By Nigel McBride, CEO Business SA
Artist Emma Hack makes Adelaide and the people walking our streets much more colourful. Dan Mendelson and Rob Dean, who co-own Burger Theory, helped kick-start the city’s food truck revolution. And Tom Rodger, who runs a market and café specialising in the state’s finest produce, makes our world a little tastier.
Rodger is among the young South Australians out there creating niche markets, taking a bright idea and seeing how far it can grow, and making an effort to support and celebrate our state.
He is creating jobs at his southern suburbs café The Seller Door – 21 over the past year – and doing his bit to steadily fuel the state’s economic growth. Yet a year ago he was working in a safe corporate role, wondering whether his idea would float.
Along with Fresh Front’s Martin Wilson, who improves suburban streetscapes, he was prepared to take a risk. The pair have been justly recognised by winning the major categories at Business SA’s South Australian Young Entrepreneurs Scheme (SAYES) Awards.
There is no doubt the climate in South Australia is alarmingly pessimistic at the moment, with business owners facing escalating power prices, potential increases to bank taxes, high unemployment, the impending closure of the auto industry and political uncertainty ahead of the 2018 state election.
And let’s not forget that winter is dragging on and people are spending more time indoors rather than going out to restaurants, cafes, cinemas, sporting and community events. Other than the Crows and Port Adelaide of course. But we’re hardly in festival mode.
Taking a business leap of faith in the current climate is frightening, but these young entrepreneurs are key to the state escaping its economic quagmire.
There are bright young lights on the horizon, and our entrepreneurs are adding a bit of colour to the streets, providing a spark of optimism, and they are trying their best to lift us out of our winter funk.
Business SA’s SAYES program has been running for 19 years. Since then it has generated more than $65 million in economic growth, helped more than 500 young entrepreneurs and created more than 600 jobs.
For the program’s participants, who are aged between 18 and 35, it is a chance to work with a mentor to flatten the bumps on the road, to create a plan, calculate a risk and take it.
If South Australia wants to increase employment, show the rest of the nation we stopped being a city of churches in the 1800s, create new industries and foster emerging talent to ensure they don’t move east, we need to back people like Tom Rodger and Martin Wilson and support their initiatives. They are our future, and South Australia needs their optimism.
Image Courtesy of The Advertiser.