Gonzalo Calvo is an entrepreneur who likes a challenge. In early 2013, his chain of real estate agencies went bankrupt, but far from sinking due to the failure, at 48 years old, he decided to start over and today he is once again a successful person, leading the Saona restaurant group, which this year expects to bill 30 million euros and has set the goal of reaching one hundred restaurants throughout Spain in the coming years.
His new business venture was not long in coming. Just two months after filing for bankruptcy due to the real estate crisis, in March 2013, he took over a cafeteria in the center of Valencia that was for transfer and opened the Bianco Latte restaurant. This brand, however, was already registered by a Milanese company and the European trademark registry forced him to look for another name. It was at that moment that he decided to adopt the Saona brand, which is the name "of a cove in Formentera that brings me many and very good personal memories," explains Calvo, president and founding partner of Grupo Saona, in an interview with The New Barcelona Post.
"I had always liked the restaurant sector, I'm a home cook, and I also really like decoration; I chose to link these two hobbies and created Saona," explains the Valencian businessman, who has just opened his first two restaurants in Barcelona, a city where he plans to weave a network of eight or ten establishments. The first Saona opened a few weeks ago in the La Maquinista shopping center and the second opened its doors for San Juan on Aribau street 131, between Córcega and Rosselló.
Saona restaurants are distinguished by their careful decoration ---where wood and wicker predominate--- and by offering casual Mediterranean cuisine with good value for money. Saona has been successful thanks to a fixed-price menu formula, with eleven starters and eleven main courses to choose from. The price includes desserts, but drinks are paid separately. There are four rates, depending on the day of the week and whether it is midday or night. You can eat during the week for 10.95 euros, while the menu price rises to 15.95 euros on weekend nights. "With this closed menu format, Saona customers already know, before coming, how much they will spend," says Calvo.
But let's go back to Valencia and the group's beginnings. "The beginnings were tough, people saw us as a cafeteria, which was the business that was there before in the premises, and nobody came in to eat. I made my children sit on the terrace to eat so that people would be encouraged," he recalls. Everything changed, however, radically in the summer of 2014, when Calvo opened a Saona in a beach bar in Jávea. The place became very fashionable that summer and they took the opportunity to explain that there was already another Saona in Valencia. The third restaurant was not long in coming and since then they have not stopped.
Today, Grupo Saona has 28 restaurants and another seven are pending opening in cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants such as Madrid, Elche, Albacete, Alcalá de Henares, Seville and Sagunto. "The idea is to open between ten and twelve new premises this year and repeat the same figure for 2022," says the chain's president, who also aims to establish itself in Portugal from 2023.
How far does Gonzalo Calvo want to go? "As far as we can! I don't set limits, but much further than where we are now for sure. When I see that people are not happy leaving my premises, I will stop opening new ones," he assures. "In Spain, I estimate that we can reach one hundred restaurants," explains the businessman, who is very happy to have established himself in Barcelona, where he could create a network of up to eight establishments. In Madrid, he already has ten; it is his main city, along with Valencia.
Although most of the group's premises bear the Saona brand (24), the company also owns the Turqueta (1 in Valencia), Tagomago (in Valencia and Madrid) and Quick Saona (in the Bonaire shopping center) restaurants, with which it has wanted to explore new concepts. Saona is the brand with which the expansion plan has been decided to concentrate, but some new Tagomago premises will also be opened, the group's highest-end restaurants.
100% of the 28 restaurants are company-owned, as until now Calvo has not considered expanding through franchises for his expansion strategy, although it is a door he does not close for the future. For the first six years, the founder of Saona did all this alone, but in 2019 he decided to sell 49% of the group's shares to Miura Partners, the Barcelona-based private equity firm led by Luis Seguí. "Miura is a good travel companion, there was very good empathy with their team and I am satisfied to have them as partners, I have not made a mistake," reflects Calvo.
Miura is also the reference shareholder of Grupo Tragaluz, but the two restaurant groups are managed completely independently, although synergies have begun to be explored, such as joint negotiation for the purchase of beer.
Grupo Saona currently employs 650 people and, before the pandemic, recorded annual growth of 40%. In 2019, it invoiced 19.5 million euros, a figure that dropped to 16.5 million in 2020 and which this year it expects to almost double, to 30 million, thanks to the recovery of normality and new openings.
Covid has also delayed Saona's arrival in Barcelona by a year. In La Maquinista, the brand has set up in the recently expanded area of the shopping center. The chain has also chosen to locate itself in the center of the Eixample, on Aribau street, with a joint investment close to one million euros. The Aribau restaurant has a capacity for 150 diners, employs 18 people and has two floors where up to four zones or environments totaling 450 square meters can be differentiated. "For us, Barcelona has always been a special challenge. We are very excited to be able to offer a different concept to the city; we hope to have a good reception from the people of Barcelona and to be as liked as we are in Valencia or Madrid," concludes the owner of Saona.