Wow, I don’t know if it’s Spain or this is an international….issue…let’s call it, but finding the right place to open a bar/cafeteria/restaurant that has all of it’s ducks in a row, isn’t wildly expensive, and doesn’t need major renovation is NOT easy.
I haven’t mentioned it here, but we found a reasonably OK place in the area where I would LOVE to open Bruja’s Bakery– it has enough space, it’s in a great area, it’s walkng distance from the center, it’s on the same metro line from my house, the distribution is decent, and the price is ok. The downsides? The kitchen will need some major work (create new distribution, create a ventilation tube that brings in fresh air), work on the bar, new lighting, andddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd after going to the licences office in Madrid last week- it wil need to be COMPLETELY restored to the original floor plan of 1979. *face palm*.
Word to the wise: if there is a local you’re interested in in Madrid, IMMEDIATELY MAKE AN APPOINTMENT AT Calle Bustamante 16 (through this webpage) and go there and ask about licences/ floor plans and whether or not your business idea is even permitted in this place.
In Madrid, the law states that once a “local” has a licence, the licence lists all the machinery included in the place and if you want to do something NEW (and big), you need to do a full “proyecto” which includes getting an architect, engineer, and techician and make a full plan to be presented to the ayuntamineto and they can accept or deny your request….which means you could lose the place you’re hoping to get, or you could sign the lease and take it and assume they will allow you to do what you want to do.
In certain cases, if you want to put in new machinery and the machines have less than 10Kw, you can do so with no problems but you can still have problems and each case is different. Now, we went to Calle Bustamante to ask about the oven we want to put into the local. The oven is THE MOST important piece of machinery for Bruja’s Bakery (and actually, this place we found has had an oven there that has been there for 7 years with no issues), but we wanted to ask if WHEN they do the inspection, if we will have a problem for having our oven (we also wanted to be extra careful because this place is in the center of Madrid and places in the center are extra protected).
Before even getting to ask about the oven, the funcionario started asking us about the licences and the floor plan and we only had what the current renter gave us… a licence from 1979 and a current floor plan. The funcionario told us that this floor plan is IMPOSSIBLE because the licence needs to have a floor plan attached and whatever the floor plan from 1979 says is what is legal. GREAT. So he did lots of digging- literally it took about 30 minutes for him to find it, but he found the floor plan which has NO RESEMBLANCE to the current floor plan. Oh, and the facade is protected, which means that the only facade that is legal is the one from 1979……….when it was a perfume store…….
So, in order to “legalize” the work there, the ORIGINAL facade needs to be restored as does the ORIGINAL floor plan. To which I replied: I cannot think of ONE place in Madrid that has the original floor plan and facade from over 40 years ago and to which he replied “yeah, it’s because they won’t go after you unless someone reports it….”. Which makes sense, because even this guy had to do a ton of digging to find the correct floor plans and everything.
He asked us if there could be an updated floor plan because when all of the construction was done, maybe someone got a new floor plan… we didn’t have one, so we asked if he had one and he said he couldn’t find one but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Great…. the guy that works in the licences office has no clue.
So where did that leave us? We called the current renter and the owner and asked if they had updated licences and floor plans and neither had any idea what we were talking about so fast forward a couple weeks, the current renter decided she is going to leave the local without doing a traspaso and the owner went to Calle Bustamante and realized that everything we said was TRUE, so basically that leaves us two options:
- Completely reconstruct the place to make it legal, OR
- Use is illegally
Neither is a good option.
This has SPAIN written all over it…..
This brings us to another place we found that is on the same street as the first one, has a HUGE kitchen, lots of space, big windows, has NO traspaso, low rent, is perfect…. but it has a license to be an “obrador” or factory/ workshop, but doesn’t allow us to put any tables there which means people can’t sit and enjoy their bagels there which takes away half of our business plan.
It does have a licence that allows for “classes” so you can provide a table for people to take “classes”, but if you get caught using the table for people to eat, you can have problemas.
Again, problems, problems, problems!
I told Luis that I am not comfortable with basing the whole business off of things that are illegal, because that’s a recipe for disaster. It’s true that 99% of Madrid businesses are doing something illegal, but to build the whole business off of that is not a good idea.
Back to the drawing board….
