A tasty little business ... MasterChef's George Calombaris can seemingly do no wrong. Photo: SuppliedThe 32-year-old was named as the southern region winner of the Emerging category - for trailblazers aged 35 and under - in the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards.
Calombaris now has a stake in six restaurants including The Press Club, Hellenic Republic and Maha, along with writing three cookbooks and launching his own signature range of kitchen products.
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Entrepreneur and novelist Christopher Ride. Photo: Supplied"They chose to come to one of our restaurants so we have to exceed their expectations."
The Press Club Group, which Calombaris began in 2006 in partnership with three others, now has 300 staff.
Helping women suit up for work ... Marion Webster (left) and Renata Singer. Photo: SuppliedThe Ernst & Young awards recognise the significant contribution entrepreneurs make to Australian business and the wider community, Melbourne managing partner Annette Kimmitt said.
Judged by five highly successful businesspeople, Ms Kimmitt said the calibre of this year's nominees was high.
Christopher Ride, managing director of IT service provider Interactive - and a novelist on the side, was among last night's winners, taking out the Technology category for Victoria and Tasmania.
Ride joined Interactive, then just a start-up, in 1992 as a salesperson, and is now one of the company's two major shareholders.
The entrepreneur, whose father was a diplomat, forged an interesting path from early on in life, living in seven countries and attending 13 schools by the age of 20.
"Then both my parents got married three times," he said. "I never saw it as a benefit but I'm starting to see that now."
With a large brood of step-brothers and step-sisters, Wild jokes that it honed his people skills early - "to not get beaten up you've got to be good with people".
Outside his demanding career, Ride has also found the time to pen two fiction novels, The Schumann Frequency and The First Boxer. "I write seven days a week between 10pm and 2am," he said.
In the social entrepreneur category, the southern region honours went to Marion Webster and Renata Singer, of national organisation Fitted For Work.
Since 2005, Fitted For Work has helped more than 6500 disadvantaged women with suitable clothing for job interviews, and other support services.
Webster said the idea came out of a casual chat with Singer, who was living in New York for half the year and had been involved in a similar scheme in the city, Bottomless Closet. Webster said Singer had been despairing how she could spend the other six months in Melbourne in a meaningful way.
With more than 300,000 Australian women looking for work at the time, Webster said Fitted For Work was a "no-brainer".
As the program has grown, Fitted For Work has found new ways of securing funding, including through vintage store Dear Gladys, in Melbourne's Northcote.
A highlight for Webster was helping a woman who arrived very depressed, needing something to wear. They fitted her into a smart navy suit.
"It was late in the day and it came time for us to pack up her clothes. She said 'could I wear the clothes home'?" Webster said.
"She said I've always wanted to be one of those other women who walks down to Flinders Street station and goes home with the other workers.
"She went on to get a job and she was one of our many success stories."
Last night's other winners were:
- Industry: Justin Dowel, Natures Organics
- Services: Mark Evans, Dental Corporation
- Listed: Brian McNamee, CSL Limited
- Champion of Entrepreneurship: Lyndsey Cattermole
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