Coia’s is one of the most renowned Italian restaurants in Glasgow, having operated on Duke Street for almost 100 year by the same family. We caught up with the owner Alfredo Coia to hear about the history and how it came to be.
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00:00It has a really deep, deep history in terms of when Italians first came to Scotland.
00:07So when my grandparents came over here as immigrants, Italian immigrants, looking for work,
00:14the one thing they were looking for was something that they could do together as a family.
00:22So the family business started as a cafe back in 1928.
00:29And just before the cafe opened, my grandfather was a shop fitter and cabinet maker.
00:36And him and his brother-in-law had a company called C&C Coir, who done a lot of shop fitting throughout Glasgow.
00:42Different cafes, which was all maybe people that they knew, friends and family that maybe needed something, some work done.
00:48So they built up a wee business called C&C Coir, which done cabinet making and shop fitting.
00:53And my grandmother decided, right, OK, I fancy going into the cafe business.
00:57So with their help of sort of fixing the shop, fitting it out and setting it up as a cafe in Duke Street,
01:05which was in the corner of Nullarsey Street and Duke Street, along the other side of Duke Street,
01:10just maybe about three, four hundred yards from here, they opened it up in 1928.
01:16And my grandmother, really, she ran the cafe, while on the other side, my grandfather ran the shop fitting business along with his brother-in-law.
01:24So she built it up as an ice cream shop, confectionery.
01:29They sold a lot of cigarettes and cigars and that type of thing.
01:33And from that, basically, people's demands changed in terms of what customers would want.
01:39So customers were maybe looking for something to eat, something to drink.
01:43And they introduced teas, coffees, bovrils.
01:46So it was basically down to basic, sort of basic snacks.
01:50And from that, it grew into a snack bar, which we would serve maybe traditional Scottish sausage, egg and chips and pies and chips and steak pies and fish and chips.
02:02So that's built through the 30s and 40s.
02:05And then just after the war, 1946, my namesake, Alfredo, was killed in Palestine.
02:13He was shot. He was with the British Army and he was killed in Palestine, shot dead.
02:20And they gave up the shop fitting business because he was coming back to establish the business further.
02:26So they just put all their energy into Collier's Cafe.
02:31And at that stage, my father, Alfredo, who was killed's brother, he basically came into the business as a young man because at that stage in life,
02:43you weren't made to go to the business, but you felt obliged to help in the business.
02:47So as a young man, after his school days, he worked in the cafe.
02:53And he built it through the 50s and the 60s and the 70s into more of an Italian bistro, which served lots of different foods.
03:05We even touched on Italian foods like lasagnas, macaronis, pasta dishes.
03:12And at that stage, there was no license in the premises, so everyone was really driven by Coca-Cola's and the jukebox.
03:20And it was built up through that type of thing, that type of customer, where you would get regular customers every single day of the week.
03:27And people used it as a hub where they would meet and they would meet their future wives or their future girlfriends in life.
03:35And a lot of people still to this day relate back to that.
03:39So in a second generation, with my father being a second generation in the business, he had his era of taking it to another level.
03:46At that stage, Juke Street at that stage was in a transition stage, where when it got to the late 70s, early 80s,
03:57we were getting the forge along at the other side of Juke Street that was planned to be opened.
04:02So it took a bit of the heart out of Juke Street, so it changed things a lot.
04:06So we had to relocate because the corner site where we were at Millerson Street was under redevelopment and under compulsory purchase.
04:14So we had to move from that site and we moved down to the site that's next to us here at 473 Juke Street,
04:21which was at that time an old Kentucky Fry.
04:24And we decided, right, OK, we're going to relocate, have a really more of a bistro type cafe where we could sell lots of Italian foods, cappuccinos, espressos.
04:37So we introduced all that kind of type of food to the area and it done very, very well.
04:43And then when I came into the business as a young man, myself and my wife, we decided we'd go down the restaurant side and introduce a licence to the premises.
04:53So when we introduced the licence, we had an opportunity of building this premises now, which has become a really, really busy and well looked at restaurant in Glasgow.
05:06Now we're 96 years old. It's pretty much an icon in Glasgow and Juke Street and we're known very well for service, fine foods, fine wines.
05:21My son Carlo is now fourth generation in the business. He's come on board and he's took it to where he wants to and I agree, we're going to take it to another level.
05:33We have plans to open a new restaurant, which is probably now about Easter of next year.
05:37And that will be more casual dining where you can maybe just, you don't need to book and you can come in and have, you can dine.
05:45We've got fish and chips going on there. We've got pastas, pizzas. We've got a wee cocktail bar upstairs.
05:50So it's a wee bit different from what we've got here. This will stay completely the same as it is at the moment.
05:55As they say, don't, if it's not broke, don't fix it.
05:58So we do very well and we have a really good team here.
06:02And in terms of future, future for Collier's Café is really, really inspiring in terms of the next generation.
06:11In four years' time, we're 100 years old. So we're going to have a, probably a nice big party for our centenary and that'll be where we want to go.