Convinced and risky, Carlos Bosch (Aspe, Alicante, 1976) —in black in the opening photo— is the patron of one of the Alicante’s most powerful gastronomic ships: Grupo Gastro Portal. An adventure that began in 2008, in the midst of a crisis, daring with a concept that may now sound recurring, but of which nothing existed more than a decade ago. Even less in Alicante.
This is how El Portal was born. a place at number 2 Bilbao street, which has made luxury its raison d’être and which in just 140 useful square meters makes champagne, cocktails, wine, architecture, music, design coexist and gastronomy reverts to what he has baptized as gastro-lifestyle.
Eight years later, Bosch decided to open a more democratic and popular path. This is how Bar Manero appeared, also in Alicante. Now, the Manero format has conquered Madrid —and where it plans to open at the end of December— in addition to expanding threefold in the city of Alicante. Patron and lookout, Bosch carries this concern for a hospitality reason that, he affirms, “makes Spain a brand” and where he believes that “we owe it to Spain that there is a Manero in the world”.
For Bosch it is about “look for a Hermès of the Spanish tapas bars”. In the evoked speech, Bosch also talks about giving work to more than 300 people. He also about how to sell 180,000 bottles of wine a year or about having turned two of his premises into embassies of houses of champagne as reputable as Dom Pérignon and Krug.
And this is just the beginning of a path for which for a couple of years has also included the Barcelona chef Carles Abellán within the gastronomic section.
From marketing and franchising to lighting El Portal
Bosch was not a prophet in his land, or not from the start. Rebounded from the distribution sector after studying Business, Bosch changed that life of continuous travel representing brands such as Carrefour, Eroski or Walmart to start in the world of marketing and communication.
That wicker was worth to him, consciously, to understand that it would be easier for him to attract clients for both worlds with a magnet that was in the hospitality industry. He set up a tapas franchise with a partner that ended up being a frog and that, in 2008, made Bosch stay with the place that after a radical change would become El Portal.
High tables, bar, cocktail bar and low tables make up the space of El Portal
However, it was clear to me what it should be and, above all, that it should not be anything that had already been seen. Cuisine, cocktails, drinks, live DJs, decoration in a plan that should be a total and immersive experience where everything was taken care of.
However, Alicante stopped him dead. The man from Alicante did not drop by El Portal. Until 2011, where the horizon of the Volvo Ocean Race opened up, a nautical event that served Carlos Bosch for a more international client, already abundant on the Alicante coast, and that allowed that potential public that demanded something more quality, to find it. As if they were musicians from Hamelin, those bars served to make the man from Alicante aware that something very powerful was brewing in his city.
The flag concern
The local Bar Manero Mollá in Alicante, the first of the Manero.
maybe now talk about premises full of decoration is evident. Also to have a live DJ in a restaurant. Even talking about bars with visible cocktail bars. Or long champagne and wine lists. Or that the bar could be a space to enjoy cooking like in a tapas bar but with one more point of care.
In 2023 it sounds conventional or frequent. In 2008, an odyssey and a battle against the elements. However, that seed bore fruit and, among other milestones, El Portal is one of the places that sells the most champagne in Spain and the one that, surely, sells the most bottles of Krug champagne. A merit that even in 2016 served Carlos Bosch to sell an idea to the house itself: setting up the Krug Embassies. Today there are more than 80, spread all over the world, but the first is on Manero Mollá street, in the heart of Alicante.
Carlos Bosch’s intention is to create “the Hermès of Spanish bars”
Along with champagne, the pursuit of a gastronomic merit that, as he explains, “has never been chasing stars” and of being able to open 365 days a year with uninterrupted cuisine, offering quality and fun in a small place in the heart of the Alicante capital. To understand the milestone, Bosch gives two figures: “in 2019 we had 139,000 reservations. That means that there are more than 1,000 annual reservations per square meter.”
“Everybody told me I was crazy,” he remembers when he mentions that third way that came between the modern and the classic. “They were three very hard years because nobody understood what we were doing until we managed that space for the Volvo Ocean Race,” he recalls. “I told the team: ‘these people have to eat and drink very well’ and that was the starting signal for El Portal”, he indicates. By these people he means Nordics, Central Europeans, Belgians, Dutch and, in short, a foreign client who understood El Portal and who, today, continues to be the 70% of the local clientele.
Manero and the McDonald’s example
Manero bases his proposal on tapas and portions, but taken from a hedonistic point of view.
2016 was the second impulse, that of the creation of the first Bar Manero. Barely 20 meters separate it from El Portal, but it is radically different. “We wanted it to be a Spanish tapas bar, something like the Hermès of tapas bars,” he explains.
For this, you need a product. Also centralize costs and be more efficient. In fact, it was McDonald’s, or more specifically, its creator, that inspired Bosch to some extent to understand what Manero should be like.
The concept works through a standardization that allows to be efficient without losing quality.
“Saw The Founder [el biopic sobre el fundador de McDonald’s] and I discovered that it had a work system that allowed a dish, from the time it was ordered to the time it was served, to take only three minutes”, he says. This applied to a quality product and to a Spanish cuisine based on tapas and portions.
It was also clear to me that it had to be pronounceable and internationalizable. “It must be a name that could be registered worldwide and that it was easy to pronounce. We realized that Manero Mollá, the street where he is, was perfect for that “. And so he took off.
In between, the classic concept of a Spanish bar with tapas and raciones, but in a much more careful and sophisticated environment, where the product is paramount, but also having fun and doing it at a reasonable price. “He Average ticket for Manero Alicante is 35 euros and we got there by being very efficient,” he says.
Within Manero Mollá there is a Dom Pérignon club with 150 members who belong to the best of the province of Alicante.
To do this, they look for “non-dependence on the conflicting points and thus not depend on the method”. By this it refers to problems of cooking, costs, warehouse management or stockages. A task of centralization that has earned him to to be able to export the format to Madridin addition to growing in Alicante in three locations that, he insists, “always have their own identity and differentiation”.
Meanwhile, open horizons in the short term. Madrid again —with a total concept that includes a bistro and a club—, Lisbon, Seville, Barcelona or Dubai, as I dream beyond Europe, where to get to with Bar Manero, but what is Bar Manero really?
What is Bar Manero for Carlos Bosch
Although there is a common trunk among all Manero, they all include differences in gastronomic or design proposal.
It is convenient to understand what Manero is not to understand what it means for Carlos Bosch. For example, Manero is not a franchise. Nor is it intervened by an investment group. In fact, the reality is that 99.9% of Manero and its ownership correspond to Carlos Bosch. It does have partners, but it explains that “they are partners who provide work” as is the case with Sergio Sierrachef at El Portal since its opening in 2008.
It is also convenient to know what Manero does not want to be. “It is not for sale. I’m not fattening a cow to sell it to someone and I’m not looking to retire with a hit of a ball,” Bosch affirms emphatically, what he wants, he says, “is for his son to continue with the project —although he’s still 15 years old— and he considers that “Manero is a family moment.”
The style always focuses on the tapas bar, but something more elevated.
Everyday incentive, Manero for Carlos Bosch is the life extension of this innkeeper which, among other concerns, has fought to create its own brand that is the one that champions a large part of its proposal. More than 110 references between preserves, oils, sausages, salted meats or cheeses, labeled under the Manero brand, bear witness to this effervescence, of which more than 50 references are wines.
However, he denies that they are “just labeled for us.” The reality, he explains, is that he looks for suppliers, intervenes in blends and elaborations, looking for special wines and creating products that are not for sale in other circumstances. The numbers support him.
In Alicante there are three Manero, Balmis being the most recent opening.
The Gastro Portal Group sells more than 160,000 bottles of wine a year. Of this total, 120,000 correspond to Manero brand wines. In this, another relevant percentage is that of champagne, of whose own brand they sell 22,000 bottles per year and of which they are proud of “being the only Spanish product that is present in the AOC Champagne”, with which they soak Alicante and Madrid.
This is what he calls mediterranean dolce vita whose background music appears Concha Piquer and Julio Iglesias or in whose bathroom plays Chiquito de la Calzada jokes and that in 2019 it invoiced six million euros. He is somewhat right, obviously.
Images | Gastro Portal
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