MULTI-BRAND RESTAURANT GROUP
“Nosotros llegamos a un comité con un 3% y nos echan.”
“If we walked into a board meeting with a 3% variance, we'd be fired.”
Javier Álvarez · Head of Controlling & Purchasing Director · Grupo Dani García
Fourteen restaurants in Spain. Some months, every single one runs under 0.8 points of theoretical-to-actual variance. The industry considers 3% acceptable.
Excel spreadsheets and recipes in a notebook
Grupo Dani García did not adopt a system because the old way was broken. It adopted one because the old way could not scale. Costings lived in Excel with purchase prices that never updated. Recipes lived in a Word document, or a notebook.
“Teníamos un escandallo base que era lo mismo en marzo que en mayo. Ahora es totalmente diferente, y más con la fluctuación de precios que tenemos.”
“We had a base costing that was the same in March as in May. Now it's completely different, especially with the price swings we deal with.”
The trigger was ambition. Going from two restaurants to fifteen is not a bigger version of the same problem, it is a different problem.
“Tú puedes tener un Ferrari, pero si no sabes conducir, ¿de qué te vale?”
“You can own a Ferrari. If you can't drive, what good is it?”
What the system governs
- Centralised recipe governance: every concept, every country, one source
- Live costing tied to real purchase prices, updated daily
- Three permission tiers: read-only for line cooks, operational for head chefs, admin for the central team
- Purchasing strategy negotiated centrally on volume, pushed down to every site
- Waste categorised by type (water loss, guest, kitchen, accident) and costed
- Monthly management close, escalating to weekly the moment variance crosses 1%
- Kitchen team bonuses tied directly to variance and waste thresholds
What that produces
Metric
Before
After
Metric
Theoretical vs. actual variance
Before
Industry norm: 3%+
After
0.17 to 0.80 points
Metric
Escalation trigger
Before
Monthly review
After
1% triggers weekly closes
Metric
Recipe source of truth
Before
Excel and Word
After
One system, all countries
Metric
Chef turnover risk
Before
Knowledge left with the chef
After
Account handover, nothing lost
“Le damos su mail, su contraseña, su perfil, y aquí lo tienes todo: proveedores, recetas. Lo único que tiene que seguir son las directrices que nosotros le marcamos.”
“We hand them an email, a password, a profile, and everything is there: suppliers, recipes. All they have to follow is the direction we set.”
Where to start, according to Grupo Dani García
“Primero, que se digitalicen. Aquí no se usa ni un papel.”
“First, go digital. There isn't a single sheet of paper in this business.”
“Bajar los costes tocando la calidad es fácil, lo hace cualquiera. Lo que hacemos nosotros es mantener la calidad, o incluso mejorarla, mejorando los costes.”
“Cutting costs by cutting quality is easy, anyone can do that. What we do is hold quality, or raise it, while improving cost.”
Watch the full interviews
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