James Barbara started his one-man catering business in 1989, producing and distributing his own delicacies from home.
Over the past 30 years, the Company has grown into a fully-fledged thriving catering organisation operating at the new state of the art factory in Bulebel sitting on 21,000 sqm of land, referred to as
James Caterers’ Food Factory. With an investment of €26 million, the new factory in Bulebel is the largest catering firm in Malta, with a team of around 220 people, with an operating capacity to
generate over 25,000 meals daily. Latest revenue figures for 2020 reached € 13 million.
The Company has achieved operational excellence through its carefully structured standards of procedures (‘SOPs’), listing procedures from facility requirements to bacteriological testing to hygiene to delivery and logistical planning. These SOPs are the backbone of day-to-day operations which have allowed the Company to achieve the operational excellence with which the Company operates daily. This allows the catering services of James Caterers to be value-based, maintaining the high standard of quality which is synonymous with the James Caterers’ brand.
Throughout the years, the Company has positioned itself in such a way as to offer full-service catering for corporate and social events of any size or complexity. Through the very early catering commissions for weddings and our involvement in the organisation of the first ever Weddings Fair in Malta, we have learnt the means to identify and focus on the real needs of our customers. This has led to James Caterers being awarded numerous major catering contracts with leading Maltese companies, institutions and corporations.
The business encompasses multiple sectors of the catering industry including catering to the culinary needs of the elderly, meals for correctional centres, third country nationals residing within open centres and detention centres and other high-risk individuals including patients recovering within our hospitals.
Together with this, the Company provides industrial food supplies to numerous hotels, production of dry pastries, gateaux, custom cakes, 3D cakes, and the catering industry including custom wedding events.
The factory is self-sufficient in having its own butchery, larders, kitchens, bakery, packaging facilities, assembly lines, pastry production, gelateria together with a dedicated space for Research and Development (‘R&D’), together with a fully certified Halal kitchen.