That was an adventure. A bet made by a group of businessmen who launched into a Avenida de Anaga that would experience a boom only a few years later. It is now the 40th anniversary of the first fast food restaurant in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It did not last long, many do not remember it, but its history is striking.
The year was 1983, the decade in which the cultural influence of the United States, at all levels, was most evident. Within everything that came thanks to the cinema and television was fast food, a concept still distant for the Canary Islands despite the large influx of tourists.
Four businessmen from Tenerife, Manolo Martín Gamero, Paco González Cárpenter, Pedro García-Sanjuan and Carlos Aguilar-Tablada decided to set up the first fast food restaurant in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. “Manolo Martín Gamero had some contacts in Barcelona with Kentucky Fried Chicken and offered us to enter the franchise. In my case, without knowing”, says Pago González Cárpenter.
The idea was to bring it to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, specifically at number 45 Avenida de Anaga, but at the beginning of the 80s the area was not as crowded as just a few years later or as we know it today: “We were looking for a a place that met the conditions, which was not easy, and we found it there, at one end of Avenida de Anaga. Seen in perspective, it was too big. I see it now and it scares me. The rent was also high.”
Precisely, the spaciousness of the premises was one of the factors that harmed the development of the first fast food restaurant in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, because the feeling, when it was not full, something that only happened on weekends, did not encourage the public : “We had many dead times during the week and that is essential, seeing that there were no people inside does not encourage the client to enter. It is true that on weekends it was very lively, but not the rest of the days ”.
The success of onion rings and takeout
Tania was one of the clients of that Kentucky Fried Chicken, so innovative that even in the advertisements of the time NOTICE DIARY you could tell what its pronunciation was. She was a girl when the opening took place and she remembers, among other things, one of the main novelties offered by the franchise: “On weekends I went with my parents to pick up the food in those brown bags to eat at home. I loved it”.
That, the possibility of picking up the food and taking it away, was one of the strengths of that KFC, but there were others, as Paco González Cárpenter recalls: “The onion rings were terrific, that’s where I and many people discovered them. In order to offer takeaway food, we had to reinforce the shifts during the weekend”.
Beyond the management, which possibly could have been better, that society of the early 80s was not used to paying 600 pesetas for a menu, because for that price in the city you could eat in many places. Fashion, perhaps, was fleeting: “The opening was impressive. It overwhelmed us. That euphoria, something that happens a lot in Santa Cruz, went down. Maintaining it was not easy despite the fact that the guidelines were very marked”.
The chicken was from Tenerife, the KFC’s secret batter mixture was added to it and the rest of the products, such as the potatoes, came from the Peninsula: “Despite the fact that it was a franchise, or perhaps because of it, it was not too easy for us to find people to run that kind of business.”
The first fast food restaurant in Santa Cruz de Tenerife would remain open for several years, until the late 1980s, until it closed giving way to the Falúa restaurant, known for its political gatherings. Only a while later, Avenida de Anaga would become fashionable as a reference point for leisure in the city: “What would have happened if we hadn’t lasted a little longer? We will not know, perhaps it would have gone differently. The results were not good.”
The football team, the best memory
Paco González Cárpenter narrates everything that happened vividly, smiling, remembering old times, but his face lights up when he is asked about the best memory he has of that adventure: the soccer team that sponsored the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Santa Cruz de Tenerife: “The team was made up of my children, Pedro García Sanjuán’s and friends of theirs and, to be honest, we had a good time”.
That team, which wore the image of Colonel Sanders on its chest, competed in “leagues that were played in the Santa Cruz Sports Pavilion,” and “from time to time we won,” as he recalls, with a smile on his lips. Gonzalez Carpenter.
