Mixing business with family is fraught with risk, proof (if ever it was needed) that it is perfectly possible to know someone too well. The Schiavone family, however, based in the Maltese fishing village of Marsaxlokk, believe that they have found a winning formula that mixes family and work.
“In a family-run restaurant there will always be issues, but everyone here plays their part,” explained Stephen Schiavone, who along with his twin brother, James, and their mother and father, has run Tartarun since 2009. “We complement each other. I am front-of-house together with my mother, James is the chef and my father sources and purchases the fish. This also means that we work different hours; we’re not always working at the same time together.”
Stephen’s parents have run a restaurant most of their lives, but Tartarun was the first time everyone in the family entered an enterprise as equals. “It all happened quite naturally,” said Stephen. “My father had a stake in the running of a restaurant — a touristy restaurant — which only opened for lunch.”
At the time, the brothers were both studying, James to be a chef at the local catering school and Stephen to be an engineer.
Click here to read the full story that ran in the August issue of SeaFood Business >
