He led his ship through the major Mediterranean ports trading in wool and hides becoming a frequent visitor to Gibraltar where he met local Maria Dominica Bignone whom he married at the Cathedral of St. Mary the Crowned in 1817.

[2][7] In 1906 Bartolo purchased a merchant house designed by renown Italian architect, Giovanni Maria Boschetti, on the corner of Irish Town and Tuckey's Lane.

[8] Gradually ditching his other imports, Bartolo focused on purchasing large quantities of the finest Arabica and Robusta coffee beans from Africa and South America.

[2][4][5] Once arrived in Gibraltar the beans would be roasted, blended and packaged in-house at the Irish Town merchant house into a variety of brands to suite different tastes.

Although coffee smuggling later declined and eventually ceased to be profitable, the business continued to prosper purely on local trade[2] and Sacarello's brands would soon become famous in Gibraltar and southern Spain.

[5][6] Shortly after Federico took the helm, Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, closed the frontier with Gibraltar in the 1920s making it harder to do business and maintain his widowed mother, brother and two sisters.

However, the marriage would eventually give fruit to four sons and the business continued to thrive under Federico's leadership until the frontier was shut once again by Spanish caudillo, Francisco Franco, in 1969.

[6] Nevertheless, the business weathered the economic storm and the eventual full re-opening of the frontier in 1985 (it had been opened in 1982 for pedestrians only) [9] rekindled the demand for Sacarello's coffees in the Spanish hinterland as well as from tourists and the expanding retail and catering industry in Gibraltar.

By 1994 the success of the new venture was such that the brothers sought to rehire Langdon to redesign and convert the remaining part of the warehouse into a kitchen with extended seating areas for customers.