The restaurant sector has undergone several twists in recent years, driven by cultural and dietary shifts. Consumers’ tastes, which are increasingly leaning toward healthier eating, have forced restaurants to reinvent themselves again and again, and, most importantly, to know how to differentiate in an ever more homogeneous world. Superfuüd is an example of this; it is a business specializing in healthy cooking, with a proposition based on dishes crafted from ingredients with high nutritional value.
With several locations in Madrid, the brand advocates a balanced, flavorful, and accessible way of eating, proving that taking care of yourself doesn’t have to clash with enjoyment. Its menu incorporates superfoods, natural ingredients, and recipes designed for everyday life, with the aim of bringing wellness to the plate in a simple, honest, and appetizing way. To better understand its philosophy, as well as the role technology plays in these restaurants, we spoke with Juan Sánchez, executive chef of Superfuüd.
MuyPymes: How would you define Superfuüd’s culinary concept and what market need did you identify to develop a healthy-eating and superfoods-focused proposal?
Juan Sánchez: Superfuüd springs from a very clear idea: healthy food based on superfoods can—and should—be the main product on the menu, not a separate section for ‘those watching their diet’. We build the entire proposition around the superfood as the lead ingredient, applying real technique so that each dish has its own culinary substance, not just nutritional value. And beyond the plate, we seek to build community: people who start eating with common sense, consciously, without sacrificing enjoyment at the table.
MuyPymes: What profiles participate in product development and how do you balance culinary, nutritional, commercial and operational criteria?
Juan Sánchez: Behind every Superfuüd dish there is a large, multidisciplinary team. As executive chef, I lead the culinary and technical side, but product development doesn’t depend on a single head: there is a leadership team at Superfuüd that sets the brand’s strategic direction, and a marketing team working in parallel so that each proposal resonates with the community and makes commercial sense.
The balance is achieved not because of separate phases — kitchen, marketing, business — but because we work together from the origin of the dish: technique and flavor come from the kitchen, brand vision and business come from leadership, and the connection with the customer is handled by marketing.
MuyPymes: How can you innovate in healthy cooking without losing sight of factors like flavor, price and profitability?
Juan Sánchez: For me, innovation in healthy cooking starts by stopping treating ‘flavor’ and ‘healthiness’ as two separate boxes to check. If a dish doesn’t engage the palate, it doesn’t matter how functional the ingredient is: customers won’t return. So technique comes first — cooking methods, textures, natural flavor enhancers, fermentation, spices — and the superfood is integrated within that technique, not on the margins.
Regarding price and profitability, the key is choosing battles wisely: not every superfood has to be in every dish or all the time. We work with seasonal and locally sourced products when possible, we control the cost breakdown from the dish design — not afterward — and we look for ingredients that deliver high nutritional and flavor impact with small amounts, rather than inflating the menu cost by including trendy superfoods that only add expense. True innovation is finding that point where a dish is surprising, well-made, and also financially viable; if any of the three pillars fails, it isn’t innovation, it’s an experiment that won’t scale.
MuyPymes:¿Qué importancia tienen la trazabilidad, el origen de los ingredientes y la relación con los proveedores en el desarrollo de la oferta gastronómica?
Juan Sánchez: For us it isn’t a marketing add-on; it’s the foundation of the proposition. If you sell health through food, you have to be able to back up where what you put on the plate comes from: it’s not the same as a superfood of questionable origin transported halfway around the world, than one whose traceability you can track from start to finish. That transparency is part of the product as much as the flavor itself.
La relación con los proveedores también va mucho más allá de negociar precio. Trabajamos con ellos casi como una extensión del equipo de cocina: entender cómo cultivan, cómo procesan, en qué momento del año cada ingrediente da su mejor versión. Eso nos permite construir la carta con lo que realmente tiene sentido en cada temporada, no al revés. Y a nivel de comunidad, es también parte de lo que le contamos al cliente: que sepa que detrás de cada superalimento hay un origen concreto y una relación de confianza, no solo una etiqueta bonita.
MuyPymes: ¿Cuáles son las principales dificultades para mantener una carta saludable con costes controlados en un contexto de encarecimiento de materias primas?
Juan Sánchez: The first challenge is that many superfoods are neither local nor seasonal here, so you depend on imports, exchange rates, and logistics, and that’s where price inflation bites harder than in a traditional menu. When the price of an ingredient that also defines the dish’s identity goes up, you can’t simply remove it without harming the proposal.
The second is that the customer seeking this kind of offering also expects high quality and transparency, so you can’t offset the extra cost by lowering quality or switching suppliers continuously: you would lose exactly what sets you apart—the traceability and the trust.
And third is purely about the cost breakdown: superfoods tend to have a higher cost per kilo than conventional ingredients, so the margin is tighter from the start, and any price increase hits profitability of the dish faster.
MuyPymes:¿Qué papel desempeñan la tecnología y los datos de ventas en la toma de decisiones sobre nuevos platos, cambios en la carta o preferencias de los clientes?
Juan Sánchez: Sales data is the real thermometer for the menu, far more reliable than intuition or the chef’s personal taste. Seeing which dish rotates, which is always ordered with another, at what time of day or season demand rises or falls… that tells us a lot before touching anything creatively. If a dish with a particular superfood doesn’t work, the data lets us quickly differentiate whether the problem is the price, the name on the menu, its placement within the menu, or the product itself.
Operationally, technology also helps cross that sale with the cost breakdown and waste: not only what is sold, but what margin it leaves and how much is discarded. That is key in a menu like ours, where the cost of ingredients weighs more.
And then there is the community and social media aspect, which for me is also another data point: what content generates more interaction, which ingredients spark curiosity or questions… that sometimes anticipates a trend even before it’s reflected in sales. In the end, the final decision remains culinary, but it is made with far more information than before.
MuyPymes: Además de la propuesta gastronómica, ¿cómo se construye una marca vinculada a conceptos como bienestar, estilo de vida saludable y comunidad?
Juan Sánchez: The plate is only the entryway. The brand is built in everything that surrounds that plate: the language you use, the aesthetics, how you tell the product, and above all, how you make the customer feel part of something. At Superfuüd we don’t want people to come just to eat; we want them to identify with a way of understanding food: mindful, unpretentious, with common sense.
That translates across several fronts. In the physical space, in how the product is presented, in social media communication, where we don’t only sell the dish but the philosophy behind it — why that superfood, what it adds, why it makes sense to eat it this way. And in the community: people who follow the brand not because they came once, but because they share that approach to well-being and want to keep learning and participating in it, both inside and outside the restaurant.
In the end, a brand like this is not sustained by good product alone: it is sustained by consistency. That what you say on social media, what you serve at the table, and what the team behind it represents all tell the same story. That is what makes people trust and return.
MuyPymes: ¿Hacia dónde cree que se dirige el sector durante los próximos años y qué tendencias marcarán el futuro de los alimentos funcionales y la restauración saludable?
Juan Sánchez: I think we’re heading toward a moment where it won’t make sense to separate ‘healthy restaurant’ from ‘restaurant’ at all. Functional health is becoming one of the sector’s engines of innovation, and increasingly the balance between taste and real benefit is sought—not one at the expense of the other— with a consumer who no longer accepts choosing between well-being and pleasure, and expects sensory quality even in products marketed as healthy.
Also I see a much more informed and demanding consumer who scrutinizes where they spend their money, which translates to greater attention to value for money and transparency—where traceability we discussed earlier stops being an extra and becomes a baseline for competing. And in terms of offerings, formats that combine indulgence and function will gain ground: you’re not going to give up a good dessert, but it will be better resolved in terms of ingredients.
Finally, I believe the conversation will shift from the ‘isolation of the superfood’ toward something deeper: digestive well-being, sustained energy, mental health through food. The challenge for restaurants like Superfuüd is not to chase the latest ingredient trend, but to build a solid proposition that can withstand that shift in conversation. In short, a lifestyle.
