HOW TO “RUN” A RESTAURANT WITHOUT ACTUALLY RUNNING A RESTAURANT

Let’s begin with a cheerful little statistic.
In Malta, roughly one in three bars is allegedly involved in money laundering. Restaurants? About three in ten.
Which means that if you’re sitting in a quaint little restaurant in Valletta, admiring your €18 plate of indifferent pasta, there’s a fair chance the spaghetti isn’t the main thing being processed.

Now, because this has clearly evolved into something resembling a fully fledged economic sector, I thought it only fair to offer a helpful guide. Particularly for those bright‑eyed dreamers who’ve always wanted to open a restaurant despite having absolutely no idea how food—or business—actually works.

Good news: you don’t need to.

Step one: get the cash
And not the nice, clean, tax‑paid kind. No. You need the sort of cash that arrives in bags, not bank transfers. Plenty of it. According to widely cited figures, the cocaine trade alone in the Maltese market feeds hundreds of millions into circulation annually. So supply, as they say, is not the issue.

And if you don’t happen to have a suitcase full of dubious banknotes lying around, don’t worry. There are people—very friendly people—who will happily provide it in exchange for becoming your silent, invisible business partner. No paperwork. No signatures. Delightfully discreet.

Step two: invent a company somewhere sunny
You’ll need an offshore company. Malta, Cyprus, Andorra—take your pick. You don’t need to speak the language. You don’t even need to visit. All you need is a compliant accountant and a functioning passport. This, essentially, is your washing machine.

Step three: buy a restaurant in a tourist hotspot
Location is everything. Not for business reasons, you understand—for theatre.
Valletta. Sliema. Ta’ Xbiex. St Julian’s.
The food? Irrelevant.

Tourists will come once, take photos, eat something vaguely edible, and leave. They won’t be back. And locals? They’ve been quietly muttering about the situation for years. So whether your pasta is sublime or suspicious is of no consequence whatsoever.

Step four: watch the “value” magically increase
Thanks to tourism, your restaurant will, on paper, become more valuable every year. A place that barely justifies €100,000 in revenue can suddenly be “worth” €500,000. Not because it’s better, but because an algorithm somewhere has decided that foot traffic equals value.

Try that logic with a hardware shop in Birkirkara or a café in Qormi and you’ll be laughed out of the room.

Step five: sell it… to yourself
After a couple of years, you sell the restaurant. To another company you own. For double the price.

And here’s the brilliant part: on paper, everything is perfectly legitimate. Banks approve it. Notaries stamp it. Tax authorities nod along politely.

And just like that, the money comes out the other side looking as pristine as a freshly polished teaspoon.

Step six: repeat endlessly
This, incidentally, is why restaurants in Valletta and the waterfront keep changing names. Every three or four years—new sign, new branding, same chairs.

They’re not failing. They’re spinning.

Now, if all of this makes you slightly furious, it’s probably because you’re one of the unfortunate people doing things properly. You invested real money. You care about the food. You track your margins. You lie awake at night wondering how the place down the street is still open despite being perpetually empty.

Well, now you know.

And it doesn’t stop at restaurants.
Luxury retail. Hotels. Wine bars. Franchises. Trendy “concept” stores selling things nobody needs at prices nobody understands.

Anywhere you find high margins, plenty of cash, and assets that can be conveniently overvalued—you’ll find the same game being played.

And here’s where it gets properly irritating.
You might think your problem is marketing. That your ads aren’t sharp enough. Your offers are not compelling enough. Your positioning is slightly off. It isn’t.

You’re playing fairly in a game where a significant number of players have no intention of winning. Because they don’t need to.

If someone can afford to lose money indefinitely, they can outspend you, outlast you, and undercut you without breaking a sweat. You can tweak your menu, optimise your pricing, and craft the most irresistible offer in human history… and it still won’t matter.

Because you cannot outcompete someone whose objective isn’t profit.

Which is why, interestingly, some of the newer markets—online education, consulting, and digital services—still feel relatively sane. For now.

There, skill still matters. Writing better converts more. Positioning smarter wins. Being good at what you do actually has a measurable impact. It’s one of the last arenas where the table is, more or less, level.

But give it time. Because the moment the washing machines arrive there too, you won’t notice when it starts—you’ll only realise when it’s already normal.

And finally, if the shop across the street is selling gelato for 50 cents while yours costs three euros—and you’re not selling a single scoop…
Relax.

They’re not better than you.
They just have a different business model.