Start-up spirit infuses eateries with multiple owners.
When Joseph Valore opened his first restaurant, Bodega, with brother-in-law Elvis Abrahanowicz, he never imagined they were on the path to creating an empire. But a preparedness to form partnerships has rapidly propelled Valore from his family's wine cellar to owning shares in six of Australia's top restaurants.
"We always have different ideas of what we want to do, and partnering up with people makes it so much easier," he says. "I think we've got the formula down quite well. We roll it out to each new venue. We do everything in-house, we don't outsource, so we have our finger on the pulse the whole time." 
Bodega, in Sydney's Surry Hills, is listed in The Australian Financial Review Top Restaurants, presented by Qantas.
Awards co-director Jill Dupleix says the "sharing generation" has its own way of expanding, working "collaboratively and in small groups of mates, almost like an unstoppable bacterial growth". Abrahanowicz is the poster boy for this form of "mateship" expansion, she says. "They treat everything as if it's a start-up, a pop-up - and yet pay the same attention to detail, training and sourcing, so it is built to last."
Another restaurant in the empire is LP's Quality Meats, whose co-owner and chef Luke Powell spent years trying to break into the sector before he teamed up with Valore and Abrahanowicz. "I would definitely look to doing more restaurants with them," he says.
Over the past 31 years, Josiah Li has begun his empire with four popular restaurants in Canberra, two of which - Lilotang and Lanterne Rooms - have been listed in the awards. "The trick is I never repeat cuisine or the same dish across my restaurants, but I always use the same business formula," he says.
Li claims not to have the secret to success, but since he relocated The Chairman & Yip from the suburb of Civic to Barton six weeks ago, the restaurant has been full every night.
Adelaide's Simon Kardachi opened the fine-dining Melting Pot in 1999, but learnt you can be an award-winning restaurant but not a "fantastic business". His response was Melt, a gourmet pizza and tapas bar, which since 2005 has been his springboard into other venues.
"When you conceptualise any business, you want to be able to expand it," Kardachi says. "Melt is a brand and you can reproduce it confidently and easily enough to garner consistency. You really need to think of the business back to front. Too often people go in with just food on their mind and can't make it profitable."
Kardachi now has eight restaurants, including Osteria Oggi, The Pot Food and Wine, and press* Food and Wine, all of which have been named on the Financial Review top restaurants list.
He could expand his empire, he says, not only in Adelaide but even in Singapore or Queenstown.
Awards co-director Terry Durack says the new breed of "restaurantrepreneurs" are creating individual, not cookie-cutter, establishments.
"How do you connect the dots between Andrew McConnell's Japanese pop-up Supernormal and fine-dining Cutler & Co, and European wine bar Luxembourg?" he says.
"The days of a chef specialising in one type of restaurant and one type of cuisine are disappearing. Everyone wants a finger in every pie."
The Top 100 list will be announced at a gala awards ceremony in Sydney on   May 2. For more information and to view the full list of 500 restaurants, visit australiastoprestaurants.com