Transcript: Today's Compromises Are Tomorrow's Standards | Bernardo Blachovicz (Cafe Gan Sipur)

Meet Bernardo and Cafe Gan Sipur

Eyal David: [00:00] Bernardo, so great you came, how's it going? All good. I wanted to introduce you, but I'll let you introduce yourself. I'll introduce myself: I'm Bernardo, Bernardo Blachovicz.

Bernardo Blachovicz: [00:10] I'm 50, father to Ariel, who's celebrating his bar mitzvah tomorrow, Alma and Mateo, married to Yarika, and together we have Tommy. Among other things, I own the Cafe Gan Sipur group and the Silo restaurant, and very recently we opened a stunning, beautiful location, and if we're already advertising, in Ra'anana Park, and we're heading to Ganei Yehoshua in Tel Aviv and next year to Yavne.

Eyal David: [00:44] So first of all, congratulations, both on the branch and on the bar mitzvah. Thanks. Basketball, you should talk about that too, right? Sure, that comes first, I'm already after a morning practice.

Bernardo Blachovicz: [00:54] I coach for the soul, a national-league kids' team at Hapoel Holon. It's the joy of life, outstanding therapy. I recommend that everyone, in the madness of day-to-day life, take some hobby and turn it into a parallel track to their life. It gives your brain a break, although it's not really a break for the brain, it's a kind of pause from everyday thoughts into other thoughts, other worries, other tactics, other strategies, sadness, joy.

Basketball, coaching kids, and what it gives to business

Eyal David: [01:37] And is it something you did even during the periods when you had to push with everything you had, when you didn't really have time to fit it into your life? A shame I didn't.

Bernardo Blachovicz: [01:44] A shame I didn't, because it enriches you, it helps you in business afterwards, it helps you keep a cool head when you come to think, it puts things in proportion for you, and of course, like any athlete, there's nothing that compares to, or is a better substitute for, a win or a good game by my team. It's just a feeling that I'm not sure I can get in business in that dose and that distillation,

Eyal David: [02:19] And that's the power of sport, that's what's beautiful about basketball. And you've been doing it for years, because I talked about it with a friend and it turns out she knew you from Holon too, so I know you've been doing it for years. How long now? First of all, I did it all through my youth as a high school student,

Bernardo Blachovicz: [02:34] and now I've been doing it for 4-5 years. What, you played and everything? I played and I also coached as a high schooler, I coached kids back then, but the age gap was relatively very, very small. Today I coach kids where the age difference between us is 37 years, that's crazy. I'm also a somewhat different coach, not just in age, also in how I look and in the language I speak with them. I'm very far from them in age. Now, that's great and it's also a challenge. By the way, I'm also far from their parents, because I assume I'm older than most of the parents on my team. What does a different language mean? Sorry? You said you speak to them in a different language. Yes, look, I don't always understand their little nuances, and I assume they don't always understand my little nuances. But this is the second year I'm coaching the team, so we already know each other's quirks. What do you love about coaching? Everything, from planning the practice, through the butterflies in your stomach before games, through seeing the progress, through the competitiveness, and all the preparation, the preparation. Look, I'm a mentor to 15 kids, ten months a season, it's being there every day, first of all practice every day, and being available to them every day. Every day there are tons of problems, tons of challenges, tons of ups and downs, sadness, joy, anger, anger, it's just, in the end, in the end, you know, if, to give you the bottom line, I try to give them provisions for the road, tools so they can cope better in their adult life, near and far, and I assume that at the end of this two-year process I go through with them, they'll have tools to cope as businesspeople, as soldiers, as high schoolers, as family people, as career people, as colleagues,

Eyal David: [04:47] maybe even as professional players, you know, tools like that. What's the main lesson, or the main lessons, you try to pass on to them?

"Don't cut corners": the core lesson

Bernardo Blachovicz: [04:55] First of all, you don't cut corners, that's very, very important, you don't cut corners, there's no instant, I'm anti-instant, I don't believe in it. My team's practice sessions are the longest practice sessions in the club, they're loaded per session more than anyone else, we take it to the edge in professionalism, in preparing for games, in preparing for practices, including training camps, but mainly, mainly, not cutting corners and striving for excellence, but in practice, not in slogans the way people like it, fixing and sorting out things small and large.

Eyal David: [05:41] I still don't know how you do it at that level together with this. Not as coldly as I know. Tell me, what are your strongest traits, in your eyes?

Bernardo Blachovicz: [05:52] I don't cut corners. Look, I'm a very critical person, very tough with my family, with my employees, with my partners, with my players, and before that with my suppliers, but first of all I'm a person who's tough on himself. Maybe because of what I went through, maybe. First of all I'm critical of myself, first of all I demand of myself before I dare ask anyone else. What you went through, you mean the whole journey, Pizza Meter, your parents, like what do you mean? Yes, my parents, the journey, my childhood, my whole life journey. I've never given myself discounts, I never played the victim either, and, you know, I never took myself as a coefficient, a discount coefficient of some kind. I demand more of myself than I demand of others, but I demand a lot of myself. I try to live up to it and not just, you know, as lip service, but in the end I demand of myself and then I demand of others. What, what, what does that look like? I'm really curious. Say now... My day usually starts at 6:30 in the morning and doesn't end until 01:00. What do you do? Walk me through it. First of all, 50% of my role is being the sergeant major. In the end I'm a sergeant major. Look, I go around our restaurants and check that everything's in order and everything's standing, and I give an outside perspective and a mirror that you don't always see when you're in the jungle. And I try, broadly, I try to get the experience that our customer and our guest gets with us, and to see whether we're giving them the experience we aspire to and the value for money we aspire to. And mostly I work so that they get what they deserve, the best value, the best value in service, the best value in sound,

Bernardo's day as the customer experience "sergeant major"

Eyal David: [07:59] the best value in cleanliness, the best value in courtesy, and of course the best value on the plate. That's basically the good experience, we'll touch on that, but really I'm trying, not to formalize, but to understand a bit more what it means that you set yourself very strong boundaries and you stick to them. What does it look like, you not cutting corners?

Why compromises become tomorrow's standards

Bernardo Blachovicz: [08:19] Look, I have lots and lots of flaws, one of the biggest among them is that I have no gray area. I mean, I have black and white, and that's for better and also for worse, and maybe mostly for worse. I don't believe in compromises. I think compromises are tomorrow's standards, so I'm very, very anxious about compromises, I'm very anxious about approving compromises and I'm very anxious about compromising myself. I don't know of compromises I've made lately or at all, it would have to be something very, very, very, very extreme for me to compromise on something. That's where it starts. What did it look like when you started Cafe Gan Sipur? Look, let me tell you, in big systems of 800 employees, and lots and lots of managers, and a management layer, even though we're a very small management layer, we're four people in the management layer. In the end, when you have 800 employees, everyone, I'll say something that might not sound nice, but in the end people want to pull you down, but not because they consciously want to pull you down and say, no, no, we want him to fail. They want to pull you down because they want to make things easier for themselves, because they want to make things easier for the system. It may be, by the way, that there's some sense in it too, that it makes sense, what they... but they want to pull you down, to lighten things, to simplify, and most people are like that. I mean, most people want the easy, the simple. And I'm very, very afraid of these downward pulls. Let's go with mediocre service and turn it into a method. Right? We give mediocre service on purpose, there's no such thing. In my eyes there's no such thing. Or the restrooms are deliberately... or the service is deliberately sloppy, or the dish deliberately looks sloppy on the plate. I don't accept it. I don't accept it as a method and I don't accept it, because then it also becomes DNA. It's the most Israeli thing there is. Uh... I... look... maybe except for the Air Force? No, the Air Force is... I'm saying... the holy of holies. Uh... there are, there are, in certain worlds, there are wonderful things that are sloppy in my eyes, but they look wonderful. They're sloppy, I always say, they're sloppy but scripted. And they look wonderful. I don't want to name names, because you know,

Eyal David: [10:57] but there are wonderful things, and they're wonderful, there's magic in their sloppiness. But I'm not there, I'm not there. Tell me, and when you started, I'm going for a second specifically to Cafe Gan Sipur when you started. Did you start it with partners, alone, what did it look like? I started Cafe Gan Sipur with partners. And when you started it, it was basically you, you guys against the world. How did you not cut corners there when it started?

Bernardo Blachovicz: [11:19] Because there aren't 800 employees yet, there isn't yet... by the way, the success of Cafe Gan Sipur is that I think there was a huge gap between us and the competitors. We went as high as possible. I really want to hear about that. Listen, you know, in the end you arrive at a saturated market in a country that has everything, and everything, lots of everything. This is a country, back then we were 7-8 million people 15 years ago, 7 million people, 8 million people, with 300 chains, and some of the chains with over 100 locations. It's like, take an equivalent state in the United States with the same number of millions of people as today's Israel, there are no such numbers. There are no such numbers in the number of malls, there are no such numbers in the number of chains, and there are no such numbers in the number of cafes. So in the end, when you want to look for some wall and stick the pin in here, find the hole where you can differentiate yourself a bit, you need, you know, differentiation is very important, because if not, you're just another one. So people come in and ask themselves, why the same Caesar salad, the same thing I've already seen 100 times, why eat here? Plus our places are a destination. 100% of our places, it's people starting the car and driving to us specifically. There's no walk-in, there's no foot traffic, nobody on a Sunday, Sunday at 10 in the morning, strolls in a park in Israel under the blazing sun. There's no such thing. We're the destination, we're the mother of destinations, even by chance, you don't wander in and reach us, not even by mistake. People drive to us specifically, the value for money has to be very, very high, and the value has to be excellent,

Differentiation in a saturated market: how not to be "just another one"

Eyal David: [13:06] and also the precision of the concept. OK, here you jumped to the breakthrough you made. I want for a second, just why, why, that example of the United States, and, why, why is there less there, let's call it chains per square meter, because what, is there more buying of businesses there, which hadn't happened here yet at that time?

Bernardo Blachovicz: [13:24] Why is there less there? I don't, I, look, I don't think there's less in the United States. I think Israel is distinct from all the rest. There's something here that's just unbelievable. I don't think the United States behaves differently from the Western world. I think Israel is very, very inflated in everything, people here go all the way. Now, that's for better and for worse, right? There are good sides and there are not-good things, but mainly I think the Israeli, in his DNA, is an entrepreneur and a leader, and it's hard for him to be a franchisee. And there's a kind of paradox between being Israeli and being a franchisee, because the Israeli isn't a good franchisee. He's not a good franchisee, so I don't have franchisees. I don't have franchisees. I'm not a franchising chain. I do business with my employees, who become my partners. And I'm not a franchising chain in the classic sense of the word, I don't sell franchises. Because I don't believe in Israelis as franchisees. That's something you learned from Pizza Meter, if I remember correctly. Right, but there too I had franchisees, but there too there was the model of employees who became partners. In most cases the employees there became partners in Pizza Meter too. There were other problems there, and I learned from my mistakes. But I don't believe in the Israeli who's an entrepreneur at heart and knows better than you after half a year for sure, and in the bad case knows better than you after two months. And that's also what you meant about being pulled down, right? Everyone is... they don't do it because they're pulling you down, they just know better than you. And they don't understand that there's DNA behind the concept, and they don't understand that Mr. Cohen, who walks in in Dimona and in Hadera and in Ashdod into something he met in Givatayim, needs to feel that he's in the same DNA and feel safe, that he's going to get the same quality. They don't understand that every shift in the DNA affects the customer and unsettles him: where am I, is this what I remember? And if not, then the goods will be bad and it really isn't tasty to me, like he already, he hasn't tasted it but he already understands it isn't tasty to him. Behind franchising there's respect for the manual, there's respect for the DNA, there's respect for whoever founded the chain, and in Israel that respect doesn't come across, it doesn't come across, it doesn't come across, and we're more a nation of entrepreneurs and so on, and by the way they do it wonderfully. The restaurant industry in Israel is at a very high level, very high. It's also jumped a lot in 20 years. Forget it, ten years ago I'd travel to London to get inspiration, today in Israel you can get inspiration even in the periphery, by the way. There's a very creative industry, very high quality, there's quality here. Which businesses have you seen in the periphery lately that are worth pointing out? I have in every city, you know, what I love to eat, what I love to [enjoy], in every city. In every city, because I'm constantly moving around with my restaurants, so there are lots of colleagues whose work I love, I love the quality they serve, I love the idea, and there are also some where I don't love the food, for example, but I do love the concept and the design and the little shticks.

Why he doesn't believe in classic franchising in Israel

Eyal David: [16:52] You even said you love the sloppiness. Love the sloppiness. Tell me, so I actually want to take you to the beginning of Cafe Gan Sipur, OK? First of all, how did you keep your resilience to start this whole thing?

Bernardo Blachovicz: [17:09] When you start small, keeping resilience isn't a problem. We're skipping over the fact that it's as if you're a blank slate on this thing for a moment. No, no, I brought, but I brought the partners who were the financiers of the first location. By the way, the first location was without pretensions, right? Who thought there'd be 12 locations? Oh, it wasn't up to that? What did you go in with? One location, and I can even tell you that I didn't even want to hear about locations, or hear about replication, like I had some kind of aversion. By the way, it was preceded by a decision of mine that I was leaving the industry, but the universe pulled me back. What does that mean? What does it mean, it pulled you? After the fall of Pizza Meter I sent hundreds of CVs to every field that could possibly not be food. And the failure was hanging around my neck, so they brushed me off. They always remember you for the last thing you did. I didn't manage to get out of the industry. For years I wanted to fly out of the industry and I wanted to do something else, and I studied. Yes, what did you want? What did you study? I studied appraisal, I studied real estate, I studied this, I studied this, I studied this, I couldn't escape that circle. And in the end it happened that I went to look at some tender in Holon that had failed twice and nobody had bid on. It was the park where I used to play with my little kids at exactly that time, and I said, come on, let's go for it. But branches, a chain, franchisees, no, I'm not going back to that. Not going back to that, but look, in my gut I love it, and the adrenaline, and I was seven years after my fall. It tickled me, it tickled me, but you know that you have, maybe, maybe you have one more bullet in the chamber, maybe, and not even that. So I didn't sleep. And how old were you? I was 35. 35, 36, yes, 35. One bullet in the chamber, you're scared to death, you're insecure, you're very, very anxious, you know, you've already tasted failure, and you don't want to go back to it, you don't even, you're afraid to go back to it, it's terrifying, it's a terrifying fear. And still, it's what I love, it's what I know how to do, it's what I do best in the world. And once again I was thrown into the water after seven years of a break, I was an employee. Oh, so you did find a job, and what were you an employee as? No, I was an employee in the industry, because I had no other options, but I tried to open up to other things and I didn't succeed, and in the end I came back to it. By the way, with a lot of fear, a lot of awe, and I even remember that for the first three years I was, it was my second job, Cafe Gan Sipur. It was an evening job, after a job that brought me a living, and on weekends I'd work there full time. I'd put in 300 hours a month, but as a second job, not as a first job. Only after three years did I leave my job and devote myself completely. Why? Because what happened? Because I was afraid, because we wanted to see that it was succeeding, because we wanted to see that it was possible, that it could pay me a salary, because... That's what I'm trying to understand, when I tell you it was without pretensions, it was without pretensions in... it was let's try, and at most there'll be some modest success and we'll have fun, and mainly maybe get back the confidence that was lost. What are these amazing partners who... what is it? Really, yes, yes. Not really? Amazing partners, amazing partners, and one of the partners is the one who was actually on the ground and worked and also got a salary, Asaf, and it was without pretensions. I don't think we even dreamed of another location. It wasn't there at all, it wasn't there, and the place too, its investment was very modest. Like, I'm talking to you about the first location, 15 years ago we invested 20% of what we invest in a location today. Because what? What changed? First of all, input prices changed. Right. So you know, there's a way there too, but regardless, we bought everything second-hand, and we bought, and without cold rooms, and without crazy air conditioning, and without sound, everything in austerity, austerity, austerity. So how do you create an experience if everything's modest? You create an experience, you create an experience. The experience doesn't happen because of the eye-candy, or because of the... there's magic, and there's magic in the simple too, and there's magic in the modest too, and there's magic in the cheap too. You just need to reveal that magic.

Returning to the industry after the Pizza Meter failure

Eyal David: [21:55] You were 36, so were there already kids at home? Five, five, sorry. And then there were two. And then basically three years like that where you're juggling, basically?

Bernardo Blachovicz: [22:04] Yes, my kids were born to a father who isn't home, who's a restaurateur, and if I'm out and about at ten at night, they ask me if everything's OK, like, they don't, they're used to it, my wife is used to it too, she met me during the Pizza Meter era. My kids are used to it, they were born into it, the two older ones also work in it. Wow, sorry. He as a soldier, now he's a discharged soldier, and she's on her way to the army, to a pre-army academy, and she also works, and they were born into it, they understand it, they eat, they know how to eat, gluttonous kids, and they understand service, and they understand hard work.

Eyal David: [22:42] Well, they also hear at home what happened before, so they also have the... they also see the investment, that it was weekends, nights, holidays.

Bernardo Blachovicz: [22:49] What occupies you most today? What occupies me now, today? First of all, my kids, that's, you know, in the end the most important thing I've created, and like my grandmother said, small kids, small troubles, big kids, big troubles. You translated for us, right? Yes, I can say it in Yiddish too, but broadly, you know, the kids are what occupies me most, but day to day, they really are good kids, and Cafe Gan Sipur, you know, we're in development, in growth and expansion, with partnerships, and entering new cities, and Tel Aviv, which is around the corner, occupies me very, very much, because it's a city, it's a challenge, also to make the adjustments for a city like Tel Aviv.

Eyal David: [23:47] And... maybe tell us a bit more about that, and maybe afterwards we'll also touch on... what's the metric you look at most, but what adjustments do you make for Tel Aviv?

How to choose a park for Cafe Gan Sipur

Bernardo Blachovicz: [23:59] Maybe tell a bit about the business, like how a unit is built? Cafe Gan Sipur is located in the beautiful parks of Israel. We actually, you know, I choose my locations not based on tables of socio-economic levels and all kinds of things like that. Mainly, whether I fall in love with the park. And if I fall in love with the park, the road to Cafe Gan Sipur is very easy, but the park has to be captivating. It has to be special, it has to be original, it has to be gorgeous. I close my eyes and I need to imagine Cafe Gan Sipur in it, and if that happens, and if I have butterflies, and if I'd be happy to spend time in a park like that, then it'll happen. And there are lots of parks in good and important cities that don't do it for me, so I have no interest in opening Cafe Gan Sipur in a place that, you know, I have no interest like that.

Eyal David: [24:51] But the parks really are what makes us unique, it differentiates us from every... no, let's talk about that breakthrough, we skipped over it for a moment. You got to Holon, you said the opportunity just came along, you didn't choose the park, it came to you. Right.

Bernardo Blachovicz: [25:09] In hindsight it's a breakthrough. I didn't say let's open a cafe, a cafe in a park. Until then, by the way, it was mostly thawed bourekas in parks that someone heats up for you in some toaster. Really, it came to my doorstep, and we said, OK, let's do a business. We didn't say let's do a business in a park, it was the opposite. And the garden too, the first location isn't really a park, it's a garden. After that came the parks, Gan Sacher,

Eyal David: [25:37] Ra'anana Park, Herzliya Park, but in Holon it's a garden, it's a garden. And there's also a breakthrough on a breakthrough on a breakthrough here, because then I thought about the fact that you don't have Wolt at all, because people come to you, and you don't have Cibus, right? I don't know.

Why no deliveries, Cibus or 10bis

Bernardo Blachovicz: [25:51] Yes, it's a breakthrough, it's a mix of personal taste with economics. And look, I don't like deliveries, I don't like deliveries to my own home either. I think food doesn't arrive well at home by delivery, from 95% of food businesses in the world. I think sushi can come to my home, but everything else, I don't like delivered food. I don't think it's fun to eat from a delivery. I'm sorry. And so I refuse to do deliveries to my customers.

Eyal David: [26:34] Refuse to take money for food I wouldn't order to my home from someone else. Because it also lowers the level, I understand, but also as prep for the episode, I joined some restaurateurs' group on Facebook to see what they complain about, and Wolt was the first thing they complain about,

Bernardo Blachovicz: [26:49] In my opinion that's a significant breakthrough. Look, I, all the diseases of restaurateurs, of all these bodies that sit between them and the customer, between me and the customer, I avoid them, I call them diseases. Wolt is one of them, but also Cibus, also 10bis, also business lunch deals, also breakfasts with two drinks and refillable cocottes, the whole happy hour thing, I have to, and by the way it's also not, it's not from a greedy place of wanting to make more money. It's entirely from a place of wanting to give the best value I can give the customer, and the customer understands in the end that if someone eats from me along the way, it hurts him, it hurts him in the quality of the food, it hurts him in the quality of the service, it hurts him in the quality of the experience, it hurts him in the quality of the ingredients, I don't know, someone has to fund it. If I give Wolt 20-something percent, and by the way I doubt restaurateurs even earn what they give Wolt, listen, it will come at the expense of what I give the customer, what did you think? At any given moment at Cafe Gan Sipur there are two shift managers on the floor, there are two pairs of eyes watching and supervising, sometimes it's not enough but at least there are two and not one, that has a cost. Good sound has a cost. A place with 7-8 million shekels invested in it, that looks wow and right and is pleasant to be in, has a cost. To give the best ingredients I can give, or the best I know, and to invest in the kitchen and invest in the cooks, I have to provide ingredients, it costs me money, and if I give it to all kinds of middlemen along the way, it comes at the expense of the other. So let's look at the breakthrough for a moment, there is a breakthrough here, but it didn't come from there, it came from the fact that, just on the Wolt issue, I'm saying, I don't enjoy ordering food home, so I also don't want to send it.

Eyal David: [28:37] Excellent, that's the continuation of my sentence, but that's my personal experience. That the real breakthrough here was basically around the families, like you said, that they basically come to the parks, right? Again, I'm trying to understand, because it's like you got to the park, and then after this business was already set up in the garden, as you called it, you understood there's a parks thing here. How did you basically tie it all together? No, no, no,

Bernardo Blachovicz: [28:56] The axiom was that there's a location in a park here, now let's do, let's build a concept. I remember myself many nights, sitting at four in the morning in my son's room at the computer and seeing how I could crack it. It's really, we really are family restaurants, but you know, at the beginning I was terribly afraid we'd be pigeonholed as a restaurant for kids, because we have a low sink for a kid who wants to wash his own hands, because we talk to them and see them and so on and so on, but in the end, let's not forget, on weekdays kids are our customers for two hours, three at most a day. We work from eight in the morning until 12 at night. In the end we meet kids two to three hours a day. In the morning they're not there, at noon they're hardly there. In the afternoon, because we have playgrounds, they come, have fun, and eat dinner with mom or with grandma, and at night they're not there. So you know, it's a breakthrough, it's nice and all, but for most of our operating hours we don't exist as a family restaurant. We have the two to three hours in the evening when we exist as a family restaurant, and on weekends, mainly on Saturday, we really do run like a family restaurant. But it's a family restaurant in the headline, and it doesn't exist as one during the day in the morning, during the day at noon, or at night. Could it be that it's your gateway? Could be, could be that's what exposed us,

Eyal David: [30:26] and after that the variety and range of our customers and the type of our customers grew. Yes, could be. Yes, when I was preparing for the episode I also saw that somewhere you called yourself a format builder. Format builder? Yes, yes, yes, my agent found it for me. Really? Yes. What agent? Actually, I have an agent that preps me for episodes, this page is nice because you, thank you, along the way I picked it up. I'm a format builder, I love building formats.

Bernardo Blachovicz: [30:54] Look, I don't know if I'm a format builder, I don't know if I'd call myself a format builder, but I'd definitely say that I think a true restaurateur, someone who's in this profession out of love for creating, we're artists in every sense. I mean, I see a painting on the wall here. Every location I create is, for me, a picture or a sculpture I've created, and of course I want as many people as possible to see the work I've created, and to move on to the next work, because I don't live it. So format builder, look, I've built quite a few formats in my life, I don't call myself a format builder, I'm a restaurateur. A restaurateur, I love to create, to create, but not a format builder.

Pizza Meter, pizza by the meter, and contrarian thinking

Eyal David: [31:48] I actually liked it when I read it, because the connecting thread I thought of, also when I thought about Pizza Meter, also the first conversation we had, when you reminded me of the shout on the phone, of Pizza Meter, yes, and you also reminded me, and we also talked about the shape of the pizza, which was creative. There's a thing about creativity here that you know how to crack time after time, that's how it looks. You didn't mention it with him either, there's probably some, right, how do you manage to create within a box? I saw that you basically create some boundaries, that's how I hear you describing it, and then you start creating in there. How do you do it? Like, what works for you? Say, if we take... let's take Pizza Meter.

Bernardo Blachovicz: [32:27] With Pizza Meter, I went and simply mapped the market and discovered some slightly boring insights. Basically back then, 20 years ago, more, 25 years ago, there was a market, which by the way I'm not sure has changed much today, that was formulaic and boring, and everyone served a round pizza, and everyone had the same boring toppings of olives and mushrooms, and everyone used the colors of Italy to design the place, to design the boxes and to design the uniforms. The same languages, everyone sold pizza by shirt sizes, medium, large, even today, I didn't see any differentiation, any out-of-the-box thinking, and I simply went and did everything the opposite way. Round, rectangle. Shirt sizes, sizes of a shirt, I'll do a meter. Colors of Italy, I'll go with orange, and I simply went the opposite way. It sounds very easy, right? It was... you see, it's terribly easy, right? Let's park here. But in the end, those were the insights I arrived at, and I simply did everything the opposite way. Same thing with cafes, same thing with Cafe Gan Sipur. So take us, take us there specifically. Look, salad on the side with bread. Everywhere, 15-20 years ago, salad on the side with bread. So we'll serve salad on top of bread cubes, and then all the salad's dressing will collect in the cubes at the bottom, and you eat cold and warm together, and you have that bite of focaccia underneath that's already soaked up the salad dressing, and you eat it all together. Different things. Look, they give a kids' menu to a little kid, and he can't read, so what good does it do to give him a menu? So some add vowel marks, but he can't read with vowel marks either. So you need to illustrate it. And a low sink, 60 centimeters high, so a kid can wash his own hands. These are small things, different ones. And to discover that everyone closes early, at 10-11 at night. So we won't close before midnight, and there will be, Mom, even if there's a flood outside, even if there was a terror attack, not a soul around. Yes, I heard you say that. So we do, by the way, at Pizza Meter I did the same thing. I discovered that after 11 there were no deliveries, so at Pizza Meter, all our locations did deliveries until one in the morning. Because those two hours where you're alone, it's as if I told you, listen, there's a day a week when you work with no competitors.

Eyal David: [35:00] Wow, so I'm telling you every day that you have two hours with no competitors. Listen, you went and mapped the market in both of these cases, and you looked at areas that others might have turned a blind eye to, right? Because it's not the money. Money probably doesn't, mostly doesn't flow from there. What's your way of looking at it? How did you manage now to really look at the shape of the pizza, or alternatively at the shape of let's stay open late?

Bernardo Blachovicz: [35:22] Listen, I'll tell you a story and in it you'll find the answer. And I always tell this story. There are surely people who've listened to us and heard this story, because I really love it. One day a Carmel Mizrahi sales rep came to me and says, I have a case of 12 bottles of cooking wine here. A gift. Give it to the chef, let him play with it. I turn around, give it to my chef, and he says to me, return it, return it, I don't want it. I ask him, why? He tells me, look, his car is full of cases like this. In the next two weeks all the cooking in the city will taste the same. Why do I need that? The same cooking wine? I'll make my own cooking wine. What did he teach me, Jonathan, who was my chef then, Jonathan Gonzalez? He taught me that in the end, you ask me, how did you do it differently? How did Steve Jobs? How? Look, listen, everyone learns the same material in colleges and universities, the same cooking wine. They get the same cooking wine. Your agent, I don't know if you meant a virtual agent or not, in the end feeds on this thing. It feeds on the fact that 99% of people feed on the same articles, the same AI, the same data that's being distributed and taught right now to three thousand students in the same course all over the world, probably. So what, three thousand minds come out with the same cooking wine and drink the same thing. What will they throw up? The same thing. Now, whoever throws up something else, or refuses it, [tastes] with them, with them, so he has, you know, a yardstick for comparison, and to open up his palate, but in the end you mustn't use it. Make your own cooking wine. If you make your own cooking wine, you discover different insights. And then you can enter red oceans, like you did. Right, right. That's what you're saying. So you're basically not afraid to enter saturated markets at all. First of all, it's the thing I love most. Those little flashes of brilliance, and the out-of-the-box thinking, and that 5%, where you go, like many, I didn't discover anything, but in the end it really bums me out to do the same thing. Even when I say, wow, I've hit on something, and I see someone's already done it, it really bums me out. Like, that original creation is truly the peak of the world as a creator, and just opening a place to sell the same Caesar salad you can find anywhere, that's not interesting. So you're really looking for those places, that's what you're saying. Yes, yes, yes.

"Make your own cooking wine"

Eyal David: [37:58] OK, cool. Well, let's go back to Tel Aviv for a second and the adjustments, because we need to close the loop. I don't know, Tel Aviv is a challenge.

Bernardo Blachovicz: [38:06] First of all, I avoided it. Consciously, unconsciously, or the universe. For 20 years Tel Aviv wasn't on the table, I... 20 years... you do things differently from others. Yes, but for 20 years I didn't enter Tel Aviv, both because of my personal failure, and because it didn't work out, and also because maybe I was afraid. And here I am coming back. I'm coming back. At the peak I had five or six restaurants in Tel Aviv. At the peak I had six restaurants in Tel Aviv. Four Pizza Meters, one Jonathan Gonzalez and Israela. I had six restaurants in Tel Aviv, and I failed there. So I'm coming back, with very great awe, and I think what you said about a family restaurant in Tel Aviv, that's something very, very, very much missing in Tel Aviv today. A family restaurant. I think Tel Aviv has changed, it's not the Tel Aviv of 20 years ago, and there are lots of kids and lots of married couples and lots of families, and that's lovely, and there aren't enough family restaurants. One of them is Grand Cafe in Keren Aviv. In my eyes it's an amazing, amazing family restaurant, but there isn't enough of it, and I think we can go for the family restaurant ticket here, and Cafe Gan Sipur will give an excellent family experience. And in the park, and with parking right next to it, and without bus soot, with birdsong, facing the Yarkon stream, quiet, pastoral, being inside the city but with paz, as they say in Spanish, with calm, and I'll also tell you that in the traffic chaos that's been happening in Tel Aviv in recent years, Sportek North is one of the spots where you're in Tel Aviv and you're not in Tel Aviv, you're next to the chaos, but you don't enter the chaos. Now I also understood where the location is, so I understand the parking thing, that's all that was nagging me. Yes, yes. OK, facing the chaos, I understand completely.

Coming back to Tel Aviv and the Ganei Yehoshua challenge

Money, numbers, growth, and what failure taught him

Eyal David: [40:08] Tell me, so you touched on it in passing, and I'm curious, so what have you learned about money so far? First of all, I learned to control the numbers,

Bernardo Blachovicz: [40:17] I learned to get into the thick of things, which I didn't know back then. If they'd raised red flags for me, it would have gone right past me. Today I control the numbers, control the matrix, control the pricing, control all the paperwork and all the guts of the business, and that's happening both thanks to the failure and thanks to age, my maturity, and I understand that it's, you know, in the end it's the biggest disease, that if you fall into it, there's no getting back up afterwards, business-wise. So money is a very important thing, it's the basis for our rolling forward. It's also the basis for giving our customer the best value for money we can, yes, let that be clear. I don't believe in cheap, and I don't believe in promotions, and I don't believe in perks, because in the end it hurts the experience, or hurts the value. And so I believe the customer should get the best thing I can give him, and even surprising value, but I have to make a profit for that. How much does that affect your growth, then? It affects it a lot. We're celebrating 15, and we're at less than... we're at 11 locations. In half that time, at Pizza Meter, I had 24 locations. Of course it affects it. It affects it, but I'm not sad about it, I'm even proud of it. And I'll tell you a secret, we most likely won't be a big chain. And most likely we won't even be a medium chain, and I have no problem with that. Big, you mean in terms of locations, not in terms of revenue. Yes, yes, yes. In terms of revenue we're 3 or 4 times our competitors in the industry. I mean, our takings are big, our locations are big. We have 220 seats in every restaurant. Big restaurants with very big traffic, but we won't reach 30 locations. I estimate we won't reach 30 locations. I don't know how many parks there are in the country, you know. Every city has a park. Every city has a park, and we're two years before the local elections, and I can tell you there's no mayor who doesn't call. There's no mayor who doesn't call. Listen, they all want to get to some ribbon-cutting with some park, with some red ribbon. To show off Cafe Gan Sipur in their park, it's a service. Listen, look, beyond the service and beyond the experience we provide in the park, there are even side effects, like reducing vandalism, because there's an adult in the park, and there are people at night, and there's, you know, there's bustle and there's light and so on, so vandalism is also a side effect that goes down when we arrive. In the end we employ 70-80 people from the city, and give work to suppliers, and give work to professionals, and drive the economy, and pay taxes, and pay rent to the municipality, so we also have, you know, beyond the service to park visitors and residents.

Eyal David: [43:18] Totally. Tell me, what's the most, we maybe called it a machine at the start of the conversation, I called it that in my head, what's the most important part of the machine called Cafe Gan Sipur?

Bernardo Blachovicz: [43:27] Passion. But not in the Cafe Gan Sipur machine, in every machine. In every machine, the passion, the fact that I get up in the morning and don't feel like I'm going to work, the fact that I have butterflies in my stomach before service, the fact that I'm excited that tomorrow I'm in the flow in Ra'anana, or I'm excited to open a new location, or to present my new creation, the fact that I'm excited that I'm now building Cafe Gan Sipur in Ganei Yehoshua. The passion, the passion, the passion is something that... it's not related to money, it's not related to numbers, it's related to the challenge, to those butterflies that drive you to act. And then the brain thinks and enriches itself, and that has lots of good effects, but without passion... You talked like that about basketball at the start of your conversation, right, right, right. You noticed. Tell me, so what drives you, what really creates this passion?

Passion as the engine of the machine

Eyal David: [44:27] Because you're saying it's not the growth, we won't be a big chain, so what is it? You talked a bit about customer experience, is that the thing? It's, you know, all the answers are correct,

Bernardo Blachovicz: [44:36] but first of all I love what I do. I love what I do, and I'm not sure the word work is what I do. I love what I do, I'm a restaurateur. I'm not, all that nonsense, entrepreneur, I'm a restaurateur, the most low-tech there can be, and proud of it. I'm a restaurateur, and I love my work, I love what I do, I love it, and the work is first of all the thing that drives me, right? I love what I do. I love hosting, I love creating, so it all comes together for me in this, the adrenaline and the amount of things that we, look, restaurateurs, I don't know if many people know, we're a kind of acrobat, because a restaurateur has to deal with so many fields, I don't know many professions that deal with such a wide range of professions, from sanitation, through psychology, through marketing, through culinary arts. You talked about the experience at the place, the music, right? Look, you have to understand so many fields, and the adrenaline and the pressure and the tension and the cooperation between all 25 people who are on the same shift right now, it's something amazing. I'm not capable of going into an office and sitting there for 8 hours, I'd jump out the window. Tell me, I'm trying to understand how you thought of being an appraiser or whatever, I don't see it happening. I'm also trying to understand, I don't know, I'm not [sleepy] anymore, really,

Eyal David: [46:06] it was frustration. How long did it really take you back then until you reached all these insights where you tell me, now I'm a restaurateur, I'm good at this, I... no, a restaurateur I... you knew it all along. A restaurateur, I knew all along, look,

Bernardo Blachovicz: [46:17] but I tried to push it away from me, that's what I didn't manage. That I'm good at it, first of all I didn't always know I was good at it, right? It's not that... when you fail, you fail and the lights go out inside your body, and your self-confidence drops, and I failed big, and I became a failure in my own eyes, so... They managed, day after day, to prove, basically, is that the thing? It's taking it step by step, and you build up your confidence, and I can tell you that even at the second Cafe Gan Sipur location, I wasn't sure we'd succeed, or that we had succeeded. It's not that we opened the first or the second and you say, we succeeded. And even today I don't remember a situation where I'm sitting in a chair and saying, I succeeded, we succeeded. It doesn't go there. It's not, I also don't, I don't quantify my businesses in that sentence. I don't, I don't talk like that, I also don't think like that. We succeeded. Sometimes it even surprises me when people on the street remind me of some dish, the Black Forest, like, like, I'm not, I'm not even aware of it. It doesn't go there. I'm really telling you that I constantly picture myself as someone who sculpts and puts his sculpture on display, he wants as many people as possible to see this sculpture, to get excited about it, and that's the biggest joy, but I don't think a sculptor says, I succeeded.

Eyal David: [47:48] So maybe it's good that basketball has a buzzer and points, right? So that's probably what I'm missing, could be. And tell me, here's a question that came up in our WhatsApp community: what's the metric that really makes a customer come back? You talked about acrobatics, so maybe try to formalize it for a second.

Consistency: why being a nine every time is hardest

Bernardo Blachovicz: [48:04] If we restaurateurs knew what the metric was, our lives would look different. And it's also not certain that today's metric is the metric from ten years ago, or will be in ten years. It's also a changing metric, by the way, like location. There's no location forever, there are no brands forever. A question, the million-dollar question. What do you look at to at least validate it? I think experience is a very big word, but it fits very well as an answer. But I'll tell you something. I'll even answer you with a question, or a difficulty. You know what, the hardest thing for a restaurateur to sustain is consistency. Because even if you know how to create an experience, or know how to serve an amazing, amazing dish, or create an amazing experience, and amazing traffic, and so on, consistency is the biggest challenge for a restaurateur in my eyes, and this thing where one time the experience is a ten and another time it's a six, these ups and downs, these deviations, that's the worst thing in our industry, that you get a six, and then a ten, and then an eight, and then a seven, and these jumps destroy businesses. The hardest thing is to be a nine all the time. What did you say? That they always remember you by the last time. A nine all the time. Notice what I'm telling you, a nine, not a ten, but a nine all the time. And consistency is something that's very hard for Israelis to produce, and also hard to produce objectively. Consistency is a very, very important thing. And by the way, I think it's in every industry, right? Consistency, consistency. I comment to a cook about his hat even after he's worked for me for seven years. Consistency. Like a nudnik. And to my kids I've been commenting on the same things since the day they were born. The same things. I don't get tired. And that's where I excel. I know how to comment to someone even after he's worked for me for ten years, and like he's already, you know, one of the founding fathers of the... and I comment to him on the same things I commented on ten years ago. Because I believe that if you comment to an employee about something on the first, second and third day, and on the fourth day you don't comment, he thinks that on the fourth day there's no need to be strict about it. And so I constantly, constantly, like a parrot and really like a broken record, comment and comment and insist and insist and insist and insist, in the hope that for my players it will become automatic, automation, and then it gets into the swing of habit, both for my employees and for me. Habit is what makes us master this consistency, because otherwise consistency is very hard, very hard.

Eyal David: [51:00] When you build a system with DNA and the right habits, then the new people who come in also pick up the habits, basically, which basically lets you create a playbook that in the end makes sense to someone who maybe comes in and is replicable, and then you say I can grow, that if I have growth potential then I also know how much it will cost me, and true, in the restaurant business that's very hard. But mainly you carry on, and Mrs. Cohen, who remembered you from Jerusalem and now gets the experience in Ra'anana, needs to feel she's in the same home with the same habits, and that's very hard to instill, and again it's a broken record and educating a team, but you're already going with a team that grows a team, but there's DNA and these habits. You know what it made me think of, similar but different. OK, all of that was really interesting, but what's very persistent and creates consistency, and we're putting it everywhere? AI, right? Where are you putting it into the business?

How AI entered recipes, checklists and financial analysis

Bernardo Blachovicz: [51:57] Look, we've now developed, our chef Michal Motil has now developed a recipe system in five languages with AI that can only be opened in our restaurants, it's per location, and the recipes there are by the weight you want to produce. Really with some kind of robot, no? No, no, no. OK. And with pictures and with a prep video, because part of our challenges, speaking of consistency and uniformity, is that it'll be the same in all locations. And I really avoid buying sauces from outside and turning cooks into gallon-openers, I hate that, gallon-openers of all kinds, because in the end you feel that preservative. Yes, yes, it takes me back to that Gordon Ramsay show from back in the day, right? I love hearing in the morning the chopping, the pots going on the fire, and the smell of onions and vegetables being charred, and that bustle of cooking, and not a sterile kitchen where nobody cooks and everyone's opening gallons and heating food. I don't like that. So she took it all the way. In the palm of his hand a cook holds the recipes, holds the video of how to prepare, holds it in the language he speaks, how to do it, and also weight adjustments according to the needs of that kitchen. An amazing development. We're moving everything over, checklists for the team, checklists for the bartenders, checklists for the floor, all in AI, and in my opinion it's going to change our lives. Wow, that's it, I'm thinking of a ton of areas that are interesting at your place, say. I can tell you that yesterday we finished a three-day session with Tiko, Tiko Franco, our accountant, who actually built a system that you throw all the restaurants' accounting data into, and the AI gives you breakdowns and analyses of anything you can think of. And you know, because they always tell you labor is high, food cost is high, but that's a very, very big sentence, and it's not a working tool. It's not a working tool, because they tell you, your spending is high, they tell you, you're at the supermarket? But tell me, where in the supermarket? In which aisle? In nine, seven, eight? Where in the supermarket am I spending too much money? Or where am I throwing goods in the trash? So we're starting to develop all kinds of comparison tables and methods of learning and working, with comparisons between pairs of locations and financial data, and discovering amazing things. Yes, amazing data analysis. Where's the leakage in work hours at this specific location? Where does a customer cost me more money in terms of work hours per revenue at the register? Where do I have cancellations? Where do I have leakage of desserts? Where do I have leakage of drinks? We're discovering lots and lots of things, and that's AI. And the sergeant major loves it. Tell me, and how did it basically get to you? Did you start, like, touching it on your own? Did people approach you? First of all, it reached all of us, it surrounds us from every direction. And our people took courses, and we get help from professionals. And I have, we're a very lean headquarters, but very talented people, who go above and beyond.

Eyal David: [55:26] And the world is there, listen. I have no doubt, I'm already thinking of ten things you could do at your place, even from the music. Tell me, so you talked about the players, I got a bit stuck on the young people. Just the idea here with the music, wait, wait, wait, wow, wow, wow, wow. Easy. Tell me, what's the most important skill, in your eyes, that's worth investing in?

Stubbornness, selling without selling, and how a hostess sells soup

Bernardo Blachovicz: [56:00] Wow. Well, I already said it, right? Stubbornness. Stubbornness, stubbornness. Not compromising. And I think that's what makes me unique. I don't compromise. I don't compromise with myself, I don't compromise with the team, I don't compromise with my suppliers. I simply don't compromise.

Eyal David: [56:25] I'm a Taurus too, so that goes together. That's it, I also thought you'd add sales and stubbornness here. Tell me, and if... OK, I want to tell you that if we're very, very much not insisting on upselling,

Bernardo Blachovicz: [56:37] I really don't like salesiness. I'd rather Mrs. Cohen spend time with me four times a month instead of three times a month. And I don't do that accounting, and I also don't stand over my team's heads, sell more. No. I... if there's one thing I don't do, it's salesiness. I hate being sold to, and I don't believe in those forced sales of stupid lines everyone says, I'd like to recommend our specials to you, in my eyes it's awful, awful. But here too I know how to think out of the box. And I can tell you that the person who sells the most, when I really want to sell something, promote something, you won't believe who it is. Who is it? On the floor. Of the whole service chain, who's the person who sells best? The hostess. She's the only one on the whole staff who nobody thinks is talking to you to sell you something. When a waiter comes over and opens his mouth, you're already saying, here's the salesman. Now, that salesman, look, see, 100% of people come into a restaurant to spend money. That's clear, it was an axiom. 100% of people go into a supermarket to spend money, to buy. So everyone who comes into my business, 100% of them know that at the end of their visit they'll take out their wallet and pay, that's clear to all of us. Also at the supermarket, also at a dealership, no, at a dealership it's not certain, because you can go to buy a car and it's not certain you'll buy it. But at a restaurant it's 100%, unlike a car dealership, for example. But people love to buy, but they don't love being sold to. Now, that's sometimes something a restaurateur doesn't understand. We go into a restaurant, I come to spend money, all good. But I don't like being sold to, I love to buy, I love to spend. But I don't like being sold to. But actually a hostess can do a sales action by the way, unscripted, because nobody will suspect her of being supposed to promote something. And when she sets down the menu, she tosses out to them, wow, did I taste the soup today? That's it. In the stories, what's in the soup, what's not in the soup, that's not there at all. It also needs to be theatrical and not salesy. Not to start reciting now, there's... that's not interesting. With that one sentence she sells more than the greatest waiters. Like, I have no doubt. And whatever she says that way will get promoted that evening. So here too you can think out of the box, because a waiter and a bartender and a manager, it's clear that they're, and a specials insert and a specials board, they're all meant to sell to you. But she's the only one who takes an action and nobody will suspect she wanted to promote something, but she'll be very credible, because she tasted it herself: wow, I tasted our new sandwich today! Wow, wow, that's it. Now, she also doesn't need to have a clue what the sandwich is, right, she needs to know what it includes, but not at a waiter's level, but that's indeed for them to do. That's a good example, you also saved me the next question, of what you basically know that other restaurateurs don't know. I don't know anything other restaurateurs don't know, by the way, really not. I'm also the most anti-Excel, and the most anti, you know, tables and formulas, anti, anti, I'm not, I come from the realm of the soul. I really don't think we know more than others, but we, I think we draw conclusions a bit differently, but not in knowledge, we all get up. So let's put it into practice, do you have another question? Yes. If you were starting a business today, what would you tackle first? If I were starting a new business. What would I tackle? Depends what business. Let's stay with restaurants. With restaurants? Innovation. Explain, expand. If there's something I hate, it's doing something that's been done, both at Pizza Meter and at the cafe. Innovation as creativity, basically, not innovation as... Yes, yes, yes. So that's basically what we said. You look at the whole market, look for the areas that basically repeat. Those holes, and to stick the pin into those holes, because it doesn't interest me to make another pizzeria. I mean, Pizza Meter wasn't another pizzeria. It was an industry parallel to the pizza industry. But we were in no way part of the pizza industry. By the way, in practice too. You'd come, sit down, and a waiter would hand you a pizza menu and wait on you, for the first time in Israel, he'd serve you pizza at the table. 25 years ago. Forget takeaway and deliveries and all that. There was a waiter, and he'd hand you a menu and serve you pizzas. 100% pizzas to the table. That's very interesting. Cafe Gan Sipur, if it didn't have that breakthrough in parks and that very, very clear differentiation of a family restaurant in a park and this and that, another cafe that sells. Today the world of display cases in Tel Aviv is really worn out. You cover your eyes, find yourself inside a cafe with a display case, and it's very hard, until you go outside to check what's written on the sign, to see where you are, because they all look the same: there's glass, sandwiches wrapped like this and sandwiches wrapped like that, and cupcakes and brownies and more brownies and blondie brownies and brownies. It's nice, but it's all the same, all the same, one is better, one is tastier, one is fresher, but in the end it's the same thing. So it doesn't excite me to make another place with a display case we've seen everywhere.

How Bernardo would approach a new business today

Eyal David: [1:02:27] Tell me, that reminds me, also reminds me of a question my daughter told me to ask you, but it also reminds me a bit of what you described. Were you also? 11. You were in Japan, I think, right? In Japan there are lots of display cases. In Japan the food is supposedly similar between the display cases, right? But it's done completely differently. A, two questions. The question she wanted to ask is what you think about Japanese food and why it entered Israel only in certain areas, like certain types of dishes, and B,

Japan, raw ingredients, and the future of Mexican food in Israel

Bernardo Blachovicz: [1:02:54] if you know an example about the display cases. -Was she in Japan? -Yes. The example you gave about the display cases, there it works amazingly. -Yes. -Because they preserve that soul. -Yes, first of all I'm not going into the cultural issue, right? But I remind you that 20 years ago in Israel nobody would buy a sandwich from you out of a display case. Aroma grew on that vacuum and it was anti-display-case. Over the years it moved toward display cases, but Aroma was the pioneer of anti-display-cases, because in Israel 20 years ago nobody would buy a sandwich sitting in a display case from you. Nobody. And that's a path we've traveled. Now, your daughter's question is a good question, and it's not for nothing that I asked if she'd been to Japan. There's a cultural issue in every single country, so display cases, I'm referring right now not to the consumer aspect, but to the aspect where everyone looks the same in the end. There's no differentiation in display cases. You walk in, I was only referring to that aspect on the subject of display cases. I have no problem with display cases. Listen, I'm sorry to tell you, raw ingredients in Japan, what do you want me to tell you? If she's asking me why it didn't catch on, it's something that simply isn't available. It isn't available. If you've been to the fish market, where they do the auctions at 12 at night, you wait four hours to eat sushi that's warm, warm from the sea, warm. Listen, we don't have ingredients like that, most likely there won't be ingredients like that either, and we can't forget that in Spain, on Monday, a restaurateur picks up the phone to his Italian supplier, the truck leaves Italy and arrives in Spain on Tuesday or on Wednesday at the latest to deliver the goods. That doesn't happen in Israel, we're not in contact with Syria or with Lebanon, and trucks don't pass through here. When a Frenchman calls Italy and orders wine or coffee, he picks up the phone, two days, the truck has arrived at the source, and it won't get tossed around on some moldy ship for thirty days in some warehouses and in the stern of a ship until it reaches me. So that's the gap, so many times over with Japanese ingredients.

Eyal David: [1:05:12] What's the best cuisine that, in your opinion, could be here but isn't here? I think that for many years people here have been waiting for a Mexican food breakthrough.

Bernardo Blachovicz: [1:05:23] It suits the Israeli palate really well, because its spiciness suits us, the sharing suits us really well, the Mexicans' way of opening up the table suits this place really well, and I think they've finally managed to make adjustments here in Israel. Adjustments. And the adjustments are good, and I see sparks. The call is a pioneering one. Los Tacos in Ra'anana does it wonderfully. I'm its neighbor, so I was exposed to it. It's really lovely, that business there in Ra'anana. It's family-run and it's magical. Like, in its simplicity and charm, it has lots of charm. And I think it's a cuisine that for many years people tried and failed, and I think it's the next thing. Interesting.

Eyal David: [1:06:13] And avocado, the prices here are also very convenient. Listen, avocado... the best export from here or something like that, no? In the United States it's the fruit with 8% growth a year, the biggest growth in the last five or six years, if I'm not mistaken. It's a vegetable that, it has lots of properties and lots of that, but it's also sustainable,

Bernardo Blachovicz: [1:06:35] and yes. But avocado was always here. It was here only in season, and when it wasn't the right season, now it is. Listen, but I notice, you know, a lot, a lot. But Mexican food didn't succeed because there was no avocado. Right. It didn't succeed for other reasons. And I'm not sure the Mexican food you eat in Mexico City would succeed here, right? But the adjustments they made suit us. But the kind you eat in California, probably yes, in my opinion.

Eyal David: [1:06:58] Right, but that's Tex-Mex. Right. That's Texan, American food. Bernardo, it was a pleasure, it was really fun. Me too. I think if there are questions and such, people who want to get in touch with you, is there a way? Yes, what do you want me to give? We'll put an email or something like that? Yes, Gan Sipur. So we'll put, fine, we'll put it. Gan Sipur at Gmail dot com. There, so now that's also indexed in Google. Yalla, thank you very much Bernardo, it was a pleasure. Thanks. Bye bye. Thank you very much.