Areas Brand Guidelines: Barcelona 1968, the Elior Years & PAI Partners Since 2019

A Spanish concession caterer and its long years inside Elior.

Areas is a concession caterer: it runs restaurants, cafés and shops in airports, railway stations and motorway service areas under contracts awarded by the operators of those sites. The company was founded in 1968 and is based in Barcelona, the franchise trade title L’Express Franquicia reported in October 2026, citing the Spanish business daily Expansión. Its business rests on concessions rather than on franchises sold to individual owners, the same report said: an airport manager awards the space through a tender, and an operator such as Areas decides which brands go into it.

For much of its recent history Areas sat inside a French group. The catering company Elior entered its capital in 2001, El Confidencial reported in April 2015, and by then held 61.5 percent of the shares; the rest belonged to Emesa, the investment holding of the Cuatrecasas family. That month the two sides opened formal talks on a swap in which Emesa would give up its stake in exchange for cash and Elior shares. English Wikipedia says Elior became the sole shareholder of Areas in July 2015, and the Spanish daily El Español reported in 2019 that Elior had taken full control that year. Under Elior, El Español added, the Italian business MyChef and the French Elior Concessions were brought together under the Areas name.

In April 2019 Elior said it had received a firm offer for Areas from the private-equity firm PAI Partners, made together with the Areas management team, El Español reported. At the time the company described itself as number one in Spain, France and Portugal, second in Mexico and Chile and third in the United States, with 21,000 employees. The sale closed at the start of July 2019: Vozpópuli reported on 7 July that PAI had completed the purchase the previous week, and English Wikipedia gives the date as 1 July 2019. PAI Partners was still the owner in October 2026, according to L’Express Franquicia.

Airports, motorways and stations in eleven countries.

Areas works across four kinds of site. Its website, read in November 2026, lists 81 airports, 236 travel plazas, 78 railway stations and 43 leisure venues, with around 2,000 points of sale in 11 countries and about 24,000 employees. The trade title The Moodie Davitt Report gave a higher count in June 2026 — more than 2,200 outlets across 11 countries — after the company’s latest purchase in the United States. L’Express Franquicia, citing Expansión, said in October 2026 that airports made up about 60 percent of the business, motorways 23 percent and railway stations 17 percent, and that Areas ranked third in the sector worldwide, behind Avolta and SSP, according to Expansión.

The airport list on its website runs from Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca in Spain to Charles de Gaulle, Orly, Lyon, Toulouse and Basel-Mulhouse in France, Lisbon and Porto, Milan Malpensa and Rome Fiumicino, Santiago de Chile and Mexico, and US airports including Los Angeles, Chicago, Newark, Minneapolis and Miami. In Spain, airport space comes through tenders run by the airport operator Aena. In Aena’s 2023 tender at Madrid-Barajas, L’Express Franquicia reported, Areas took 35 of the 55 units on offer. In June 2026 The Moodie Davitt Report named it the main winner of the food-and-beverage tender at Barcelona-El Prat, with 22 outlets, and on 1 October 2026 the company said it had won 14 more outlets at Málaga-Costa del Sol, Gran Canaria and Valencia.

On the road, the website lists 58 sites in Spain, all the service areas on the network of the Portuguese motorway operator Brisa, French stops such as Assevillers, Mornas and Limours, and service plazas in Florida, Maryland and West Virginia. Its railway work includes Paris Gare de Lyon, where in October 2026 the company described Hoppy, its own brasserie concept on the mezzanine of Hall 2, pouring beers from its partner brand Gallia. The same month it opened a restaurant with the Japanese restaurant group Kabuki in Terminal 4 at Madrid-Barajas.

How travel caterers present themselves.

Most companies in travel retail and travel dining sell under other names as well as their own. HMSHost, part of Avolta, says it works with more than 400 international, regional, local and proprietary brands, and SSP divides its portfolio between concepts it has created and brands it franchises from other companies, according to their websites. Their corporate sites speak to two audiences at once: HMSHost’s has pages for business developers and partners, and SSP’s has sections on its markets, its brands and its investors, alongside the restaurant and shop names a traveller actually sees.

Trade press describes the units themselves in practical terms. Reports in The Moodie Davitt Report give a venue’s floor area, its seat count, whether it sits airside or landside and how many self-order kiosks it has, as in its March 2025 account of a 65-seat Shake Shack at Boston Logan. They often stress local character too: SSP’s November 2026 opening at Auckland Airport was described as a coffee-led café drawing on New Zealand’s coffee culture.

Industry awards give design its own categories. The 2025 FAB Awards, organised by The Moodie Davitt Report, included Airport Restaurant Design of the Year and Airport Food Hall of the Year, according to SSP’s list of its wins, and HMSHost lists airport bar and restaurant awards from readers’ polls and trade titles on its own site. Motorway sites mix the same elements: in 2021 the same publication described HMSHost’s American service areas as combining branded food and drink concepts with convenience retail.

Ownership is part of the story these companies tell. HMSHost explains that it joined Avolta in 2023 after Dufry and Autogrill combined, and SSP’s history page runs from an airline catering division founded in 1961 to a London listing in 2014. This guide sets out who founded each company, who owns it now and which brands it runs, and keeps each company’s own claims apart from what independent dated sources report.

Deli&Cia, franchised names, the United States and Britain.

Areas mixes concepts of its own with franchised names. The website speaks of a portfolio of about 150 brands and highlights its own: Deli&Cia, a grab-and-go format; VyTA, an Italian coffee-shop brand; Sibarium, which sells gourmet local products; and two multi-brand formats, The Market and StrEAT. L’Express Franquicia, citing Expansión, named La Pausa and Farine among its other own brands, and Burger King, Starbucks and Rodilla among the third-party brands it runs under franchise, licence or partnership agreements.

The United States has become its largest market. The acquisition of Travel Hospitality Services from Delaware North was completed at the end of 2025, The Moodie Davitt Report reported in June 2026, making the US 28 percent of group revenue and giving Areas 27 US airports and more than 400 points of sale there; the same report called it the second-largest travel hospitality operator in the country. The company also listed new business at Miami and Los Angeles airports and on the Florida Turnpike.

Britain is the next step. In July 2026 The Restaurant Group announced the sale of its concessions division, TRG Concessions, to Areas, Hospitality & Catering News reported. The Moodie Davitt Report said the business ran 38 locations at ten UK airports, with brands including wagamama and Giraffe and its own concepts such as The Curator at Heathrow. In October 2026 Hospitality & Catering News reported an opening under the name Areas UK: a wagamama at Cobham Services on the M25, following one at Beaconsfield on the M40.

For a design guide, Areas shows a concession caterer whose shopfronts carry many names, some its own and many belonging to other companies. Compare Avolta, which absorbed Autogrill, and SSP. For this guide we use a terracotta, a dark ink, warm sand and an olive green with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Areas’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.