The restaurant is a loss leader. He benefits greatly by having demand exceed supply. If anyone with $3K can get a table, then he's just another expensive restaurant. But if it's impossible to even get there, it's worth talking about. He makes his money elsewhere:
"El Bulli itself may not make money, but the brand has spawned plenty of other things that do. Those 100,000 big books that he has sold containing the Bulli secrets, going back to when Adrià first joined the restaurant in 1983 cost £100 each and are printed by El Bulli's very own publishing house. Then there's his range of supermarket books (50 new tapas you can make at home, 10-minute recipes, that sort of thing); a hotel in Andalucía; three fast-food outlets called Fast Good (two in Madrid, one in Santiago, Chile), with four more on the way; and his endorsement of a top-selling brand of olive oil. He charges many thousands for each lecture he gives. He has a collection of kitchenwear, a joint venture with Armand Basi. He has his own brand of plates and cutlery (including a spoon with small holes in it so you can eat your cereal without drinking the milk).He has deals with Lavazza coffee, Pepsi, United Biscuits and Spain's biggest hotel chain. One could go on but he is, in short, the David Beckham of the food business."
'There was one thing Maximin said to us that has always stayed with me. Someone asked him, what is creativity? And he replied, "Creativity is not copying". So simple and so obvious, I suppose, yet that was a key moment for me. Because until then I had always copied, but from that moment on everything changed. I understood something I had never understood before. I passed from being a technician to a creator.'
It's fine to learn by copying. However, during that process you can try to not copy, and instead reason out some problems on your own. By not copying, you learn more. If your short-term goal is not education, however, copy away.
I'm not sure how you can charge 250 euros a plate and come out at a loss. It would be interesting to see their books, but I'm guessing that loafer lightener at 400 dollars/month is involved.
If it takes 14 cooks to run the kitchen, each managing antigriddles and sous-vide controllers and pacojets, and your ingredients include absurd amounts of truffles and morels and caviar and better-than-sushi-grade hamachi, and you can only seat 6 tables in a night --- because dinner takes five hours --- then yeah, I can see you coming out at a loss.
it's not 250 euros a plate, it's 250 euros for a complete menu with wines and about 15 courses. Compared to other this class restaurants it's dirt cheap.
250EU for a whole tasting menu is not dirt cheap. For less than $370 you can get the tour menu at Alinea with wine pairings, and Alinea is in the top 5 in the states. For $250 you can get the tasting menu at The Fat Duck, which is the second best restaurant in the world.
FYI, el bulli is #1 restaurant in the world, fat duck is the second. And afaik fat duck is much more expensive if you include wines.
The important thing here is wines because yes you can find menu for that price but wine list that is meant to go hand in hand with the menu usually doubles the price.
"Summarising what we do, I'd say it is this: whereas before the objective was to create new dishes, now what we seek is to create techniques and concepts that will generate many dishes."
Silly title. If he cooked for a living, and refused to charge anywhere near the profit maximizing price, then he'd lose money ... completely by his own choice.
Yeah, it's a silly title. I'm a bit on a fence about it: it's provocative, and there's a lot of content there, but it seems to have skewed the discussion.
"El Bulli itself may not make money, but the brand has spawned plenty of other things that do. Those 100,000 big books that he has sold containing the Bulli secrets, going back to when Adrià first joined the restaurant in 1983 cost £100 each and are printed by El Bulli's very own publishing house. Then there's his range of supermarket books (50 new tapas you can make at home, 10-minute recipes, that sort of thing); a hotel in Andalucía; three fast-food outlets called Fast Good (two in Madrid, one in Santiago, Chile), with four more on the way; and his endorsement of a top-selling brand of olive oil. He charges many thousands for each lecture he gives. He has a collection of kitchenwear, a joint venture with Armand Basi. He has his own brand of plates and cutlery (including a spoon with small holes in it so you can eat your cereal without drinking the milk).He has deals with Lavazza coffee, Pepsi, United Biscuits and Spain's biggest hotel chain. One could go on but he is, in short, the David Beckham of the food business."