Paella Piracy? Lawsuit Claims Owners of New Palo Alto Spanish Restaurant Stole Recipes, Key Information From Bay Area Rival Teleféric

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Posted on 01/02/2025 6:32:51 PM PST by nickcarraway

Couple allegedly downloaded and dashed

A Palo Alto culinary couple stands accused by a popular Bay Area restaurant group of paella piracy and a tapas two-step.

Restaurant group Teleféric Barcelona claims in a trade-secrets lawsuit that a husband and wife it hired to help run its operations stole recipes and customer and client data so they could start a rival Spanish eatery called Macarena in Palo Alto.

David Linares and Elisabet Reviriego are also accused in the lawsuit of using some of the purportedly purloined information to secure a deal to sell food at San Jose Sharks hockey games.

Linares told this news organization that he and Reviriego are addressing the lawsuit’s claims through legal channels. He declined to comment on details of the allegations.

“We remain confident in our actions, our values, and the processes we have followed in launching Macarena,” Linares said via email. “We are excited to bring our vision to life in Palo Alto and are deeply committed to delivering an exceptional dining experience for the community.”

Linares was brought on at Teleféric in 2019 to manage its Palo Alto restaurant, and was promoted the next year as operations director for all five of the companies’ U.S. locations, which include eateries in Palo Alto, Los Gatos and Walnut Creek, according to the lawsuit.

“Linares had unfettered access to Teleféric’s electronically stored documents and was privy to Teleféric’s confidential and proprietary information, such as recipes, deals with vendors, and client contacts,” the lawsuit filed last month in Santa Clara County Superior Court alleged.

The company hired Reviriego a few months later, and she was eventually promoted to marketing director, the lawsuit said.

“Reviriego ostensibly ran Teleféric’s IT and had unfettered access to all of its electronically stored information, including marketing materials and guest information,” the lawsuit claimed.

In May 2024, the couple told Teleféric they were resigning, “falsely stating that they were returning to Spain,” the lawsuit alleged. “In fact, they were conspiring to open a competing Spanish restaurant in Silicon Valley and to use Teleféric’s confidential, proprietary, and trade secret information to do so.”

A December press release about Macarena said it would serve “Spanish comfort food at its finest” in an “elegant” atmosphere in downtown Palo Alto.

The first Teleféric was opened in Barcelona, Spain in 1992 by the Padrosa family who two decades later unveiled a second location in that city, before expanding to the U.S. in 2016 with a Walnut Creek location.

Last year, when Teleféric’s owners Xavi Padrosa and Maria Padrosa learned that Linares and Reviriego were planning to launch their own Spanish restaurant in the Bay Area after leaving Teleféric, they hired a forensic analyst to make sure the pair had not doggie-bagged any proprietary information on the way out, according to the lawsuit.

“To their shock and dismay,” the lawsuit claimed, “the forensic analysis revealed that Linares and Reviriego did just that.”

On Linares’ last day at Teleféric, he downloaded nearly 17,000 documents from the company’s Google drive to his personal account, the lawsuit alleged. Included were recipes, customer-contact lists, food-vendor contacts, budgets, marketing strategies and pricing information for events and catering, the lawsuit claimed.

Reviriego, shortly before leaving Teleféric, copied — then deleted from the company’s database — many marketing files, and downloaded its entire customer marketing list, the lawsuit claimed.

“The documents stolen by Linares and Reviriego contain confidential and proprietary information such as marketing plans, market research studies, marketing full reports, sales and revenue forecasts and planning, competitors’ analysis, branding guidelines, all customer data, partnership agreements, present and future product launch plans, and competitive intelligence reports,” the lawsuit alleged.

Linares and Reviriego “are using the stolen confidential and proprietary information, including recipes, marketing materials, customer lists, and operation procedures to imitate Teleféric’s successful formula for opening and running a restaurant serving Spanish cuisine,” the lawsuit claimed.

Macarena, according to its website, is slated to open this year. The Padrosas believe the location is less than two miles from their Teleféric Barcelona restaurant in Palo Alto.

Reviriego, in a December post on LinkedIn highlighting her Spanish heritage, said Macarena would provide the “essence of Spanish hospitality.” Every dish, she wrote, would tell “a story of tradition, crafted with the love and artistry passed down through generations of my family.”

The December press release said Macarena would open in February, “celebrating the joy of simple, honest flavors.”

Reviriego and Linares are accused in the lawsuit of violating confidentiality agreements. Teleféric is seeking unspecified damages.

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1 posted on 01/02/2025 6:32:51 PM PST by nickcarraway

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