Lumen Winter 2016 - Flipbook - Page 25
story by Genevieve Sanchez
South Australia is forging a worldwide reputation for the high quality of its food and
beverage sectors. The University of Adelaide is playing a key role in delivering the range
of technical and professional skills necessary to achieve that success. Lumen caught up
with some of our graduates who are using this expertise to launch their own businesses.
Scientist brews the perfect formula
M
oving from medical science
into the world of craft brewing
might seem an unusual career
path but for Prancing Pony Brewery CEO
Corinna Steeb it was a natural progression
for someone with her entrepreneurial spirit
and fast-racing mind.
After arriving in Australia from Germany
as a trained maxillofacial surgery
nurse, Corinna added more strings to
her medical bow by studying animal
physiology and then enrolled in a PhD in
medicine at the University of Adelaide.
She says that her time at university
helped her gain discipline. As a mature
age student she treated it like a job,
arriving at 8am and going home at 6pm.
“I wanted to absorb knowledge and I
carried that discipline through to my work
– I don’t procrastinate on things or restrict
myself to the most obvious solution that is
in front of me,” she says.
Reflecting on how her education
has helped in her many entrepreneurial
ventures, including a stint as a business
strategist, Corinna says that much of her
learning didn’t happen until she applied
her skills out in the workforce.
“I view all of my formal training as a
ground for gaining patience and solving
problems,” she says.
“When you walk out of university, you’re
not an expert but you do have a number
of very basic skills – being resilient,
coping with disappointment and rejection,
problem solving, perseverance and
understanding there is a reward at the end
of it if you stick with it.
“I very happily lean on my formal training
for the soft skills that you don’t receive a
grade for – being able to work through
problems and making sure you take a
logical approach to everything that you
need to achieve.”
In the three years since establishing
Prancing Pony, Corinna and her partner,
head brewer and physicist Frank Samson,
have seen some great success, receiving
numerous awards for their beers and
moving premises to expand production.
The restaurant and unique brewery
experience at the Brewshed has
become a hugely popular venue for beer
enthusiasts and tourists visiting Hahndorf.
They’ve also recently installed new
brewing equipment, increasing production
capacity from 250,000 to 3 million litres.
Corinna is now working on plans for
further expansion to include a bigger
kitchen to cater for more meals.
Most important to Corinna is that she
has fun with her work. “We don’t take
ourselves too seriously – everything we
do has to have an element of humour and
fun,” she says. “We’ve come a very long
way from when we arrived in Australia so I
figure let’s play and take everyone with us.”
Joe delivers a Tour de Fork
A
s the man behind one of
Adelaide’s most innovative food
events, Joe Noone has literally
brought trucks to a standstill.
He has delivered over 40 Fork on the
Road food truck festivals around the city
and suburbs, bringing street food to packed
crowds and amassing a following of tens
of thousands of passionate food lovers,
eager to sit on crates and kerbsides to
enjoy some of the city’s tastiest fare.
But Joe’s pathway to entrepreneurialism
was anything but linear and his day job
has nothing to do with food.
Studying a Bachelor of Health Sciences
at the University of Adelaide and following
a variety of career routes before landing
an industry partnerships role in the public
service, Joe says that for him it has
always been about the journey rather
than the destination.
“My role in community and affordable
housing is not that far removed from the
public health principles I learnt in the first
few years of university,” he says.
And it was at uni where Joe says he
picked up many of the skills that he uses
in his day job and when organising the
Fork events – planning, researching,
finding out how and why people do things
and building relationships.
“These are concepts that hold you in
really good stead whether you’re trying
to come up with good public policy or
you’re organising a food truck event for
thousands of people,” says Joe.
His desire to bring people and food
trucks together came after visits to the US
where he saw the popularity of street food
and the strong community vibe it created.
“My idea came about because of
the realisation that people talk a lot in
Adelaide about how things should be
and maybe sometimes we talk too much
without action,” says Joe.
The opportunity to stop talking and
take action with his first Fork on the
Road came when Adelaide City Council’s
Splash Adelaide initiative put the call out
for innovative city projects.
“I thought that if it didn’t work,
I’d try another idea – that’s what
entrepreneurialism is about,” he says.
But each event attracted huge crowds
and the feedback was overwhelmingly
positive. Three and a half years and 40
Forks later, Joe has delivered events that
have the whole city talking through social
media and the local press.
Joe says the success of Fork is about
“just trying stuff out” and he has some
simple advice for others wanting to take
the entrepreneurial pathway: “Try something,
be flexible, retry it and don’t be afraid to fail
– just go, do something, don’t stand still.”
The University of Adelaide | Alumni Magazine 23
