Fremantle Stuff > people > Luigi Saccone
Luigi Saccone has possibly the best-known name in Fremantle, in the familiar form of Gino, due to the enduring popularity of Gino's, the coffee-shop he started on the corner of South Terrace and Market Street in 1983.
Gino's webpage:
“I was a tailor, started when I was 6 years old. My father, mother, all my family tailors. I came from a little village straight to Fremantle. Fremantle’s the best place to live, the best. I started about 30 years ago with Sorrento Tailors on the corner here, for twenty two years, tailoring! Every morning I start at four o’clock. I used to go to the Marina Coffee Lounge in the morning and I always complain the coffee is no good. I say, ‘Look, you don’t want to make better coffee, change your coffee or I open a coffee shop!’ For a joke, then I say to my wife, ‘We’re going to Italy for a holiday’. After I arrived over there I go and look for coffee. I never say anything to anybody. I come back after six weeks, I put ‘Close Down Sale’ in the window, close down men’s wear store. My wife she come down and went crazy!
‘What are you doing there?’
'I want to open a coffee shop; Gino’s.'
My wife, she didn’t want me to do that but I wanted to do something different.
Twenty-ninth of November it’s eleven years!
Now I go through one hundred and fifty kilo of coffee a week.
For thirty two years I’ve been on this corner, always this corner, and the people, they like my coffee.”
Gino Saccone 1937-2001, from the Gino's webpage, as is the image.
Gino's website
Garry Gillard | New: 15 August, 2016 | Now: 1 January, 2023