospitalityWhat Law 1/2025 requires from bars and restaurants in Spain, why the prevention plan only binds above 1,300 m2, and what you have to put on the menu.
- Recording working time in hospitalityWhat recording working time really requires in a Spanish bar or restaurant, what is still pending on the digital rules, and what you must keep and for how long.
- What your menu must carry in CataloniaLanguage, prices with tax, supplements, allergens and compulsory notices: everything a bar or restaurant menu has to carry in Catalonia.
- Which food waste law applies to your venue in CataloniaCatalonia has both Law 3/2020 and Spain's Law 1/2025. Which one applies to your venue, why the prevention plan depends on size, and what to do.
- Minimum spend, bookings and tips: what you may requireMinimum spend, table time limits, booking deposits, no-shows and tips: what a restaurant in Catalonia may require, and on what conditions.
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