Makro and Madrid Culinary Campus promote Gastro Leaders Forum to transform business management in the restaurant industry
Gastro Leaders Forum was created to address a clear need in the independent restaurant sector: the increasing complexity of the business that accompanies all growth.
The Gastro Leaders Forum will function as a professional working community, combining a digital platform with aggregated analyses and comparisons developed by Comillas – ICADE and Madrid Culinary Campus (MACC), based on aggregated and anonymized data. In addition, management meetings will be held throughout the year to delve into issues affecting independent restaurants, such as costs, productivity, talent, operations, and growth. The Gastro Leaders Forum also incorporates a governance model and an Advisory Board with allies and representatives from various groups to guide priorities and ensure continuity.
“Gastro Leaders Forum is a research and outreach project that aims to help independent restaurant groups become more efficient,” stated Manuel Morales, director of the Chair of Gastronomy, Innovation, and Culinary Sustainability at Comillas Pontifical University, through Madrid Culinary Campus and the Madrid City Council. Its objective is clear: to move from data to criteria and from criteria to decision-making, at a time of increasing operational complexity and pressure on margins. “Gastro Leaders Forum intends to be a business community within the independent restaurant sector to delve into real challenges, share lessons learned, and accelerate improvement initiatives with the support of experts, connecting the business world with academia, business, and universities,” Morales said.
In this way, Comillas will work to obtain data that will allow for research and the drawing of conclusions that will benefit the sector. “This will allow companies to make better decisions that will help them grow,” explained Carlos Bellón, coordinator of the chair. The promoters of this initiative agreed that “it is conceived as a stable professional community, aimed at raising the level of management in the gastronomic sector through the joint analysis of aggregated and anonymized information.”
Academic rigor as a foundation
Within this framework, the participation of Madrid Culinary Campus – a project in which Comillas Pontifical University and Vocento are partners – guarantees the project's methodological rigor and practical orientation. The university contributes its expertise in business analysis, developed at Comillas ICADE, to transform information into knowledge applicable to the daily operations of restaurant groups.
Obregón emphasized that the academic work will always be based on aggregated and anonymized data, allowing for robust and representative comparisons of the sector. “The goal is to identify patterns, find key drivers, and translate what happens in the restaurant industry into real-world lessons for business management,” he stated.
Gastronomy and business: a necessary conversation
The project, presented at the recent Madrid Fusión event, has the backing of Vocento Gastronomía, a business partner of the forum. Its CEO, Benjamín Lana, emphasized his organization's commitment to gastronomy "in its entirety" and its desire to remain a relevant—and increasingly active—part of the community. Hence their strong support for the development and launch of this Gastro Leaders Forum. Lana also highlighted the experience of the gastronomic community, which he knows so well, in the process of sharing knowledge and information as a strategic lever for the growth of the hospitality industry. This allows for the creation of synergies in management, trends, training, and the identification of weaknesses, as well as opening new business opportunities both nationally and internationally. "Together we will be stronger, and together Spanish gastronomy will be stronger," he summarized.
Make better decisions together
The Gastro Leaders Forum is not conceived as a one-off event, but as a long-term project based on collaboration and peer learning. It combines Makro's strategic drive, Comillas University's academic rigor, and Vocento's sectoral expertise to build a community focused on continuous improvement.
“This isn’t a project to simply count data; it’s a project to make better decisions,” summarized Chema León, marketing director at Makro. “We want decisions to be based on comparable data, real-world learning, and professional dialogue among peers. With the support of an academic partner like Comillas MACC, data ceases to be just an Excel spreadsheet and becomes actionable knowledge.”
