The Cobar Primary Health Care Centre took out the top gong at the 2016 Great Cobar Business Awards on Friday night.
Presented by the Cobar Business Association, the annual awards aim to recognise excellence in local business and the excellent people who work in those businesses.
Cobar Business Association president Sharon Harland said the focus of the awards was on the improvements a business has made in the past 12 months.
“This year nominations for individuals in business far out-weighed the number of nominations we had for actual businesses.
“I think this reflects the importance of having good people running businesses and having great staff working in them,” Mrs Harland said.
In addition to winning the 2016 Overall Best Business, the Cobar Primary Health Care Centre also won the award for Business Innovation.
The Cobar Quilt Shop collected the 2016 award for Marketing; Four Corners Farm Stay won the Tourism Award and Abby’s Lunch Run took out the Hospitality category.
The Young Person in Business category was highly competitive with the judges awarding six prizes, two in the owner/operator categories (Simon Prince, overall winner and Ellie Russell highly commended) and four to employees, Miranda Riley (Winner), Stephanie Mitchell (Junior Winner) and Certificates of Appreciation for dedication to their trade went to Dr Charlie Thompson and Dr Caroline Bowman.
The People’s Choice for favourite business was J&K Butchery with handyman Stuart Wharton named Cobar’s Favourite Tradie.
Cobar Mining Contractors won the award for Excellence in Small Business with Cobar Quilt Shop highly commended in this category.
The 2016 Excellence in Business (10+ employees) award went to The John Mitchell Pharmacy with KML Industries the runner-up.
Mandy Dell from Inland Petroleum Cobar (BP) was named as the 2016 Invaluable Employee.
Outstanding Customer Service awards went to James Degn (J&K Butchery), Georgia Baker (Great Western Hotel) and Kim Bellotti and Kailah Worth (both from Gumnut Gifts and Homewares).
