Tapas bar in south of Spain introduces tough new minimum spend per customer per hour rule

Granada city is full of bars where the star of the show is the tapas; in Granada it's traditional to get a free tapa with every drink consumed. With so many options to choose from, customers are spoiled for choice. However, for the businesses it's more difficult, especially when customers order little but stay for a long time.

This is what happened to La Madre que me Parió, a gastrobar located in Calle Pinto Zuloaga which had to take a drastic decision to keep the business profitable: to apply a rule for tapas and chatting and establish a minimum spend per customer per hour. The rule is simple: everyone who goes there for tapas must consume a minimum of eight euros per hour per person at the table.

"We have always wanted to keep the tapa as part of our business but sometimes it is impossible and unfeasible. The numbers didn't work out for me", Willer, who was in charge of starting up the business a year ago, told SUR's sister paper in Granada, Ideal.

According to Willer sometimes customers stayed for more than an hour occupying a table with just one drink. "We are a small establishment and we have costs to bear. The fact that a table is occupied by someone for a long time with hardly anything being consumed is very detrimental to us".

So before deciding to scrap the tapas, Willer decided that a good option was to establish this rule, which is clearly explained to customers on the menu. "We've been doing it for six months now and the truth is that it's going really well. People are more aware of what's going on and understand us," he says.

As well as tapas, La Madre que me Parió also offers some of the flavours of Willer's native Brazil, with burgers and croquettes the speciality. "Our speciality are the homemade burgers with real cheese and the croquettes, which are not like the traditional Spanish ones," explains the restaurateur.

The croquettes, in fact, are made without bechamel, with a wheat flour and potato dough. The best sellers are the three-cheese and chicken croquettes, although they also have others including sausage. As well as other dishes such as fried cassava, which is a typical dish in northern Brazil, they also serve esfihas, a kind of pizza from Middle Eastern countries.