Boasting a prime beachfront location in the bustling seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, the Old Thatched Cottage restaurant’s enviable sea view can be enjoyed all year round, thanks to extensive outdoor seating, complete with stunning fire pits. While the glowing flames warm customers’ hands, and the succulent steaks warm their bellies, it is the family heritage woven into the restaurant that truly warms the soul. The restaurant has been in Alex Demetriou’s family for 65 years and has shaped each generation who has worked there.

“My grandfather bought the restaurant in 1959,” explains Alex. It was then passed on to his mother, Maria. “I started working from the age of seven – outside clearing tables, then into the pot wash, then into the kitchens. By the time I was 15, I was able to run a shift as head chef, even though I wasn't head chef, but I was capable at that level to be able to cook à la carte food. It was a great education.”

Since then, Alex has gone on to set up Regency Purchasing Group, a buying group for the leisure and hospitality industry, which has over 10,000 members. But it was the Old Thatched Cottage that inspired him to start the business.

“When I was 23, I was building two 350-seater restaurants in Bristol,” he says. “I was negotiating some really good terms with suppliers for the new restaurants and said, ‘We'd also like my Mum to have the same pricing at the Old Thatched Cottage’. The suppliers refused, stating that they could only offer reduced pricing because of the scale on which the larger restaurants would be operating. “My view of it was that my mum works just as hard and has the right to achieve the same margin, so I designed a buying group business off the back of my love of the restaurant.”

Despite having his hands full with Regency, Alex took on the running of The Old Thatched Cottage about five years ago. “Mum wanted to slow down, so I agreed to take it on, but knowing that I would have to manage it from a distance,” he says. “The thought of walking past that restaurant and it not being ours is just impossible, so we had to find a way and we've built a management team around it.” Staff are led by manager Julia Grobicka, but Maria remains the face of the restaurant and Alex’s older sister, Andie, also spends time there.

In fact, pretty much every member of Alex’s family has worked in the restaurant at some point. “My grandparents’ siblings have worked there, all of my mum's siblings, their children have worked there,” he says. “It really is a bit of a rite of passage for the entire family. At some point or another, they have to do a season.”

Alex’s daughter, Sophia, recently had her first taste. “She spent the summer waiting on tables, and that made her the fourth generation to work in that same restaurant,” he says.

He feels that working in a restaurant provides an excellent grounding. “There's something really special about founder- and family-run businesses because they give the younger generation the opportunity to actually spend time with a business owner. What I love most about it is the way that you're able to engage and teach young people – not just about a future in hospitality – but about a future in any business because you learn how to treat people, how to work with people, and how to interact with people.”

Of course, it isn’t just Alex’s own family who have benefited from the restaurant. “It feels more like an institution!” he grins. “We would have had christenings there and the person that had the christening would have had their 18th birthday there and they would have their 40th birthday there and they might have got married there, and so it holds history.”

And that’s only the outlet’s recent history. Originally built in 1791 as a holiday cottage for soldier and composer Reverend William Leeves, the Grade II listed building is the sole remaining thatched house in Weston-super-Mare. Last year, it unveiled its very own blue plaque from English Heritage, which Andie had applied for.

Eager to pay further homage to its historical roots, the family has just had plans approved for a large thatched roof to cover the flat roof extension, which adjoins the original building.

Meanwhile, the restaurant’s cuisine tells the story of the family’s heritage. “My grandfather was a shepherd and left Cyprus with five pounds in his pocket,” says Alex. After arriving in London, he worked washing dishes and then in a café, before saving up enough to buy the lease at the Old Thatched Cottage. The French chef who worked there agreed to stay on and taught his grandfather how to cook. “Some of the dishes that were on the menu in 1959, like Filet au Poivre and Tournedos Rossini, remain on the menu today.”

There's also a very heavy Greek Cypriot influence. “We've had Kleftiko on the menu for the last 40 years and it is still one of the bestselling dishes,” says Alex.

About 35% of the restaurant’s stock is sourced from Booker.

He explains that his role heading up the buying group has seen him cultivate a solid relationship with senior members of the Booker team. “We’re very close with Booker – from a Regency perspective, we're their biggest customers, so we know everybody in Booker from the guys on the ground all the way through to [sales director] Stuart [Fenn] and [CEO] Andrew [Yaxley] and we all meet up regularly.”

But despite running a successful buying group, Alex remains equally devoted to the family restaurant. “It is the driving force behind the work that I've done my entire career with the buying group. It's special enough that it's created the blueprint for an entire business.

“I hope that I remain healthy enough to run it for the next 35 years so we can get to 100 years.”

With committed owners, loyal customers, and a new roof imminent, it seems the sky’s the limit for The Old Thatched Cottage.