A Fush Called

Serving and Caring for their community

Fush is a unique restaurant in Christchurch specialising in classic Kiwi fish and chips with a twist.

Brother and sister, Anton and Māia Matthews, along with Anton’s wife, Jess, have built the Fush brand around normalising te reo Māori in the community to protect its use for future generations.

What is your personal business journey and the inspiration behind Fush?

In one word, the inspiration has been Manaakitanga (care).

Manaakitanga being, as a host, your ability to take care of and serve other people. What I’ve been taught is that through Manaakitanga, that’s how you earn mana, and mana is this currency that we all want more of, we want to hold on to it. But like currency, you can lose it, if you fail to serve people.

Do you feel that you are fulfilling what you set out to achieve with your business? Has anything changed along the way?

For the last five years, it’s been about building the brand. It’s only now that we can start scaling up what we believe is a really special kaupapa. How can we employ, a management team rather than just me and my sister, and our finance manager? A specialist HR person, a specialist procurement manager, a specialist executive chef? How can we employ those people and build a business that has its own autonomy? Making sure we’re focusing on that future and making those opportunities for the next generation to come through.

How did you come up with the name for your company?

We wanted something that was quick, that was easy to say and that captured what it was. The new standard for the humble fish & chip shop. We thought, well, Fush is the perfect name for a New Zealand fish and chip brand. It has a real Kiwi flavour to it, and I also really love the playfulness and the way we have been able to incorporate the phrase “fush shore bro” into our business too. It just screams “born in Aotearoa” to me. to be because you can only go up from there.

What has been your biggest challenge so far?

I think it was changing people’s perception around fish and chips. People think fish and chips is a cheap takeaway $1.50 scoop and a $2.00 fish. We couldn’t understand why a pub or restaurant could sell a $30 fish and chips meal and why we couldn’t? Especially since we were obsessed with creating the perfect plate of fish and chips.

It probably took four years for us to really change people’s minds and the way I think we did it in the end was, we’re not a fish and chip shop – well, we are, but we’re a new breed.

We didn’t want to compete on price, we wanted to separate ourselves from everyone else. It was about how we can provide value to our guests in other ways.

And that’s how the idea of sharing our culture, sharing our language, our stories.

How important are the people and relationships you build to running your business, including the one you have with BNZ?

The most important people in our company are our people, our staff. If they aren’t happy, if they’re not working at their peak performance, then it’s pretty hard to achieve anything great. So my focus has always been on them. I believe that if I do a good enough job as a leader, looking after my people, then they will turn around and they will look after all the guests that come through the doors.

And really looking after them making sure that we’re investing in them, making sure that we’re continuing to provide them with the challenges that they need to keep them excited and motivated. I want to create opportunities for my people to experience the sort of success