WALNUT CREEK, CALIFORNIA – A decade ago, Telefèric Barcelona made an unusual choice for its first restaurant in the United States.
Instead of opening in San Francisco, Los Angeles or another major culinary destination, the Spanish restaurant group selected a second-floor space in downtown Walnut Creek.
That decision now looks remarkably prescient.
Telefèric Barcelona has grown from its original American outpost at 1500 Mt. Diablo Boulevard into a rapidly expanding restaurant group with locations across California and Arizona. Its co-founder now expects the business to generate between $60 million and $62 million in revenue during 2026, according to reporting from SFGate.
The restaurant’s rise is an especially notable success story for Walnut Creek, where Telefèric recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of its U.S. debut.
From Spain to Walnut Creek
The story began long before Telefèric arrived in the East Bay.
The Padrosa family entered the restaurant business in 1992, when parents Soledad Urabayen Arza and Ramón Padrosa opened a restaurant in Sant Cugat, a community just outside Barcelona.
Their children, Xavi and Maria Padrosa, later expanded the family business into central Barcelona. The siblings brought the concept across the Atlantic in 2016, choosing Walnut Creek for the company’s first American restaurant.
Xavi Padrosa already had a connection to Northern California. He had moved to the Bay Area as a teenager on a tennis scholarship and could envision eventually building a life here.
But the Walnut Creek location reportedly came together after local developer Brian Hirahara visited the family’s Barcelona restaurant during his honeymoon.
Telefèric opened there in January 2016.
The 7,000-square-foot restaurant introduced diners to a menu of tapas, pintxos, Spanish wines and paella cooked with a layer of crispy socarrat rice at the bottom of the pan. We reviewed it several years ago.
Revenue Could Reach $62 Million
That strategy appears to be paying off.
Padrosa told SFGate that Telefèric Barcelona’s restaurants will generate between $60 million and $62 million during 2026.
Those figures are estimates supplied by the privately owned company and have not been independently audited or publicly confirmed.
Still, they offer a striking measure of how far the restaurant has grown since opening above Mt. Diablo Boulevard a decade ago.
Walnut Creek Remains the American Flagship
The company may now operate restaurants hundreds of miles from the East Bay, but Walnut Creek remains its original American flagship.
The location still occupies the second floor of the building at Mt. Diablo Boulevard and North Main Street, with an open kitchen, floor-to-ceiling windows, private dining areas and a large marble bar. There’s also a surprisingly classy outdoor rooftop dining area that served the restaurant quite well through the pandemic.
In April, city officials joined Telefèric Barcelona to celebrate its 10-year anniversary and recognize its growth from a single Walnut Creek restaurant into an international business.
It’s a big success story for the restaurant–and also for Walnut Creek as the burdgening chain’s original incubator.
