Throughout the perils of a premises change, a pandemic and parenting, Michelle Grand-Milkovic and Michael Milkovic have steered Sydney seafood restaurant love.fish through choppy waters.
Every day, hundreds of diners flock to love.fish for a quintessentially Sydney experience.
The location, smack bang in the middle of the Barangaroo harbourside dining precinct, is second to none. The relaxed, airy indoor-outdoor space is as suited to business lunches as it is social catch-ups or date nights. The main event is what’s on the plates: fresh, local, sustainable seafood from oysters to sashimi to grilled fish, all at a range of decent price points.
As effortless as the experience may feel for diners, the husband-and-wife team behind love.fish have had plenty of sleepless nights trying to perfect their recipe for success.
“Living a hospitality life can feel a bit Groundhog Day at times,” Michelle says. “I think anytime you’re running a seven-day a week operation, it’s an endless cycle of juggling family and staff and deliveries and bookings. At the same time you also have to be an accountant and you have to do social media, you have to do marketing. So, there’s many hats that you have to wear.
“And that seven-day cycle can certainly be really, really overwhelming. There are definitely times where you’re feeling you’re doing a lot of things and none of them particularly well – especially the parenting, I find!”
Thankfully, it’s a feeling Michelle can share with both her husband and other restaurateurs who fully understand the pressures of an always-on business.
“I’m very lucky to have a partner who is incredibly supportive and I also think it helps having the support of fellow restaurant owners,” Michelle shares. “For me personally, talking and sharing that journey and the challenges of that journey with others really helps.”
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From small fry to big fish
Already seasoned hospitality professionals, Michelle and Michael first opened love.fish as a small, 50-seat restaurant in Rozelle in 2010. Their goal was to create a relaxed, affordable eatery with sustainability at the heart of their operations.
“When we founded love.fish, we had really young children. It was really important to us to start a business that focused on leaving as light a footprint as possible and creating a family business,” Michelle shares.
To make a positive impact on the world their children will inherit, the Milkovics have implemented sustainability practices across all facets of the business.
“The hospitality industry in general is quite a high-waste industry, so for us it’s really twofold,” she explains. “It’s how we source our produce, the transparency in how we present that to the customer and then what we do with our waste within the restaurant cycle.
“For example, we have six different waste streams in our kitchen. We separate out our food waste for composting. We have different bins for different types of plastics. We have different cardboards. Knowing where your waste goes once it leaves your premises is a rewarding part of the way that we run our business.”
In 2016, having gained a reputation as ‘the fish bar with a green heart’, love.fish swam to new shores at Barangaroo. With 175 seats, the larger venue demanded growth in mindset, too.
“Within that first week of opening at Barangaroo, we were doing six times the turnover we were doing at Rozelle,” Michelle recalls. “I had to learn new skills and upskill. Marketing, that was a huge one. Website, SEO, learning to manage staffing that was 50-plus – it was a whole new skill set. And that can be an incredibly challenging experience.”
Finding the right people to help carry out the vision, and fill in those skill gaps, became crucial to love.fish’s future success.
“When you come to a venue of this size, you’re really relying on others to see your goals and your passion for your business, and then to execute that on your behalf,” Michelle says. “For us, it was really important to keep the small family values that we had from our first restaurant but bring them on a much larger scale.
“We look for the same qualities that I think we have in ourselves, in our staff. And at the same time, we also look for skills that maybe we’re slightly lacking in to help increase the skill set of the whole team.”
“Surviving and growing are two such different skill sets”
While it’s been a smoother sailing throughout 2022, as businesses trickle back into city offices and living with COVID-19 has become somewhat more normal, Michelle has gained perspective from dealing with uncertainty over the past two or so years.
“The biggest challenge about COVID was it was quite a diminishing experience,” Michelle admits. “Before COVID hit we were running a tremendously successful and booming business and then all of a sudden you had to make your world very, very small to be able to survive this period. And then you had to make your world big again and get excited about the future and you have to start planning. And then the same thing happens again, and then you’re hit with another wave and you have to make it very small. So I think surviving and growing are two such different skill sets.”
One of the biggest challenges has been managing cash flow, which Michelle says she’s alleviated through using a charge card with financial breathing room.
“We’ve really made full use of our American Express® Platinum Business Card in recent times, particularly for cash flow. The American Express Platinum Business Card allows you to make purchases and also to pay suppliers. And then it gives you up to 55 days to pay for purchases. I’ve found in those uncertain times when we’re not sure what our revenue’s going to be, that was a great comfort and really helped us out,” Michelle says.
From love.fish’s card spend, Michelle has been able to make use of a rewards program with up to 2.25 points earned per dollar spent. “We use those for either purchases for our business, rewards cards that we might give as staff incentives, and of course for travel,” she shares.
One final morsel…
Every restaurateur has a personal favourite dish on the menu. Michelle doesn’t hesitate to share hers.
“I’d have to say our seafood platter. It contains all of our love.fish favourites. We’ve had some dishes on the menu for 12 years, and I think if I tried to take them off I would just get hate mail,” she laughs.
“I think that there’s nothing quite like sharing a seafood platter, celebrating Australian produce, overlooking Sydney Harbour with the Sydney sunshine.”
Want to get more out of your business charge card? The American Express Platinum Business Card has one of Australia’s highest charge card point redemption rates, with up to 2.25 Membership Rewards points per $1 spent. With no preset spending limits, extended cash flow of up to 55 days, and Platinum travel privileges, the sky’s the limit. Find out more here.
This article is brought to you by Kochie’s Business Builders in partnership with American Express.
Feature image: love.fish founders Michelle Grand-Milkovic and Michael Milkovic
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