‘Flat chat’: Award-winning NSW butcher swamped as Aussies embrace eating at home

With cost of living pressures continuing to impact household budgets, eating out has fast become a luxury.

Australians are increasingly choosing to eat at home, which is proving lucrative for local butchers like Millin’s Free Range Butcher in Balgowlah Heights in Sydney’s northern beaches. Owner Stef Millin tells nine.com.au trade has been “flat chat” as households pivot away from pricey restaurant bills.

“I think finding value in restaurants is hard for people,” Millin said. “To be honest, we haven’t been busier. It’s just flat chat for us. We’re very lucky. It’s not easy out there, but we just keep the service up, keep good quality, and customers seem to love it.

“The last few years we’ve been growing about 10 to 15 per cent every year. We just have really good service, we have good-quality stuff, try to keep up with the times and flavours, and customers seem to love it.”

He attributes the steady surge in demand to shoppers choosing home dining over hospitality tabs: “You can still do it [eat out], but you just can’t do it every week. It’s nice to stay at home, have a nice bottle of wine, and bring some friends over.”

The bustling trade comes as the shop cemented its reputation on the state stage, proving it is a cut above the rest at the 2026 NSW Sausage King Awards.

Millin’s brought home a staggering 15 medals including seven gold, four silver, and four bronze, officially making it the most awarded butcher shop in New South Wales and Australia’s most awarded shop at the event.

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Leading the charge was the butcher's signature Satay Chicken Malay, which scored a flawless 100/100 from industry judges to claim the title of NSW State Champion. The golden banger will now represent the state at the National Championships in a bid to claim the national crown.

Millin admitted the perfect score came as “a bit of a shock”.

“We entered six different ones, and you’ve got a mark or a medal for every single sausage,” he said. “We’re really, really happy. It sort of showed consistency.”

He explained the winning creation is inspired by classic family dinners.

“We based it on a satay chicken stir-fry. We used a paste meal, and then we add some peanut butter to it, some coriander, with fresh shallots in there and a little bit of chilli. It’s a good family sausage. The whole family likes it. It’s not too spicy or anything.”

“We started selling the satay about three years ago. We won number one in the state a few years ago, and this is the second time they won number one in the state,” he said.

Despite the accolades, the recipe remains completely untouched: “We wouldn’t change that one.”

Sausages make up roughly 30 per cent of Millin’s overall trade.

“There are a lot of average sausages out there, so we really make sure we do a good job with it,” Millin said.

When it comes to everyday staples, the shop’s best sausage seller remains its thin plain beef sausage which attributes to it being “easy to cook”. They also supply a thick plain beef and plain pork variety, which Millin notes all hit the spot “for people who just want a plain sausage sandwich”.

For those looking beyond the classics, the shop produces up to 40 inventive varieties in its gourmet line-up, where the satay remains the overall top seller. These include Wagyu beef, truffle and Gruyère cheese, the latter of which was also given a perfect score.

Then there’s its famed Beef Philly cheesesteak, lamb and raisin, pork chilli fennel, and Thai green curry chicken.

Prices across the range sit between $20 and $40 per kilogram. Even the premium Wagyu, truffle, and Gruyère snag frequently sells out, with the shop regularly taking customer pre-orders to keep up with demand.

While their experiments usually hit the mark, Millin confessed they have had the occasional miss over the year, most notably a Melbourne Cup-themed experiment made with pork, strawberry, and champagne.

“Some people thought it was okay, and some just said, ‘No, that doesn’t work.’ So the sweet taste worked for some people.”