Proud to celebrate National Family Business Day 2019
Victor and I are third generation Italian Scots. Our grandparents were great friends and lived very close to each other in two tiny hamlets up in the Lazio mountains between Rome and Naples. Victor’s family arrived in Edinburgh around 1912 and my family arrived in 1919.
This year we’re celebrating our family living in Scotland for 100 year.
From our village in the mountains, I Ciacca, to a tiny village by the sea 10 miles from Edinburgh, my family started a new life in Cockenzie.
Like so many Italian immigrant families at the time, selling ice cream and cooking fish and chips became their livelihood. These cafes became the hubs and the meeting places for local communities. There wasn’t a village up and down Scotland that didn’t boast of an Italian Cafe. A place for people to meet, have a cup of coffee, a fish high tea and a knickerbocker glory on high days and holidays. We are very proud to continue this tradition, with the same values and sense of community.
In a world that’s changing very fast we’re determined to continue to share some traditional values. Our story has touched so many people’s lives over the last 100 years. There isn’t a day that passes that a lovely customer doesn’t shares a story of happy memories enjoying fish and chips and ice cream in Cockenzie, Easter Road or in other family cafes around Scotland from Largs to St Andrews.
Buying locally and sustainably is as important to us as it was to them.
Buying locally now involves sourcing from throughout Scotland. Sharing the success of Edinburgh’s buoyant tourism and business community with our rural producers is a big part of our brand values and we are proud to buy from as far away as Berwickshire to Shetland, Orkney and the Isle of Skye. Our fresh fish comes from the harbours at Peterhead, Scabster and from Eyemouth. Vegetables from East Lothian, soft fruits from Perthshire, lamb from the Highlands and our pork comes from Lanarkshire to the Borders.
Scotland has so much to offer it’s important and a privilege to share it with you.
We’re looking forward to sharing many more happy memories.
