Guillem Garí Fornés: "Without generational change, the future of Es Cruce is complicated."

ManacorThere was a day when Williamde sa MoletaHe left behind anonymity and his family nickname to become a leading figure in his town, the Pla region, and Mallorca. That first pine arbor on La Moleta, which shaded travelers on the Manacor road, was first transformed into corrugated asbestos roofing and, later, into a popular restaurant. It was then that Guillem Garí Fornés (Vilafranca, 1957) became Guillemfrom Es Cruce

Upright as an owl, with his arms outstretched, elegantly directing and assigning tables, recalls Pep Guardiola in his best days.Dream TeamGuillem knows he's playing on his own turf, and without losing control, he orchestrates the game. He does this from beneath the threshold of the door that separates the entrance from the large dining room; just take a look at the tiles, much more worn where he stands. Who knows how many hours he's spent on his feet? From there, like a conductor, he runs the business with the same passion and precision with which he led Vilafranca football to glory, alongside Tomeu Penya, and just as he has done with his restaurant.

To begin, can you tell us a little about your origins?

— My roots are in this very place where we are now. We were a working-class family. Here, 51 years ago, my father and mother started selling melons, watermelons, potatoes, and other local produce during the summers. We had a stall under a pine branch, and when the weather turned bad, we had to close up. Little by little, as business was going well, we put up corrugated roofing sheets—nothing fancy or anything like that—and that way, instead of only being able to stay open for four or five months, we could last seven or eight. Later, we added some glass and started making coffee. With a toaster from a blacksmith's shop that was here, we'd give snacks to those who came by—a bit of pork loin or blood sausage. My grandfather would find a few asparagus spears, and we'd make two tortillas, and my godmother was the cook.

And did this arise because of the tourists who went to the caves or the pearls of Manacor, or not?

— That's right, tourists, but also the delivery drivers; the truckers made us very famous. They'd stop for a snack, and we'd serve twenty or thirty snacks, thirty or forty meals, and we'd close early, around eight o'clock.

— The first fifteen or twenty years were like that, and then we started to improve things a bit. I'd say for the last fifty years. Forty years ago we made the dining room bigger and started to rotate more people and expand, but it wasn't what it is now because that dining room (referring to the one in the right wing) was run by three people back then, and now seven of us run it.

At what age did you start working here?

— I left when I was 17 because I didn't want to study, and my parents told me, "Come here and help us." I'm 68 now, and I've been here almost since the beginning. I worked two years on a roof, and then my mother started pushing me to get a job. And you know, it was relatively easy work because it meant serving twenty people in the morning and thirty at lunch. But for them, it was a lot, so I started, and I was hooked, and I haven't left since.

What were the beginnings of the restaurant like?

— At first we had this vegetable garden here, we had two cows, chickens, pigeons, vegetables and almost everything we served we took from home and brought here to cook and serve it.

As the business grew, how did you update or expand the menu and the dishes?

— It was a slow growth. For the first ten or fifteen years, we just kept going. We never did more than we needed to. Then, about forty years ago, we built the dining room and started to grow more and hire more staff. We've expanded according to demand, but we never planned for that, you know? I remember when we opened; carts with bread were passing by, and one of them asked, "What are they doing here?" and the other replied, "They want to open a bar here," and the first one said, "Those people are crazy." And they were, a little crazy, actually. But these last fifteen or twenty years, it's grown more than we could have ever imagined.

How many people can pass through the restaurant these days?

— Now, approximately twelve or thirteen thousand people pass through each week. There are busy days and quieter days, but the volume is very large compared to when it started.

What would you say is the secret to staying so long?

— I believe that if you can offer a reasonable price, good quality, and especially if you're open on weekdays... if you provide fast service... if you can achieve these three things, you'll succeed here or elsewhere. But it's not easy to do it well, quickly, and cheaply.

One of the things that gives people confidence is that they see you when they enter the restaurant. He's applied well what the owner should be…

— Yes, absolutely. I've been here, inside the kitchen, and I've broken things... I've been very hands-on to make sure everything runs smoothly. Just like to get a good price, you have to fight for it. For example, cod went up a lot, and we tried to make it cheaper... that's it: if you want to sell at good prices, you have to fight to adjust them. And as I was saying, the important thing is speed of service, especially on weekdays, because there are many people who work and don't have much time for a snack or lunch. Some people eat in an hour, and others in half an hour. And all of this means you have to be on top of things. Oh! And I insist, quality. If you don't offer quality, you can give it away for free, but people won't come.

The staff that he has had to hire will also have changed during these years.

— Things have changed a lot. Twenty years ago, people would come in and tell you they were interested in working long hours, earning money, and if they only had one day off, that suited them. Now, on the other hand, they tell you they don't want to work all year round. They prefer to work eight months and be unemployed for four because they have to go back to their home country. Or they simply want to be seasonal workers so they can rest for two or three months. Eight hours is enough for them, and they don't want to work twelve.

What else has changed over the years…

— Look, the purchasing system has changed a lot too. Ten years ago, suppliers would come and say, "If you buy a bottle of cava, we'll give you four cases of wine, or if you buy a hundred cases of soda, we'll give you five." Now nobody comes to offer you anything; you have to call them and ask them to come. There are no offers. Before, buying was a great deal, but now it hurts to stretch your budget. Now, if you tell a supplier you don't want a product because the price has gone up, they don't care.

Imagine how much it revolves here, imagine a small (business) one…

— Yes, yes, and I move around a lot… and pay. Everything has changed a lot. Shopping has become much more expensive. In ten years it's gone up by 30%. Now you go to the supermarket with a hundred euros and you don't buy the same things as before.

With COVID, did this become even more pronounced?

— Yes, it increased a lot with COVID. There was also a staff shortage.

Has this staff shortage been a constant in recent years?

— Yes, there have been cases these past four or five years. And the problem is that many people don't want to work year-round. Some want to consider their partner or their unemployment benefits. There are people who ask, "Can I come in and work a couple of hours off the books?" And no, I can't, because we can't do that. That does happen. There are those who receive a monthly allowance of five or six hundred euros, and of course, they don't want to be registered and lose that allowance. It's complicated.

Is this the biggest headache these days?

— Yes. The hardest part is the staff. You can have a million customers, no problem. The problem is having an efficient team. Ten years ago you could hire nine people, and now you're happy with just six or one—that's just how it is now.

But have you had employees who have been here for many years?

— Yes. There's one that's been here for forty-two years. Seven or eight of us have been here for twenty years, and five or six for fifteen. For a while, the whole staff were people who had been here for many years, and now it's just the veterans left. There are about thirty people who have been working here for a long time. But the other thirty, when there are sixty of us in total, if we've been here a year, we're doing well. Things have changed. Everyone used to want to build a house and want to earn money to do it, and now that's not the case anymore.

— So there are also a lot of absences. We, for example, to stem that, offer an incentive during June, July, August, and September with a bonus each month to anyone who isn't on sick leave. For instance, a young man who fell off his scooter and had a scrape on his arm, I told him to take sick leave, but he said no because he didn't want to lose his bonus. You have to come up with systems to keep them working. But I'll also tell you something else: earning the same as at another bar or in El Cruce, they work here and they should feel somewhat incentivized to continue, because if they don't feel that way, they'll go somewhere else. It's not the same working here as somewhere else where they might have a moment to take care of themselves or be unemployed, and here they're constantly on the go.

It closes one day a week now, but it hasn't been that long.

— We started closing on Tuesdays a year and a half ago. We didn't used to close, but when the law allowing two days off came out, it was impossible for us not to close, and now one day closed and one day off counts as two days off. I mean, personally, I wouldn't have closed any days, but if I had to go looking for work, I'd actually done well (laughs).

What are your typical hours on a normal day?

— We open at six and the kitchen is open until eleven in the evening. That means you can come here for a snack at eleven or lunch at five in the afternoon. But, and I think this is important, now, for example, on a weekday in the summer, maybe two hundred people come through the restaurant between four and six; that's a time when, normally, if you order lunch at any restaurant, they'll tell you the kitchen is closed. Where are you going to eat at those hours? Nowhere, and we take advantage of that. It's true it's more complicated because you have to manage staff shifts, but we provide the service.

What type of customers do you have?

— We have a bit of everything. For example, on Sundays from 8:30 to 9:30, it's all Mallorcans. Then, from 10:00 to 11:30, about 80% are Colombians and people from other parts of South America. At midday, we go back to about 50 or 60% Mallorcans, then it's all mixed together. If someone had told me twenty years ago that on a Sunday at 11:00 in the morning I'd have 80% South Americans, I wouldn't have believed it. And these are people who spend money because you can see they work.

And tourists?

— They sell later, from five or six o'clock onwards, because they eat dinner early, especially when the weather is nice and there's a terrace. I think tourists feel a bit overwhelmed in Es Cruce during peak hours because they're not used to it. On the other hand, at this time of day, when everything is quieter, we get 150 tourists every day.

Are there signature dishes at Es Cruce, or do they all have their fans?

— No, no, there are leaders. First and foremost, in terms of quantity, it's the "arroz sucio" (dirty rice). Second is snails; third is quail, and then escalope and grilled cuttlefish, but the first three sell far more. We used to sell suckling pig forty years ago, and we still sell suckling pig today. The same goes for the "arroz sucio," also forty years ago, as well as the snails, which we've also been making for many years. However, some dishes do go out of fashion.

There were a few years when, in addition to Es Cruce, he also took on another role. How do you remember the period when you were involved with Vilafranca football?

— We got involved with football and it worked for ten years. He joined. Take Peña And we had a great time because we signed some good players, and one year we even won the Third Division championship, which was one of our goals. Then we came back older and passed the torch to the younger players coming up. And we left the club in good financial shape. But we had to make it our own. Just think, the year we left, to get the team debt-free, we organized a festival in the town square. I hosted a dinner, and Tomeu Penya sang. It was to raise funds for the club before we left and to leave it in good shape. And even after we'd done all that, we were still a million pesetas short. I told Tomeu that we all had to chip in, and that's what we did. But we're very happy to have run the club.

A day off, what does Guillermo do?from Es CruceIs it located?

— He sleeps in the mornings because I'm always on the back foot. Then I go for a walk somewhere else, or one day there's a restaurant industry fair and I go… I always have things to do. I only leave if it's closed. When it's open, never. Then we close for a week at Christmas and one at Easter and take a short trip, but if not, don't look for me… because we're here.

How do you explain that the restaurant on the Manacor road has survived, while others have not finished operating?

— I think they either haven't been paying attention or they've approached it the wrong way. I believe the surest way to succeed is to serve local food: soups, snails, arroz sucio (a type of rice dish), fried food, carne asada (grilled meat)... this works. And, above all, offer good food at a good price. And offering a good price doesn't mean serving bad food. If you serve bad food, you can set whatever price you want, it won't work. And speed. During the week, for example, some people have already eaten in three-quarters of an hour, with a starter, main course, dessert, and coffee. Let me explain, they're already doing us a favor if they make it easy, because we can set up another one (laughs). Yesterday, for example, IB3 came to do a report on after-dinner conversation, and there's no after-dinner conversation here. In the summer, when things are quieter, there is some on the terrace, but not in here now. Besides, if you're eating and you see the queue, you leave. Seeing the queue, I think, influences people to leave. And this also has a positive effect. If people see a queue, they're encouraged to come. But above all, it matters that people leave happy. Otherwise, I wouldn't come back.

I wonder if many famous people, politicians, have passed through here?

— Presidents, councilors, all the presidents of the Balearic Government, Real Madrid players, singers, Christmas... have all come through. Agatha Ruiz de la Prada came, and I didn't recognize her, and she said to me, "Guillem, I would have a table"And I told her no, that she had to wait in line. And a customer told me who she was, and then I went to find her. I remember she came with one, and she ordered snails and asked me how to eat them. And he asked me for something curious: a beef stocking, well-done on the outside and raw on the inside.""Very slightly burned on the outside"I placed it directly over the flame and it came back, very black. I took it to him and he said:"Perfect,That's how I wanted it."Sometimes you have to invent and do these things.

And the future?

— "Oops, here!" she says, leaning back in her chair without realizing it. The future is complicated, very complicated. I have three children: one has been working at the University of Barcelona for ten years, another is a teacher and is currently in Ibiza, and one is a psychologist, but she works with us at the Es Cruce office and says that when we close, she'll leave. In other words, there's no one to take over right now. That's why I want to hold on for a year or two, and then we'll see how long I can manage. I'll have to rent it out or sell it... I don't know what to do, because there's no one to take over from the next generation. No! And I've made them offers. I made one to my son not long ago, and he said it was a very good offer, but that he really loves what he does. And if someone does what they love, they should do it.

That job doesn't stretch them and…

— No, but the truth is, everyone loves Es Cruce. Look, when COVID hit, we closed for a month. My little girl, the doll, called and said, "Are you opening yet?" because that was when they were going to give permission to reopen. And her mother told her, "I think your father has been very well, and I don't think we'll reopen." And my little girl said, "How can you not reopen?" And they hung up. Ido, it seems, suddenly started talking to each other. And soon the other two called me to see if it was true that we wouldn't reopen. I mean, everyone loves Es Cruce, but they have other jobs.

Should this work be liked, or not?

— If you don't like it, you're dead. I'm not liked. Now, on a Sunday, you're keeping an eye on things and you see the line stretching way down there and you think, "We'll be done by six!", but you don't care. You just keep going, you keep going.

Could he have retired a long time ago, or not?

— Yes, I could retire, but I love what I do. Besides, now, for example, if you say we're closing the kitchen at 4:30 or 5:00, we could do it; we don't need it to live, we could serve those 100 or 150 more people. You do it out of a sense of service. Why should I worry about whether we'll fit those twenty more tables? It's not about the money, it's about the pleasure of providing service. This has been somewhat lost in the industry. Bars and restaurants are closing down… Fifteen years ago, Vilafranca had a lively atmosphere, with five or six bars open.