Page 5 - Stakis A Case Study
P. 5
ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENTS
In 1947 Reo Stakis opened a
restaurant in Glasgow. He was a Greek
Cypriot and had visited Glasgow
regularly before the Second World War
as a young salesman for his family's
business of lace and linen supply.
Stakis chose Glasgow partly because of his previous
connections and partly because he identified a market
there; Glasgow was considered a dull place for eating out in
the late 1940s although the same could probably be said
about most Post-war United Kingdom cities.
The winter of 1947 had been particularly severe and there
was continuing austerity, with power cuts and rationing of
essential commodities still a feature of everyday life. It may
not have appeared to be an appropriate time to be
attempting to add to the limited restaurant provision in an
industrial city which had carried over an unattractive image
from the inter-war period. However, Stakis had ideas on the
type of service appropriate to the circumstances of the city
and the times and set about putting them into practice.
Initially his choice was self-service establishments with a
good range of dishes and including a certain amount of
