Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anthony Tartaglia. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Anthony, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I am extremely happy as a business owner. As a multi-unit restaurant owner, I consider myself to be one of the most fortunate people in the world. I don’t like to use the word “lucky” because none of it really happened by accident, but I do have to admit early on in this interview when I look back at how things have turned out, I was just a small piece to the puzzle. There were so many people who have influenced me one way or another, and so many things that went right for us along the way, and if I tried to take all the credit for our success I would be stepping in front of too many people.
First & foremost, I want to thank my parents and lay some groundwork for anyone reading the next paragraphs to come. We were raised in the 80’s and 90’s in a small, working-class community on Long Island, about 1 hour from New York City. Our dad worked for the NYPD, primarily in Brooklyn’s 71, 75 and 77 precincts, and anyone who knows anything about NYC in the 1980’s and 1990’s will know that this was arguably the worst part of the city during the worst period in its history. Our mom worked as a clerk in a library and also as an aide in a preschool, but was home often to take care of my brother and I. Our childhood home was a small 2 bedroom ranch which was later converted to a 3 bedroom by turning the garage into the primary bedroom. I joke around sometimes saying I remember when I was a baby and I slept in the dining room and would look out the window at night at the neighbor’s bug zapper, but I definitely can’t remember that far back. We didn’t have much, but we had it all. Food on the table, 2 loving parents, bikes, and the seemingly increasingly distant independent childhoods that I’m not sure my kids will ever have. We would wake up go. We’d ride our bikes for miles, play baseball all day, get into all sorts of trouble; placing pennies on the train tracks and throwing rocks at it as it passed, getting into fist fights with the neighborhood kids, and all without cell phones or social media. And once a summer, we’d all pile into the family car for our annual vacation to North Myrtle Beach. A 1988 Cutlass Sierra that almost inevitably break down either on the 16 hour trip down, or the way back up. We were raised without frills. Raised to work hard. Raised to respect people if we wanted to be respected back, raised to be strong, and raised to be honest. I like to think the majority of my success stems from my upbringing. The rest is just minutiae.

The first few years were more difficult. Longer hours, less resources, more stress, and the uncertainty of will I be able to provide for my family. but after building the brand, gaining trust in our market and fine-tuning our visions,

Being a small business owner for the last 11 years, I have been able to buy back my freedom and time

I never realized I had this inner creativity until we started building out Verde in 2013. The entire process of opening a restaurant just seemed to come so natural to me and it was something I really enjoyed doing. Looking back on it now, I feel like I just really understood something that maybe I wasn’t supposed to understand at the time. I was 29 years old, poor, no college degree and just lost. I didn’t what to do with my life. I needed a bigger purpose and an outlet for my creativity. Most of my life I wanted to be a police officer like my dad was, but when the time came, I just didn’t take the leap. I know I would have been good at anything, but 20 years later at the age of 41, I’m finally starting to realize that I could never have worked a regular job with a boss and a long commute, adhering to a dress code and working 5 days a week for an average paycheck.

I had always worked in restaurants, but that doesn’t really translate to being capable of opening your own. People think every long-time bartender or cook has the ability to run a full-time business with thousands of moving pieces and the sad statistic is tha most people just aren’t successful at it. I was 29 years old, poor, no college degree and I think I was just lost. I was confused and didn’t what to do with my life. I always wanted to be a police officer like my dad, but when the time came, I just didn’t take the leap. I know I would have been good at anything, but 20 years later at 41 years old I finally relaize that I can’t work for someone else and

beach days, field trips, being home everyday before they get home from school

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Anthony Tartaglia and I am a 41 year old father of 4 boys. I have been working in the restaurant business since I was 13 and I have owned my own restaurants since 2014. My brother and I along with our restaurant group currently own & operate 3 restaurants in Bay Shore which is on Long Island in New York.

The first restaurant opened by our restaurant group ‘Costa Verde Long Island’ was Verde Kitchen & Cocktails; a somewhat premium and refined version of what we like to call “creative Mexican” food. We are coming up on our 11th anniversary this October in our original location and we’re in the middle of a massive expansion into a building 3x bigger. We hope to make the transition into the new space in the spring of 2026. Right now we are operating out of a 2,700 square foot space with a glass enclosed greenhouse room which serves as our main dining room and is also where we host our private events. Our main focus is serving fresh, healthy food prepared with as many local ingredients as possible, at a reasonable price. We do our best to work with local farms, fisheries, tortilla companies, and other like-minded brands who are making positive impacts in their categories.

Soon after opening Verde, we opened Coastal Kitchen & Daiquiri Bar in 2018 less than one block down the road. Coastal is a faster paced restaurant with a vibrant bar scene, live music, shuffleboard table, tv’s and dart boards. It’s a mix between a great Caribbean restaurant, a dive bar / beach bar, and a live music venue. The space is about 1,000 square feet bigger than Verde and with 14 foot ceilings which makes it feel even bigger. We serve an eclectic menu and just like at Verde, we focus on fresh, local ingredients. Any place with a coastline is fair game for inspiration. We serve everything from a classic Maine Lobster Roll to house made Ramen, Bao Buns, Roasted Jerk Spiced Salmon, Coconut Crusted Fish n Chips, Jerk Chicken Tacos, Caribbean Beef Empanadas, Coconut Curry Mussels, Burgers, Jerk Chicken Wings, Tuna Poke, Kimchi Frid Rice and much more. Pretty much everything in our kitchen is made from scratch, in house by our amazing culinary team. Our bar program is one of the best around, featuring what I like to call “travel inspired cocktails” and creative tiki drinks. The inspiration for the concept as a whole comes from traveling a lot in our 20’s and 30’s. I have been to almost every country in the Caribbean, all over Mexico and Central America, parts of South America, and to quite a few countries in Europe. When we first opened Coastal, my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife and the mother of my 4 children, snuck into Havana by boarding a plane from Mexico. Years and years of what now seems like fearless and almost reckless travelling is what set the stage for Coastal. Taking the best of what we ate, drank, and more importantly felt while being out in the world and brining it back to Long Island was our mission. We wanted a place where you could have an incredible dinner, sip an $18 cocktail without regret because it was that good, listen to a local singer strum his guitar and sing “no woman, now cry,” all while the group of people next to you played a game of pool and shot darts. Coastal became a place for everyone. I think my favorite part of watching the brand come to life is the diversity in our customer base. We have people come here from almost every walk of life. Young & old, small groups & large groups, wedding parties, volleyball teams, golf outings, etc. The secret is that there is no secret. I think it’s really just how you feel when you’re here. Rock & roll and reggae on the speakers, great drinks, great food, great service, and lot’s of happy people looking to have a good time.

Like any young man who recently had a small taste of success, I wanted more. We always stayed super humble, but I think we took on a false sense of invincibility and soon after opening Coastal the opportunities began pouring in. We opened a few other concepts that unfortunately didn’t have the same success as our previous restaurants. I think we tried to do too many things at once and kind of diluted ourselves a little. Not so much our resources or our passion for the business, but more-so our inner-creativity and possibly even our credibility within the community. We were trying to do too many things at once, instead of focusing on what we were good at. It took some time for it to sink in and unfortunately we lost some money along the way, but as I got a little older and a little wiser, it became clear that less is more. Do less, but do it better than the rest. People will appreciate your focus and respect your attention to detail. The opportunities still present themselves, but for now our vision is clear: Verde, Verde 2.0, Coastal, Sweet Jane. And above all of it; family time. Baseball practice, beach days, football in the backyard, cooking dinner as a family every night, and being able to say goodnight and tuck my kids in every single night. I absolutely hate talking about Covid, but of all the lessons Covid taught me, and there were many, the most important lesson was to be present and to prioritize my family and my own health.

We opened Sweet Jane Cocktail Bar in the summer of 2023, geographically directly in-between Verde and Coastal. A small, swanky cocktail bar giving off strong yet unpretentious NYC vibes and with the food & cocktails to back it up. Sweet Jane quickly became an important part of the Long Island cocktail bar scene and at least in our minds, continued to help with the renaissance of downtown Bay Shore. Once destined to be our corporate office and additional storage space, the 900 square foot vacant brick store front now painted jet black with an impressive steel facade and with only a brass ” 64E. ” is home to one of the most popular cocktail bars around. The team consists of 8 partners/investors, 6 of which are involved in the day-to-day operations. It’s a collaboration between life-long bar guys and a fun outlet for us to try new things, a lot of which may be a little bit out of the ordinary compared to the things you’d normally find in the food & beverage culture of South Shore Long Island. Our focus at Sweet Jane is premium cocktails and interesting small plates, but without some of the stuffiness you may find in the city. Premium spirits, seasonal and relatable ingredients, knowledgeable bartenders who don’t look down their nose at you for asking questions, and once again, just good vibes.

As a restaurant owner, and I imagine any small business owner, you need to have a lot of self-discipline. Without a boss telling you what to do every day, it’s easy to get lost. Maybe that means falling behind on day-to-day operations, taking too many days off, or just not keeping up with the times. You have to know what to do and then you gotta make sure it gets done. A lot of restaurant owners and small business owners are very focused on what’s directly in front of them, and that usually means the day or the night ahead. I’ve always had the thought in the back of my mind that what’s happening today should already be planned out and done. There are a ton of moving pieces in a full-service restaurant and obviously you can’t predict equipment breaking down, bad weather, staff calling out, or how busy the day will be, but for the most part, everything leading up to today should have been done in the days and weeks leading up.

The buck stops with you. No one else is responsible for paying your employees. No one else owes the government the sales tax you collected from your customers. No one is going to tell you to clean your restaurant or fix the things that are broken. No one is going to maintain your equipment for you, pay your bills, build you a website, order the right amount of product so that you’re not throwing things away but at the same time your money isn’t sitting on a shelf getting dusty. I taught myself a very hard but extremely valuable lesson early on in my career and I’m still thankful we keep to this philosophy; the money in our bank account is not ours. First, payroll has to clear, rent’s gotta be paid, product needs to be ordered and paid for, sales tax set aside (I round up to 10% of our monthly sales to be safe), and accounts payable are all paid. This means the plumber, electrician, accountants, bookkeeper, attorneys, and whoever else you’re lucky enough that you can afford to pay to help you run a good business. After everyone has been paid and if there’s any money leftover, then you get paid.

Reactive / Proactive
Problem solving
Delegation
Discipline

What I am most proud of is our team and our longevity in this very difficult business. There was a brief moment in 2020 when I thought it might all be over, but our team ushed through.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest lessons I had to learn was how to delegate and trust the team. When we opened our first restaurant, I thought I had to do everything myself. I felt responsible for everything, but I also thought I could do it better than anyone else and I thought it would save us money. By doing everything myself and “saving money” I wasn’t able to focus on the bigger picture. I wasn’t looking ahead, I wasn’t focused on growth, I didn’t understand there was more to it than just getting through the day. I was stuck in a place doing what I could pay people to do, and to be completely honest, the people I’ve since employed and empowered can probably do most tasks better than I ever could. I used to think I was smarter and better at my job than anyone else, and that small-minded mentality kept me from getting better. It forced me to work harder instead of smarter. And it definitely slowed down our growth and ultimately delayed any future projects. Don’t get me wrong, in the beginning you have to do a lot yourself. Most young entrepreneurs starting out on their own don’t have a budget to outsource the menial and sometimes lowbrow tasks that come with owning a restaurant. We had no other resources except for ourselves and there’s nothing wrong with working in your business every day. It’s just not what I wanted. I wanted to work on the businesses while we employed others to work in them. I have a deep admiration and at times even a slight jealousy for tradesmen and small business owners. People like personal chefs, blacksmiths, fishermen, plumbers, single unit mom & pop restaurant owners. A lot of them go to work each day and do their job then go home. They can leave their work at work and not worry about tremendous overhead, huge management salaries, employee benefits, etc. But at the same time, a lot of tradespeople primarily rely on themselves for their income and if they don’t go into work or take a new job, they probably won’t get paid. I wanted to make sure my family was taken care of and that we had a flexible, somewhat stress-free lifestyle. If i was the guy everyone ran to for every problem and every task, that would never be possible. We had to build a foundation that started with good people. From there we needed enough revenue to ensure we could pay mid level and upper level management salaries and that to me meant multiple revenue streams. And if we wanted multiple revenue streams, I knew we had to trust people and empower them to take on more.
Everyone thinks their way is the best, but I really began to enjoy having a panel for everyday decisions. The big picture stuff usually takes a certain instinct and a decent amount of experience, but I like to put a lot of the not so obvious day to day stuff in front of the team. It’s called banter, and I need to have it. I have my opinions and my foresights, but for the most part I think it’s one of the healthiest ways to make the right decisions as a team. Chatter, poke holes in your own theories and in theirs, and throw some shit against the wall to see what sticks. At the end of the day, I want to be a resource for my team, not a dictator or someone who’s relied on for every single thing. Afterall, who would want to be the smartest person in the room? I guess only the guy who thinks he is…

Contact Info:

• Website: https://costaverdelongisland.com
• Instagram: coastal bayshore . verde para todo bien . sweet jane cocktail bar
• Other: gjhgkhjk

Image Credits

Tyler DiFebo
Justin Bernard
Conor Harrigan
Busch Associates