The Celler de Can Roca, with three Michelin stars in Girona and twice the best restaurant in the world, “will be renewed after the pandemic”, assures its chef and co-owner, Joan Roca, who faces the closure of the restaurant with “uncertainty” but in time to plan the future with his brothers.
Joan, Josep and Jordi Roca, confinement serves to order ideas for “the icing” of their businesses, but also to rethink the rest of their establishments with the aim of maintaining the workforce and adapting to the future that they anticipate when something of normality is recovered, a time that no one dares to date yet.
In an interview with Efe, Joan Roca recalls that they are backed by the “advantage of having diversified the investment and putting the eggs in several baskets”.
This diversity, which also includes the Mas Marroch event venue, the Rocambolesc ice cream parlours and the Hotel-chocolate shop Casa Cacao, now allows them to design formulas with which to adapt to the different scenarios that may occur in the future after the coronavirus pandemic.
Del Celler de Can Roca says that he has no doubt that he will emerge from the health crisis with a “different spirit” and substantial changes that will be evident “from many points of view”.
The eldest of the Roca brothers is clear that the events with numerous staff, such as those that house Mas Marroch, a space of enormous dimensions surrounded by fields in the municipality of Vilablareix (Girona), will have no place in the medium term, so these businesses will be the ones that need the most time to get out afloat.
That is why new content is proposed for this installation, which has hosted from a day of the Princess of Girona Foundation a gala of the Michelin Guide. Instead of opening only for celebrations and banquets on specific dates, they plan to do so daily in a restaurant format that reviews the classic dishes of the Celler de Can Roca, and use the large outdoor areas in the face of the expected reduction of the capacity.
Joan Roca has also noted that, despite the application of an Employment Regulation Dossier (ERTE) that affects her 150 employees and confirmed more than a week ago, they have guaranteed that everyone will collect their salaries in full during this mandatory closing period.
To do this, he and his two brothers will take on 30 per cent of the salaries to supplement the state’s aid, because they have those employees qualified to advance that restructuring they plan.
“The staff will also be able to move from one place to another depending on what goes best at all moments,” the cook stresses.
“It can be a way to relocate people and not leave anyone stranded,” stresses Joan Roca, who is concerned that the team he has forged for so long, so he defines the work he and his brothers do today as “logistic creativity.”
“The company will regain health, although it has never lost it, and, from all this, very cool things will come out that will allow to continue with haute cuisine on the axis of everything, which is the Celler,” says the cook, who acknowledges lastly that the difficulty is knowing “when and how” the current situation will be overcome, as a daily debate in conversations with colleagues in the sector.
