Café Jubilee is to open a flagship bistro within the next 12 months, bringing its chain to four in the company’s tenth year.
Chief executive officer Alex Scicluna declines to reveal the location of the new venture, but points out it will be in an important position where it will rub shoulders with international franchises, and that it features enough space for the implementation of a few new ideas. That’s all the information he offers about Café Jubilee No. 4.
“It is time Café Jubilee is positioned among the big brands,” Mr Scicluna says. “We have worked hard for the business to be as successful as it is today. This truly Maltese brand can hold its own.”
Mr Scicluna, bursting as he is with passion and enthusiasm, describes (in a strange range of Maltese and English tinged with an unidentifiable foreign accent like most Gozitans, and a wider range of gesticulation) that he does not cut corners, opt for half measures, or curtail ambitions.
Hence a wider plan. By planting a flagship on a high street, Café Jubilee aims to demonstrate just how it can win patrons despite the tough competition. That showcase will serve for potential international investors to observe the operation in that setting, and possibly visualise a Café Jubilee franchise in a similar scenario in a European or even Middle Eastern city.
Barely able to sit still as he outlines his ambition РCaf̩ Jubilee would be the first chain of caf̩/bistro to be totally conceived locally and exported РAlex Scicluna turns to the beginning.
When he and his younger brothers Mario and Anthony opened the first Café Jubilee in Victoria in 1998, the concept was clear in their heads.
Photo: Matthew Mirabelli.