With her growing portfolio of food and beverage concepts that include the Sushi Nori chain, Bar Good Times in Rockwell, Makati, and the soon-to-launch Miro beach club in El Nido, Palawan, the 30-year-old shares how she got here in less than a decade
Armed with an easy smile and ingratiating charm, it is not difficult to see why doors open for Milka Romero. As the daughter of beloved power couple Congressman Mikee Romero and Shiela Bermudez Romero who are both respected figures in the realms of politics, athletics (dad Mikee is a polo player for the national team and owns a handful of sports teams), and business, she has been raised to be in a leadership role. The young CEO of Miro Group (the food and beverage company she founded and operates) and her siblings were taught to be independent and industrious from a young age. She took the tools she was born with and the skill sets she developed and used them to start building her own empire.
As of this writing, the fast food sushi concept Milka started junior year in college, Sushi Nori, is 15 branches strong, while she also launched the more upscale iteration, dubbed Nori. She has several vibrant cocktail bars around Metro Manila: Out of Office in BGC, Bar Good Times at Proscenium, Rockwell, and for the younger set looking to blow off some steam, there is the rooftop bar Sanctuary in Poblacion. This summer, Milka plans to unveil her El Nido, Palawan beach club, Miro, which looks out onto the mind-blowing sunsets from Vanilla Beach.
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While it has only been less than a decade since Milka opened her first Sushi Nori stall, she admits that her dalliance with the food and beverage industry is more accurately a twenty-year affair. “During my early childhood years, I grew up in my mum’s restaurant (Azzurro Bistro in Legazpi Village, Makati)” she explains. “I was able to understand at a young age more or less how a restaurant works. It always felt like they were preparing for a show—people at the front smiling and fixing tables, chefs looking busy in the kitchen, while I was literally behind these red velvet curtains that concealed their small office. I was in my own world, and I would peek out from behind as the dining room got busier.”
That childhood memory left a huge impact on Milka, so much so that it moulded her into the kind of entrepreneur she is today. “Looking back, I was really entertained with the whole experience. Maybe this is why whenever I am working on a concept the first thing I think of is not what I want to serve but how I would want my customers to feel.” Milka's mother is someone who inspires her, as a woman who not only raised her and her siblings, but also runs their many companies with her husband, and owns the restaurant Narra Thai which is opening its third branch in Arnaiz Avenue, Makati. “I am very fortunate to have my mother as my mentor. She had the patience to teach a very hyperactive girl and helped me focus when I had a thousand ideas running through my head at the same time. She taught me costing, how to build a team, and I can still remember the very first time I had to make a business call to a supplier. I had to practice what I was gonna say in front of her before I even dialled,” Milka laughs.
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