A restaurant, a pizzeria, a hotel. What these first businesses have to offer anyone starting out in Playa del Carmen today.
Quinta Avenida today holds 555 businesses with a registered address, according to INEGI's National Statistical Directory of Economic Units (DENUE), with data from May 2026. A little over half a century ago it was a dirt road in a small town. The first businesses that opened there had something more valuable than an avenue: people walking by.
This is the story of some of those pioneers and of what their experience has to offer anyone starting a business in Playa del Carmen today.
María del Socorro Gómez and the first restaurant on the Quinta
In 1968 María del Socorro Gómez arrived in Playa. She came from Valladolid, after hurricane Beulah passed through, and she brought with her an image of the Virgen del Carmen. According to the chronicler Raymundo Tineo, she opened the first restaurant on what is now Quinta Avenida.
Her arrival left behind more than a business. From that image came the Feria del Carmen, which Playa still celebrates today. One person, with a restaurant and a devotion, planted a tradition that brings the whole city together.
La Tarraya, the same year
That same year, 1968, La Tarraya opened, according to the history the restaurant itself tells. Two businesses in a single year, in a town that was only starting to receive visitors, show that someone already saw what was coming.
Walter Brini and the first pizzeria in Playa
Walter Brini arrived in 1978, when the Quinta did not go past Calle 10. Five years later, on January 6, 1983, he opened Máscaras, remembered as the first pizzeria in Playa. It ran until 1999: sixteen years in which the town turned into a destination.
Hotel Molcas and the passengers who missed the boat to Cozumel
From the seventies to 2015, Hotel Molcas lived off a very specific flow: the passengers who missed the boat to Cozumel. Every traveler who got to the pier late was a possible guest. For more than four decades, the hotel found its market in a need that repeated itself every day.
We tell its full story in the businesses that have stayed open forty years on this coast.
What their story offers anyone starting out today
The pioneers of the Quinta have something in common: they read a flow of people before anyone else and opened right there. The boat passengers, the first tourists, the neighbors who were starting to arrive. None of them waited for the street to be finished.
From their experience we propose two ideas for anyone starting a business in Playa today:
Get there before the street exists. Before looking for the most visible storefront, it is worth asking where the people who need what you offer actually pass, and which way the city is moving. That flow tends to show up before the avenue does.
Build community. The businesses that last become meeting points. The Feria del Carmen came from one person and today belongs to everyone. A business that brings people together leaves behind something that outlives its own operation.
The Quinta keeps adding businesses. Not counting ATMs, the DENUE records 14 more than in 2023. Half a century later, the avenue that started with a handful of pioneers still draws the people who want to open something of their own.
Starting a business in community, today
The story of the Quinta shows that a business goes further when it grows alongside its community. At Kiin Hub, in Playacar Fase II, we believe in that same way of building: surrounded by other people who are also building something.
If you are starting a business in Playa, or you want to take yours to the next step, come work a day with us, have a coffee, or join one of our networking meetups. The next Playa business story could start at a shared table.
At Kiin Hub we have the Mesa Kiin: putting your case in front of people who know different things. Tax and accounting, labor, value proposition, process and technology. If you are about to open something and want another set of eyes on it, bring it.
Sources: Raymundo Tineo, chronicler of Playa del Carmen; La Tarraya, according to the restaurant's own history; INEGI, DENUE (May 2026); and the research document "La Quinta Avenida".
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