Soon after taking office in 2008, Mr. Castro opened the way for more consumption by allowing Cubans to stay in hotels for the first time and to buy mobile phones and laptop computers.

Since then, the economic overhauls have legalized many businesses that formerly operated underground and have reduced the stigma attached to having money, Mr. Beltrán said.

“The question is not whether there are Cubans with money,” said Mr. Beltrán, gesturing at the Cubans and foreigners sipping beer while his workers sprayed their cars with power hoses and vacuumed the interiors. “It’s where do you spend it? How do you spend it?”

With ease, apparently. Figures published by the National Statistical Office indicate that nearly 1.5 million Cubans stayed at hotels or spent money on tourist activities in 2012, up from 1.3 million in 2011. A worker at a hotel sports club, where monthly membership costs about $50, said the ratio of Cuban clients to expatriates had risen significantly over the past three years.

In Havana, privately owned restaurants that a year or two ago catered mainly to expatriates now have more Cuban clients. Outside nightspots like the comedian Roberto Riverón’s 3-D Café — where customers can watch a stand-up routine or a movie through a mist of dry ice — the many yellow license plates, which denote cars owned by Cubans, are a clue to the heavily local crowd.

Joseph L. Scarpaci, a professor emeritus at Virginia Tech who is one of the authors of a book on consumption in Cuba, said private-sector workers were a “new shade” of middle class, the petite bourgeoisie in Marxist terms, that emigrated after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution or evaporated when he nationalized businesses in the 1960s.