Impact of Workforce Shortages on Malta’s Fine Dining Restaurants' Quality Management

Despite significant investment in high-quality food and ambience, and notable recognition through accolades, the Maltese catering industry still faces a substantial workforce shortage. The industry’s overreliance on Third Country Nationals has raised significant quality concerns among middle and upper management, particularly regarding the maintenance of the high standards expected in fine-dining restaurants. To perform this study, three participant observations and six semi-structured one-to-one interviews were held with industry professionals. Reflective thematic analysis yielded seven themes across three coding cycles. The generated themes revealed growing dependence on constant managerial supervision by middle and upper management, thereby limiting their capacity to focus on strategic planning and development. Such challenges arose from overreliance on foreign workers, many of whom lack the knowledge, experience, and technical skills needed to meet the high-quality standards of the fine dining sector and to address increasing customer expectations. Language barriers, cultural differences, and high turnover rates are additional challenges to recruitment and training in fine dining establishments. Inadequate governmental support to address the current workforce shortage, and a misalignment between educational institutions and the industry's current needs. Despite these challenges, professionals remain committed to upholding quality standards. They often undergo on-the-job training, continuous supervision, and sacrifice strategic tasks while stretching resources to the limit, which is unsustainable in the long run. This study has contributed to the literature, as prior international studies have explored quality attributes and workforce impacts in fine-dining restaurants. In contrast, this study uniquely examines, using a novel methodology, how Malta’s current skilled labour shortage influences the quality management strategies used to maintain food, service, and ambience standards.