Estiatorio Milos looks for a partner to fund its next phase
The family-owned Greek seafood group, founded in Montreal in 1979, has hired Moelis & Company to find capital for expansion across its 12 restaurants in seven countries.
Estiatorio Milos, the family-owned Greek seafood brand founder Costas Spiliadis opened in Montreal in 1979, is looking for a strategic partner to fund its next stage of growth. The group has hired investment bank Moelis & Company to run the search, according to Nation's Restaurant News.
Milos now runs 12 restaurants across seven countries, spanning North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Confirmed locations include New York, Las Vegas and Miami. The brand built its name on whole fish sold by weight, Santorini tomatoes flown in by the crate, and a produce table that doubles as the dining room's centrepiece.
The company has not disclosed the size of the stake on offer or named a target investor. What it has set out is a growth model: a mix of company-owned restaurants, licensing deals and management agreements, built alongside real estate and hotel partners rather than through a straight franchise rollout.
A strategic partner, not a sale: the Spiliadis family is shopping for capital, not an exit.
Hudson Yards to Los Cabos
Recent and upcoming openings trace that model. Milos has restaurants tied to Hudson Yards in New York, the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas and Atlantis The Royal in Dubai. A further push into the US is planned with mall operator Simon Property Group.
The first standalone Milos outside a hotel or retail development is set to open next spring in Los Cabos, Mexico. It would mark a shift for a brand that has largely grown inside bigger hospitality developments rather than as a freestanding destination.
Beyond the restaurants, the Spiliadis family also runs Xenodocheio Milos, a hotel in Athens, and Milos at Sea, a yacht charter operating in the Greek islands. Both extend the brand past the dining room into the kind of experience-led hospitality that investors have been chasing across the industry.
A search, not a sale
Hiring an adviser to find a strategic partner is a narrower move than putting a company up for sale outright. It typically signals a search for growth capital or operating expertise, with the founding family staying in control rather than exiting.
For Milos, a near half-century-old brand that has stayed in family hands since Montreal, the test will be whether a new partner can fund a faster international rollout without diluting the model that built it: a produce table, a whole fish, and a bill that still surprises first-time diners. For another whole-fish classic built on technique rather than trend, see our bouillabaisse recipe from Marseille.
