Double the reason to celebrate success

COME ON DOWN: Max and Fiona from Maxim Barbers won the Kiwibank Excellence in Emerging Business category of the awards.

Popular central city eatery Breakers Cafe and Bar has taken out the supreme award at this year's NZME. Hastings City Business Awards.

Many Breakers staff were on hand to celebrate double success for the business at the annual red carpet ceremony held at Focal Point Cinema last night.

The eatery picked up the Ngatarawa Wines Excellence in Food & Beverage award along with the evening's main gong: the NZME. Supreme Award for Business Excellence 2015.

Hastings Business Association manager Susan McDade said the awards, now in their 18th year, were an important way of celebrating the success of individual businesses and the city as a whole.

"Hastings punches above its weight in many areas and we need to promote ourselves," she told the audience.

"We need to tell our story loudly and proudly."

The awards judges said the calibre of finalists this year had been "extremely high" but Breakers "definitely had the edge" when it came to picking the supreme award winner.

"The winners tonight have many things in common - they identify their challenges and they put their focus and energy into solutions," Ms McDade said.

NZME's eastern region general manager, James Cooper, said the award sponsors and judges had been "blown away by the hard work, determination, vision and entrepreneurial spirit" of the businesses that had entered the awards.

Russell Broughton, general manager of Hawke's Bay Today, an NZME company, said the awards were a tremendous platform to recognise and celebrate Hastings businesses which were achieving great success in what were still difficult economic times.

A new award this year was the BWR Service to Business Personality recognising a Hastings CBD Business individual who has contributed to and supported the local business community.

The award was "very deservedly" won by Coralie White of Suzelle Lingerie & Swimwear.

Guest speaker at the awards was extreme adventurer and motivational speaker Kevin Biggar whose feats of endurance have included rowing the Atlantic and trekking to the South Pole.

Mr Biggar - whose Atlantic experience included a night where he was "flung out into the dark churning water" - said those at the awards faced a different type of challenge, but one that was no less demanding.

"You guys are on an adventure of your own as you build the brand of Hastings, as you ride the ebbs and flows of the business cycles, and as you take your business to the next level - you're on a business adventure."