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 local icon in his village, the Pla region, and Mallorca. That first pine arbor in Sa Moleta, which shaded travelers on the Manacor road, was first replaced by corrugated cement sheets and later transformed into a popular restaurant. It was then that Guillem Garí Fornés (Vilafranca, 1957) became Guillemfrom Crossroads

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 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 things from outside the city during the summers. We had a stall under a pine canopy, and when bad weather came, we had to close up. Little by little, as business was going well, we put up corrugated roofing sheets, but nothing fancy or anything like that (laughs), and that way, instead of only being able to run for four or five months, we could last seven or eight. Later, we put up some glass and started making coffee, and with a toaster from a blacksmith shop that was here, we gave 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 priest, and we'd split up.

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 will 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.

How is the business growing, how are you updating or expanding 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 first opened, carts with bread would drive by, and one of them asked, "What are they doing here?" and the other replied, "They want to open a bar here." At first, I said, "Those people are crazy." And to be honest, they were a little.crazinessHowever, in the last fifteen or twenty years it has grown more than we could have 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 the beginning.

What would you say is the secret to staying healthy for so many years?

— I believe that if you can offer a reasonable price, good quality, and, especially on weekdays, 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 when they come in, you see. He's applied well the principle that 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 things go well. 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, others in half an hour. And all 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 aren't going to buy it.

Will the staff you've had to hire have also changed over 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 sell. 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 a small one that spins a lot...

— 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.

Did this get even worse with Covid?

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

Has this staff shortage been a constant in recent years?

— Yes, it's been happening for the last four or five years. And the problem is that many people don't want to work year-round. Some want to look out for their girlfriends or for 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 effective team. Ten years ago, could you hire a nine-year-old, and now it's only a six or you just settle for a set, 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 them have been here for twenty years, and five or six for fifteen. For a while, the whole staff had been here for many years, and now we're left with the veterans; there are about thirty people who have been working here for a long time. But the other thirty, out of a total of sixty of us, 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. For example, to stem that, we offer incentives during June, July, August, and September, giving a bonus each month to anyone who isn't on leave. For instance, a young man who fell off his scooter and had a scrape on his arm, and I told him to take leave, but he refused because he didn't want to lose his bonus. You have to come up with systems to keep them working. But I'll tell you something else: if they're paid the same as at another bar or at Es Cruce, they work here and they should feel somewhat incentivized, because if they don't, they'll go somewhere else. It's not the same working here as somewhere else where they might have a moment to browse or just stand around, and here they don't stop all day Sunday.

It closes one day a week now, but isn't that a bit much?

— 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 equals two days. I mean, if it were up to me, we wouldn't have closed any day, but if I had to go and find work, I actually did quite well (laughs).

What are your typical hours on a normal day?

— We open at six and the kitchen is open until eleven at night. That means you can come here for a snack at eleven or for lunch at five in the afternoon. But, and I think this is important, now, for example, on a weekday in the summer, maybe between four and six, two hundred people come through, which is a time when normally, if you ordered lunch at any restaurant, they'd 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 all sorts. 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. Around midday, it starts again with about 50 or 60% Mallorcans, then it's all mixed up... If someone had told me twenty years ago that on a Sunday at 11:00 in the morning, 80% of the people would be South Americans, I wouldn't have believed it. And these are people who spend money because you can see they work.

And tourists?

— They come more in the afternoon, starting around five or six, because they eat dinner early, especially when the weather is nice and there are terraces. I think tourists feel a bit overwhelmed in 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 any signature dishes from Cruce or do they all have their fans?

— No, no, there are leaders. First and foremost, in terms of quantity, is arroz sucio (dirty rice). Second are snails, third is quail, and then zueco (a type of fish) 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 arroz sucio forty years ago, as well as 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 Cruce, he took on another role. How do you remember the period when you were involved with Vilafranca football?

— We leftrollwith football and it worked for ten yearsfull speedHe joined in 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 you come back older, and we passed the torch to the younger players coming up. And we'll leave the club in good financial shape. But we had to put it in our own hands. 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. And 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.

What does Guillem do on his day off?from CrossroadsAre you there?

— He sleeps in the mornings because I'm always out and about. 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 he's closed. When he's open, never. Then we close for a week at Christmas and a week 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 on top of things 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 a meal with a starter, main course, dessert, and coffee by the time they're three-quarters of the way through. Meam, if you know what I mean, 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. On the other hand, in the summer when things are quieter, there is on the terrace, but not in here now. Besides, if you're eating and you see the queues, there are lines. I think seeing the queue 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.

Did many famous people, politicians... pass by?

— Presidents, councilors, all the presidents of the Balearic Government, Real Madrid players, singers have all been here. At Christmas... A lot of people have come through here. Agata Ruiz de la Prada came, and I didn't recognize her. She said to me, "Guillem must have a table," and I told her no, she'd have to wait in line. Then a customer told me who she was, and later I went to find her. I remember she came with a man, and she ordered snails and asked me how to eat them. And he asked me for something unusual: a shot.whereIt was overcooked on the outside but raw on the inside. I made it as best I could, and it didn't turn out well.Badly burned on the outsideI put it directly over the flame and it turned completely black. I took it to him and he said:"Perfect,That's what I wanted."Sometimes you have to invent and do these things.

And the future?

— "Oh, 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 the third is a psychologist, but she works with us at the Es Cruce office and says that when we close, she's leaving. 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 family. No! And I've made them offers. I made one to my son not too 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 Cruce. Look, when Covid hit, we closed for a month. The little doll called and asked, "Are you opening yet?" because that was when they were going to give permission to reopen. And her mother told her, "It seems to me your father has been very well, and I don't think we'll be reopening." And the doll said, "How can you not be reopening?" And they hung up. Apparently, the three of them suddenly started talking to each other. And soon the other two were calling to see if it was true that we wouldn't be reopening. I mean, everyone loves Cruce, but they do other jobs.

Should this work be liked, or not?

— If you don't like it, you're dead. I'm not liked if there's nothing to die for here. Now, on a Sunday, you look around and 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.

Were you able to retire him a while ago, or not?

— Yes, I could retire, but I enjoy it. Besides, now, for example, if you say, "We're closing the kitchen at 4:30 or 5:00," I could do it. We don't need to serve those extra 100 or 150 people to make a living. You do it out of a sense of service. Why should I stress myself out thinking, "Okay, let's set up those extra 20 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.