From one of the smallest to one of the largest, the Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce announced its Best in Business 2024 honorees.
The annual tradition, held during the Chamber’s final Member Economic Luncheon, pays tribute to Augusta’s Entrepreneur and the Corporation of the Year.
Laziza Mediterranean Grill was named Augusta’s Entrepreneur for 2024, and Georgia Power as the 2024 Corporation of the Year.
In announcing Laziza owners, Nader (photo right) & Lisa Khatib as the entrepreneur winner, Jay Forrester, Division President of SouthState Bank, said the couple embodies the spirit of entrepreneurs as visionaries and risk takers.
“Despite the challenges that many face in their industry, this entrepreneur has differentiated their business with steadfast service, customer satisfaction, community engagement and consistently fostering a supportive workplace culture with benefits like paid leave and retirement plans that build a team that is committed to the vision,” he said. “
Nader Khatib from Laziza told ABD he and his family are honored to be recognized and excited to continue serving the community. However, he added, they didn’t do it alone.
“Our team. We could not have done this without them,” he said. “We have nothing without the staff. Literally couldn’t do it by myself. They are a huge part of this, and we continue to take care of them and give them good benefits and hope that they can grow with us.”
Khatib urged anyone with an idea for entrepreneurship to focus on the goal because nothing is impossible.
Forrester said the company selected as Corporation of the Year faced enormous challenges in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
“One company rose to the challenge, executing one of the most remarkable recovery effort efforts of recent history across the whole country,” he said. “Fifteen-hundred miles of power lines down, the equivalent distance of the Atlanta to Denver. More than 11,800 utility poles were damaged. This company worked hard to restore power to over 1.5 million customers.”
That company was Georgia Power.
As he accepted the award, East Region Executive, Kerry Bridges first acknowledged the members of the East Region leadership team seated in the audience.
“These are the folks that worked in the face of unprecedented circumstances,” said Bridges. “This was the largest storm in Georgia Power’s 140-year history. Let that sink in for a minute. This storm was larger than the top three storms in Georgia Power’s history. Our largest previous hurricane was Hurricane Michael (in 2018). We replaced about 2,000 power poles.”
Speaking with ABD, Bridges said receiving the honor was “humbling.”
“We have the honor and privilege of serving 180,000 customers in this 11 county east region area, and at minute zero on September 27 at about five o’clock in the morning, 179,000 of those customers, 99% were without power,” he said. “That was our starting point for restoration, and so we mobilized a statewide team. We had pre-staged 10,000 electric restoration personnel across the state. We knew it was going to be bad somewhere, with the anticipation of moving them left or right, east or west, depending on where the worst of the devastation was, and it just happened to be right here in the East region, in our 11 counties.”
He said Georgia Power’s 6,700 employees were augmented by mutual aid from 35 utility companies from other states, bringing to 20,000 the number of people mobilized to make repairs and restore power.
“There’s only one thing you can say to a workforce that shows up, works safely, gets the job done, keeps the customer at the center of everything that they do, and that is thank you,” he said.
Previous corporation of the year honors have gone to FPL Foods and Textron Specialized Vehicles. Entrepreneurs honored have included The Ellefson family with the Ellefson Transportation Group and Randall Hatcher of MAU Solutions.
