Munich's downstairs Cuban refuge.
Right now the space below Frida is Xolo — a concept that hasn't quite found its audience. Above, Frida works. The building has a soul. The downstairs has potential. Munich has a few long-standing Cuban-themed cocktail bars — Havana Club, Cohibar, CU.BAR — and a few thousand active salseros and salseras across 7+ schools. What it doesn't have is a Cuban cultural home: a venue with year-round live Cuban music, a place the diaspora gathers, a stage the city's Cuban musicians can call theirs.
This proposal: re-concept the downstairs as 537 Bar — 537 is Havana's calling code — that cultural home, with a connected festival audience, and me running it as Manager and Marketing Lead under your ownership.
Havana Club has been pouring mojitos for 30 years. Cohibar fills its basement with rum and salsa nights. CU.BAR exists. They're cocktail bars with Cuban themes — good drinks, dim lighting, occasional dance floor. None of them is a year-round cultural anchor: no resident live Cuban music program, no language exchange, no diaspora gathering, no connection to a festival circuit, no address the salsa community treats as theirs. The gap isn't Cuban-themed drinks. The gap is cultural infrastructure.
For comparison: Berlin has Qbanos and a growing Barrio Cubano event scene. Hamburg has Café Don Cuba, Bar Cuba, Club Cuba. The cultural-home concept is appearing in peer German cities. Munich — Germany's third largest, with a deeper salsa scene than either — is the obvious next.
Distressed teal walls with exposed warm plaster patches. Encaustic Cuban tile floors. A walnut bar with brass rail. An upright piano in the corner. Vintage Cuban photography. Live music three nights a week. Sophisticated cultural haven, not a tourist trap.
Frida already brings a Mexican-Latin-American audience to this courtyard every evening. Putting Cuba below Mexico in the same building creates a vertical Latin America experience — guests upstairs become guests downstairs, and vice versa. The cross-traffic is built in. The underground location, instead of being a constraint, becomes the brand: the speakeasy descent is the experience.
Your lease. Your kitchen infrastructure. Your existing staff (re-trained on the new menu). Your relationships with suppliers and the courtyard. The structural and contractual baseline doesn't change — we re-skin and re-concept.
I'm co-founding the Corazón Cubano festival (Agua Pichi) — Munich's first international Cuban culture festival. Edition 1: 1–4 July 2027, headlining Los Van Van. Edition 1 target: 1,000 international attendees. Edition 3 target: 10,000 across 10 countries. The festival's year-round home — by design — is 537 Bar.
Primary stream. Cuban classics done right (mojito, daiquiri, cuba libre, ron añejo). Avg check €18–25. Capacity ~70 seated, ~120 standing on event nights.
~60% of revenueCuban tapas — tostones, croquetas, ropa vieja sliders, medianoche sandwiches. Light prep, high margin. Uses existing kitchen with minor menu retraining.
~15% of revenueThursday/Friday/Saturday live Cuban son, salsa, Latin jazz. €10–15 entry on top of consumption. Books local Cuban musicians the city is starved of.
~12% of revenueCuban-themed corporate events, birthdays, weddings. The venue's character sells itself. €1,500–4,000 per booking, ~3–6 bookings/month after ramp.
~8% of revenueThe official afterhours venue of the Corazón Cubano festival. One week in July, peak demand, premium pricing, international audience. Year 1 alone covers ~5% of annual revenue; by Year 3 ~15% as the festival scales.
~5% Y1 → ~15% Y3Numbers are concept-stage estimates. A full financial model — capex, opex, breakeven timeline, sensitivity — comes in the next conversation once you've decided the concept is worth pursuing. Capex range under discussion: €60–120k depending on the kitchen scope and finishings retained from Xolo.
I'm not asking for equity. I'm asking to run this for you — concept, brand, marketing, community, festival connection — as your employee or contractor. Your venue, your lease, your P&L. My job: make the concept work and bring the audience.
Festival announcement starts Q4 2026 for the January 2027 ticket sales push. If the bar is the official year-round home of the festival, it has to be open and on the brand by then — meaning concept lock by mid-2026, build Q3 2026, soft open late 2026. That's the timing pressure, and it's why this conversation is happening now and not later. The Xolo window doesn't reopen — once we miss the festival anchor, the whole flywheel is a year delayed.
Thirty minutes. The downstairs, in person, looking at the same physical room while I walk you through the concept. No commitment, no signed paper, no decision in the room. Just a shared first look at whether this is worth the next conversation.