‘Latest trend of indiscriminate poaching of staff between restaurants should stop’ – Michael Diacono

A widely expressed call for quantity over quality in Malta’s culinary scene is echoed by Michael Diacono, Chef Patron at Giuseppi’s Bar & Bistro at the Salini Resort, and partner in Rubino and Mezzodi.

“Restaurants seem to be the flavour of the month. I started working in our family restaurants 37 years ago and owning a catering business back then wasn’t fashionable. We got into the trade because that was what we loved doing,” he says in comments first carried in the Autumn edition of Business Now magazine, the sister publication to BusinessNow.mt.

His comments were featured in an in-depth feature exploring the staffing crisis impacting Malta’s catering industry and calls out the rampant poaching of staff taking place.

Mr Diacono warns that the road to recovery is likely to be “long and arduous”, with tourism having taken a hit and many foreign workers having left Malta at the start of the pandemic – taking up employment elsewhere or finding re-entry difficult due to low vaccination rates in their home country – and locals still largely unwilling to enter the industry.

“As a restaurant owner, I feel that a temporary reduction in VAT for the hospitality industry would be a great help to get us back on our feet,” he says. “I also feel that the latest trend of indiscriminate poaching of staff between restaurants should stop. We are all in this together, and we should work together to find a solution to our problems.”

This forms part of a wider feature on the future of Malta’s catering sector, first carried in the Autumn edition of Business Now magazine, the sister publication to BusinessNow.mt