The Coco Mocca cafeteria arrived in Madrid in March 2021, with the pandemic still raging. Soon queues began to form at the door, not because of their capsule coffee or their colorful cakes, but because of the flowery and spectacular decoration of the establishment. The careful aesthetics of this business located on Paseo de las Acacias, in the Arganzuela district, turned the place into an attraction for influencers or for anyone who wanted to share a beautiful image.
In a time of de-escalation, minimalism was not a problem, rather an advantage. It was the ideal time to bet on a “Starbucks model”, as Gerson Ramírez, Coco Mocca commercial, defines it in conversation with Somos Madrid. A commitment based on “the details and care of the products, especially in the visual section.”
Now, just three and a half years after opening, they are closing their doors. They do so to convert themselves into a pop-up store “focused rather on the concept and essence of a historic hotel,” which will arrive soon and will operate for approximately eight months in the same Coco Mocca location “although our current image is dying.” After that period they will continue “most likely” in another location, “perhaps even outside Madrid.”
Ramírez explains that with the passage of time they observed some deficiencies: “People evolved and we realized that we were falling short.” To check the strength of the company, for a time they reduced the number of posts on social networks. “Sometimes you have to mistreat the brand to know it,” he says. It was then that they chose to “move away from the classic structures and the usual presence of these businesses.”
And in these three and a half years the networks have not lost weight, quite the opposite. But the way we use them is constantly evolving and, according to the commercial, it matters less and less whether a space is canonically photogenic. Now what is relevant is that he is able to construct a story for himself. We go from selfie to reel. “From the Instagrammable to the immersive,” he says, even though immersion is also done with Instagram in mind.
They know a lot about immersive gastronomy at Sinestesia. Its director, Jorge Palacio, attends Somos Madrid in this small but well-kept establishment that opens its doors from Wednesday to Sunday in the Caleido shopping area (at number 259 Paseo de la Castellana, next to the Four Towers that crown the district of Chamartín). It is an experience in which technology and haute cuisine are combined, to immerse diners in a multi-sensory journey that tries to answer a complex question: what do colors taste like? With the advice and coordination of the prestigious chef Kiko Moya, this particular bet is aimed at an exclusive audience: the price per person of the menu is 270 euros with pairing and 195 without pairing.
Attendees, up to a maximum of 16 people in the afternoon shift (1:45 p.m.) and another 16 in the evening shift (8:45 p.m.), begin the experience in a hall where a particular set of lights begins to immerse them in the environment from the moment they arrive. welcome cocktail. Then they all go together to the main room, with a huge table where each of the diners has their assigned place. On it, and on the walls of the room, the play of lights and colors that runs through the experience will unfold.
Thus begins the concatenation for two and a half hours of eight different worlds, each one linked to a color and with each color linked to specific flavors. “First came the design, then the dishes. In the end we can always adapt or reinterpret the dishes, but the scenic and visual section had to be already prepared,” explains Palacio. The visual experience is completed with the aesthetic care of the cutlery or decorative elements that range from a diving suit to the enormous Mad Hatter’s hat. Alice.
But in addition to sight and taste, Palacio and his team wanted the rest of the senses to be present to complete the immersion. Thus, each world has a voiceover and personalized intro music (from Purple Rain from Prince to The woman in green of Izal). Also with its own aromas that permeate the room to contribute to the feeling of suggestion. The interpretations of waiters who are also actors finish giving shape to this universe full of stimuli.
“Since I was little, my family has traveled and we have liked to see gastronomic experiences or experience foods in different countries around the world. A while ago, after I saw it on social media, we ended up in an immersive restaurant in Bogotá. We realized that there were very few that ambitious in the world,” says Palacio about the origin of a project that will soon complete its first year of operation. Although he is of Alicante origin, from the beginning this businessman was clear about the need to land in Madrid “due to the flow of people and purchasing power.”
He admits that the beginnings were complicated by the confusion generated by trying to explain an initiative of these characteristics, so visual and experiential, when it cannot yet be experienced in first person or shown through images: “I told it and people didn’t understand it.” . He says that in the opening campaign they did the rest using “influencers and a lot of marketing.”
The videos and photographs of the first people who lived the experience thus became the dissemination material itself. Compared to the Instagrammable decorations with which a cafe or restaurant in the selfie era could start to create expectation with some advance notice, in the reel era The best promotion is the one done from within, when the machine starts working.
And at first the dissemination through networks generated doubts: “We raised it a lot at the beginning because there was a contradiction: for people to understand the experience they have to see it, but at the same time if we let a lot be shown through networks social we reveal it. It was a little scratchy, but in the end, from what some attendees have told us, we realized that, no matter how much you saw, if you are not here and experience it, you do not feel it the same.”
There was a contradiction: for people to understand the experience they have to see it, but at the same time if we let a lot of it be shown through social networks we reveal it. It was a bit rough, but in the end we realized that, no matter how much you see, if you are not here and live it, you don’t feel it the same.
Jorge Palacio
— Restaurant Director Sinestesia
Palacio boasts some of Sinestiesia’s strengths compared to other immersive experiences: “We differentiate ourselves from other venues of this type because we have a coherence and a common thread through the flavor of colors. In other cases, maybe you go from a screen in imperial Japan to another on the beach. We wanted to give that point of storytelling”.
The creator of Sinestesia believes that “with globalization you can hardly differentiate yourself at the product level,” hence the importance of “marking ground through stories.” He later clarifies that in his restaurant “the product is differentiating in itself” thanks to the combination of gastronomy and technology: “It is not easy to achieve. The traditional hoteliers are not going to have this. It’s more for entrepreneurs. I put the two parts together a little and this came out, but it is not easy: the performancedesign, audiovisuals…”.
He also believes that they achieve all this without detracting from the work of creation and execution in the kitchen: “We know how dangerous it is for food to be neglected in these types of spaces and end up being a catastrophe. Of the gastronomic offer, I highlight its quality, as it could not be otherwise with Kiko Moya as executive chef [poseedor de dos Estrellas Michelín]but also how well it is put together so that what we wanted to achieve is materialized and understood.” He adds, of course, that from the beginning they sought to move away from “the typical Michelin Star gastronomic offer with small bites, we look for simple food with an elegant and quality touch.”
“”He feedback It is very good and Madrid has received us wonderfully. People have a great time. Many people who don’t know each other before entering end up going out for drinks,” says Palacio. But, despite these good feelings, he maintains that the model of ambitious immersive experiences is difficult to expand in Madrid: ”From the experience I have setting up Sinestesia, I think it is very difficult. As I said before, I think that a normal restaurateur would not dare, while someone who controls technology does not usually get involved in restoration.” The multidisciplinary aspect, together with “a very high initial investment”, are in his opinion the two great handicaps for this type of spaces to proliferate.
The Sinestesia team is currently made up of twelve people, to which must be added a marketing service that they hire externally or the dozens of workers they needed to launch the infrastructure, prepare the menu or audiovisual design.
Renew or die
Some aspects of Coco Mocca will continue along a similar path to that of its original cafeteria: “We have had the same designer who shaped the Coco Mocca cafeteria, Joaquín Rivero.” They will also continue to offer breakfast, snacks and cocktails. But the intention is for the final space to retrograde the great hotels in European capitals erected at the beginning of the last century, an immersive character more modest than that of Sinestesia but just as important.
They are already preparing the renovation of the premises to turn it into the pop up storewith which they intend to create “an atmosphere that allows many girls to disinhibit themselves from the world.” That is, “building a pleasant space for people who meet often to talk calmly and not to have a quick coffee, take a photo and leave.” A new format from which they expect great results: “I come from a world of calculation, so if we observe that the behavior and type of clientele lean more toward another type of experience, we must respond to it,” concludes Ramírez.
And speaking of transformations, at Sinestesia they are aware that an immersive proposal exhausts itself. Despite their focus on an audience with a certain purchasing power that sometimes corresponds to foreign visitors, they recognize the problem of not being able to build loyalty, since the majority of people who repeat do so because they come with a new circle of friends (although there are some cases of true experience addicts). “The idea is to change,” Palacio advances.
He admits that “this first design must be amortized, that audiovisuals cost money.” The artistic design lasted for months, in a process that ranged from the visuals to the costumes or the text recited by the actors. “It takes almost a year to prepare each proposal,” he summarizes. He also adds that “at 32 people per day there are many left to live the experience, the what do the colors taste like? “It has not been exhausted.”
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