Barcelona Restaurant Group: The Evolution of Management Thinking

When Andy Pforzheimer was in college, he took a road trip to New Orleans that would change his life. The sights and sounds of the Big Easy were thrilling to the nineteen-year-old student, but it was the smells and tastes of the city restaurants that captured his imagination. While discussing the city’s eclectic dining with locals, a chef challenged Pforzheimer to go to France to discover what cooking is all about.

Decades after heeding the chef’s words, Pforzheimer is himself a renowned chef and the co-owner of Barcelona Restaurant Group, a collection of seven wine and tapas bars in Connecticut and Atlanta, Georgia.

Barcelona Restaurant Group prides itself on being “antichain.”When customers dine at any of Pforzheimer’s Spanish cuisine restaurants, they experience the local color and personal touch of a neighborhood eatery in Milan, Rio de Janeiro, or SoHo. The wait staff is personable, and the head chef is known for cooking up flavorful custom dishes to please regulars. Managers get to know customers’ tastes, and they often descend upon tables, bringing flavorful specialties accompanied by wines from Spain, Portugal, and vineyards around the world.

At Barcelona, life is all about authentic cuisine, exceptional service, and a good time. But delivering this unique dining experience requires a unique approach to restaurant management. Barcelona Restaurant Group gives employees the freedom and control they need to impress customers.

The company begins by recruiting self-confident individuals who can take complete ownership over the establishment and its success. When Andy Pforzheimer coaches new recruits, he instructs, “This is your restaurant—when customers walk in the door, I don’t want them looking for me, I want them looking for you.” The straight-talking restaurateur is adamant that his staff be mature and willing to take responsibility for their work and success: “Some of our best managers come from highly regulated large restaurant companies where they were told how to answer a phone and how to set a table and how to greet a guest. We don’t do that; we attempt to hire grownups.”

The enormous trust Barcelona places in workers is evident during weekly staff meetings. Pforzheimer routinely mixes it up with employees, and the dialogue gets feisty at times. “I can be difficult to work for,” the owner says candidly. “I’m interested in having other people’s opinions thrown at me. I like managers who talk back, and I like people who self-start.”

Scott Lawton, Barcelona’s chief operating officer (COO),shares Pforzheimer’s approach, and he underscores that Barcelona’s success depends on the mature initiative of employees: “We give some basic guidelines as to what our philosophy is and what our beliefs are, but we have to trust them to work within those confines and make the right choice.”

In refusing to micromanage employee behavior, Barcelona takes risks that other dining establishments would rather avoid. Lawton insists such risks are intentional and beneficial: “They might not always make the choice that I would make, but sometimes they make a better one. To give them a correct answer to every question is impossible, and it doesn’t work. In fact, you’re actually limiting your ability to get better.”

While Barcelona’s leaders care about the wait staff, they make it clear that employees must care about the clientele. “We’re here for the customer experience,” Pforzheimer says. “Everything else is secondary to that.”

Lawton agrees, and he adds that Barcelona’s insistence on service excellence leads to high satisfaction among employees. “If we can empower them to make the guests happy,” Lawton argues, “they’re going to make money, the vibe in the restaurant is going to be a ton of fun, everybody’s going to enjoy the shift, and they’re going to be proud of what they’ve done. And they are happy, because that’s a byproduct.”

Discussion Questions

In what ways is Barcelona’s management approach consistent with modern developments in management thinking?

In what ways does Barcelona’s management approach run counter to contemporary developments in management thinking?

What aspects of restaurant work are especially challenging to wait staff, and how does Barcelona’s approach to management help employees overcome the downsides of the job?