El Gat del Rosal

A. The main facts about the activities of the company.

El Gat del Rosal is a restaurant-bar based in Tàrrega (Urgell). It’s a small-sized business enterprise as a result of a business endeavour of “Associació Alba”, which is a non-profit association that works with the aim to improve the welfare of people with mental or physical disabilities. “El Gat del Rosal” has three main business areas:
• The Restaurant. El Gat del Rosal offers a gastronomical proposal based on the Mediterranean diet. The suppliers, which are local, are accurately selected by el Gat del Rosal and its cuisine tries to integrate organic food in all plates. Moreover, the place is comfortable and relaxing which make your stay a nice experience. Finally, the menus are economical and thought to please all the palates.
• L’Obrador del Rosal is a bakery focused on manufacturing different sort of cookies made of natural ingredients following the receipts of 100 years ago and it serves as a place for the inclusion to disabled people. El obrador has gained a reputation because of its star product, the “Arrugats” (a sort of wrinkled wafer covered by chocolate).
• The “Meeting point”. El Rosal offers a place to hold meetings, talks and workshops for all citizens (up to 120 people).

B. The Ethical challenges this company is addressing.

The main objective of “El Gat del Rosal” is to improve the life quality of those people who have an intellectual disability or mental illness. Their way of doing so is by providing these people the resources so that they can get employed and at the same time get socially integrated. Being part of the business area of Alba’s Association, which provides many other services, keeps the incentives and the motivation to both employees and managers to follow the solidary, participative and innovative values of the foundation.
Despite the stress and responsibility that implies working at a restaurant, it is a great way to empower people so that they can feel fully integrated to our society. However the foundation offers many other workplaces for those who are not able to work in such environment, an example would be the biscuits bakery which provides higher flexibility for their employees.
Although the goal of “El Gat del Rosal” is about people, it also does his part regarding the environment. They have strongly bet for local suppliers and organic food because it has a smaller impact on nature: it reduces pollution because the transportation is practically nonexistent and organic food is produced using no pesticides (or minimizing its use).

C. What makes you believe this company is really ethical and why you trust it?

The creation of el Gat del Rosal, in 2005, was part of the plans of “Associació Alba” to celebrate its 35th birthday. As explained before, Associació Alba is a non-profit entity which mission is to improve the welfare of citizens that are disabled or have some sort of mental illnesses by giving to them tools and means to achieve their autonomy. Moreover, Associació Alba has four areas that have an impact on l’Urgell and la Segarra: “Escola Alba” as a school for people with special educative necessities, “Serveis de Salut Mental” as a tool to provide advice to families and workshops for labour inclusion, “Centre d’Habitatge” in form of 2 residences for disabled people and “Centre Ocupacional” with 2 centres in Tàrrega and Cervera with the aim to train disabled people (higher than 65%) to get skills in some professions. El Gat del Rosal is part of “Centre Ocupacional” and employs 15 people (7 of them have some sort of disability). Because of its local impact, they have been recognized as a social responsible business with many awards.
In addition, its commitment goes beyond people because they want to have an impact on the environment: they select ingredients of quality that comes from the local agriculture as well as implements a tool to manage their residues. They are also transparent with information related to the economic management. In its website, there is information about the budget of the entity and the contracts (in form of subsidies) with the public administration.
In brief, we trust them for their history with impact on l’Urgell, for their commitment with people and nature and for their transparency.

D.The possible challenges facing the company in the future and how you think this company may improve.

The main challenge is the economic crisis and its double impact on the reduction of the subsidies given by the public administration to employ disabled people and on revenues. The reduction of subsides makes more difficult to employ disabled people, so they have to rely more on its business model. But, the economic crisis has had an impact on its business model reducing its revenues. They will have to deal with these problems in the future although they started to implement new formulas or ideas such as cheaper menus, free buffets...
As a second-order challenge, consolidating the offer of local and organic food as a key concept of the business as well as finding better suppliers to obtain better conditions might be the key to overcome this situation.