Palo Alto Spanish Restaurant Hit With Lawsuit Before It’s Even Open

Spanish restaurant Macarena isn’t even open yet, and already the owners are embroiled in a lawsuit in which they are accused of stealing recipes, along with the customer and client data of another Bay Area restaurant, the Mercury News reports.

David Linares and Elisabet Reviriego, the couple behind Macarena, were both former employees of the restaurant group Telefèric Barcelona, which operates Spanish restaurants in the Bay Area, Southern California, and Spain by the same name.

In a lawsuit filed on December 5, 2024, Telefèric alleges that on his last day of employment, Linares downloaded 17,000 files from a confidential, shared Google Drive containing recipes, food providers, financial and budgetary information, marketing strategies, leasing agreements, and the restaurant’s “events price bible,” which includes “strategy for hosting events, catering, and pricing details, among others,” the lawsuit states.

Reviriego, meanwhile, is accused of copying and deleting marketing materials from that shared Google Drive and on Canva, a design tool used at the Telefèric restaurants, plus a customer marketing list. The lawsuit also accuses Linares and Reviriego of using the information to leverage a deal to sell food during San Jose Sharks games.

Representatives for both Telefèric and Macarena declined to comment on the lawsuit to Eater SF.

Linares and Reviriego worked at Telefèric from 2019 until 2024; Linares was first hired as the general manager for the Palo Alto location of Telefèric Barcelona ahead of its opening and was later promoted to director of operations and chief operating officer of the U.S. locations, which includes Los Gatos, Palo Alto, Walnut Creek, Los Angeles, and Long Beach.

Reviriego was hired three months after Linares’s start and later promoted to director of marketing for the restaurant group.

The couple resigned in May 2024, stating they were returning to Spain, the lawsuit alleges, but when the company discovered that Linares and Reviriego were instead opening a Spanish restaurant in Palo Alto in 2025, the owners hired a forensic analyst to look into whether any proprietary information was missing.

The analyst allegedly uncovered the downloaded materials, along with the missing marketing materials.