Vili's pie brand fame from skill, innovation, drive of Hungarian refugee Vilmos Milisits in Adelaide's Mile End
Artisan-trained baker Vilmos Milisits and the Vili's branding he made famous in Adelaide.
Main image courtesy Baking Business
Vilmos Milisits made Vili’s bakery brand a South Australian icon from a humble start to factories turning out more than 40 million products a year and exporting to about 20 countries.
His parents and siblings had been caught in Hungary’s political unrest in 1956. Enduring starvation in rat-infested refugee camps steeled the determination of young Vilmos to achieve. The Militis family moved to Adelaide as refugees, settling in a modest home in Carrington Street in Adekaide city.
Working at a chip shop from 12, Vilmos Militis left school aged 14 as apprentice baker at a Kazzy’s Cake shop, run by fellow Hungarian and taskmaster Kazzy Ujvari, in the eastern Adelaide suburb of Burnside. After his apprenticeship but unable to get a bank loan, Militis opened his own continental cake shop using rented equipment and employing his fiancée Rosemary and his sister Olga, who later ran her own patisserie in Leigh Street, Adelaide.
Around 1965, Vili bought a cottage at 14 Manchester Street, off South Road at Mile End, where he and wife Rosemary started the business in a small kitchen. In 1978, Milisits expanded his range to include Australian-style pies and pasties, but with pastry and spices more to his own taste. The business grew with Militis buying much of the property along Manchester Street.
Typical of Militis’s innovative risk taking, he opened Vili's Café on Manchester Street for 24 hours a day and one of the few places serving Adelaide’s traditional pie floater. A big supporter of the Norwood Football Club in the South Australian league, he operated the last pie cart outside Norwood Oval. A second Vili's cafe opened on Main North Road at Blair Athol.
Militis, who always regarded himself as an artisan pastry chef, was initially ashamed to be making “peasant food” for the masses but adopting the Vili’s branding was a masterstroke genius. He set out to transform the Australian palate with a range of pie fillings including goulash, curry, nachos and hot chilli. His favourite was the green peppercorn pie.
Militis’s hard-headed commercial approach brought clashes with governments, corporate giants and banks. But the business grew to more than 200 employees in Adelaide, expanded interstate and exported pies and other baked goods.
Militis remained a firm believer in South Australia and, celebrating 50 years in business in 2018, he remarked: “I’m Aussie, more Aussie than some people born here, because I appreciate this country more.” Both Militis and wife Rosemary were awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2005 for their contribution to more than 50 charities, including Mary Potter Hospice, over decades.
The business remained a lifestyle for Militis. Until his last few years when injuries and illness slowed him, he worked five days a week at his café. His injuries from leaping out of the way of stolen car outside the café plagued him until his death in a hospital in Sydney in 2021, after undergoing a lung operation and a spate of pneumonias.
Three generations, including children Simon and Alison and grandsons Josh and Luke, continued to work and be invested in the Vili’s company.
