Luis Martín, entrepreneur from Zaragoza: "I'm closing my restaurant, and not for lack of customers."

A few months ago , the restaurant Delirio closed its doors in Zaragoza. It combined gastronomy with a theme based on the painter Goya and had opened to the public in 2023 on the central Baltasar Gracián street. The same location previously housed The Moonkey's pizzeria, but the owners decided to change the focus of the business and the brand to try a new direction in the face of mounting debt. However, they didn't make enough profit with Delirio either, despite claiming that the establishment had many customers during both stages .

One of the partners, Luis Martín Nuez, recently spoke about this experience. He is an entrepreneur who, in addition to having promoted hospitality businesses, is also an industrial and electronics engineer , and is known for being the co-founder of the Academy of Inventors. He dedicated a short video about the closure of his Zaragoza restaurant through his channel @soyinventor , where he has more than 36,000 followers.

" After five years, I'm closing my restaurant ," he explains, referring to both the Delirio and The Moonkey's periods in the same location, and assuring that "it wasn't due to a lack of customers," but rather due to the numerous expenses that he and his partners had to face.

"The rent alone for a space like this in the city center can run to 2,000 or 3,000 euros, and if you add to that fixed costs like electricity, insurance, self-employment, management, and POS," he lists, adding that you'll also need to invest in items like the extractor fan, cold storage, air conditioning, water, and furniture. "And that's not even considering the renovation of the space ," he adds.

"50,000 euros without having made a single coffee"

" You could lose 50,000 euros without even opening a single cup of coffee ," he says, considering all the expenses he mentioned. "You're looking at several thousand euros a month just by opening the doors," he says, as a result of the significant investment required to get the business up and running.

However, after sharing this experience, Martín concludes, "I'm not saying this to make you feel sorry for me, but because no one tells you until it's too late." He adds, " The only thing we've achieved by closing this business is learning ." And since not everyone can afford for learning to be the only return after an investment of this magnitude, it's very important to be aware of these risks before embarking on a venture.