After participating in the eighth edition of the Masterchef television contest, Alberto Gras wanted to fulfill his dream of “setting up a business related to street food.” The media chef shared his dream with Raimon Recoder, who has experience as an entrepreneur and in the startup ecosystem, and they both decided to start by setting up a hamburger stand at La Santa Market, a space for leisure, creation and gastronomy that is held every summer in Santa Cristina d’Aro for a month and a half. At La Santa Market in 2021, Gras and Recoder not only managed to succeed with their groundbreaking burgers with original ingredients, but they also met Gerard Moreno, the third partner of the burger chain that they were already starting to cook.
Deleito came out of the oven in October 2022 with the opening of its first restaurant, located on Sagués Street in Barcelona. With the desire to “reach the maximum number of people possible” – in the words of Gras –, in March of this year the three partners opened a takeaway restaurant in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat.
Faithful to the initial philosophy of offering street food, they have a food truck, a vehicle equipped to prepare and sell street food, “which is always rolling somewhere,” says the media chef. They have been, for example, at the Cerdanya Music Festival in Llívia and have been official caterers for the Ondas awards and the Gaudí awards. They are also not missing what has become an annual event during the Deleito summers: La Santa Market, in which they have already participated three times. This summer, they also opened an ephemeral restaurant in Llafranc, which was only in operation for the summer season. They took advantage of the closing hours of another restaurant in operation, a formula that they do not rule out repeating.
For January, they plan to open a conventional restaurant in Sant Cugat del Vallès, which will be followed by new openings. “In two or three years we will see ourselves with different locations, not only in Catalonia, but also in the rest of Spain,” advances Gerard Moreno.
The entrepreneurs, who manage a staff of 50 people, explain that they have gotten this far thanks to an Enisa loan of 170,000 euros and 195,000 euros contributed by investors, friends and family to start the first store. The recipe, both for the hamburgers and the peculiar sales system, is working for them: they expect to end the year with a turnover of more than two million euros, double what they initially estimated.
