Restaurants, bars and cafes for sale in Malta: how these deals work

Strip the romance off and a Maltese restaurant sale is three assets: the right to occupy the premises (the lease), the right to trade from it (the licences), and the trade itself (goodwill, kit, staff, name). Buyers pay for the combination; sellers who cannot evidence one of the three sell the other two at a discount.

The catering trade adds one hard rule to ordinary business-sale practice: check the licence position before any deposit moves. Catering establishments in Malta operate under licences from the Malta Tourism Authority, alongside food-safety registration of the premises, and what a buyer can take over versus reapply for is a question for the issuing authorities, not for the seller's optimism. A premises whose licence cannot follow the buyer is a fitted room, priced accordingly.

Every rule from the commercial lease page applies with more force here, because catering fit-outs are expensive and immobile. The di fermo years remaining are the period a buyer can rely on to earn back the price; the escalation clauses say what the rent will do to margins; the permitted-use clause must say catering, not retail; and the assignment clause decides whether the sale can happen at all without the landlord resetting the deal. If an agency brokers a new lease as part of the transaction, the market fee is 10% of the average di fermo rent plus 18% VAT, from each side.

Three numbers price a catering business, and all three need paper behind them:

This page exists because people searching for a restaurant to buy in Malta land here. If you are on the other side of that trade, quietly deciding whether to sell, that is worth knowing: the audience you need is already assembled. List the premises on Darscover for free, or start with the enquiry below and get what comparable commercial premises are asking, plus the three documents to put in order before any buyer conversation: the lease, the licence file, and a year of figures.