Hospitality industry wants Adelaide City Council to waive outdoor dining fees for March festival seasonHospitality industry wants Adelaide City Council to waive outdoor dining fees for March festival season
RESTAURANTS, cafes and pubs want Adelaide City Council to waive its outdoor dining fees in March, to make city streets more vibrant during the festival season.
Restaurant and Catering Australia deputy chief executive Sally Neville has proposed the fee-free period to provide financial relief for businesses offering outdoor dining during the festival period and encourage more traders to take up the option.
City hospitality businesses have reported flat trading periods during the festival season in recent years, in part due to the increase in pop-up venues such as the Royal Croquet Club in Victoria Square.
Ms Neville said the council needed to recognise the important role bricks-and-mortar businesses played in making Adelaide an interesting city.
“It isn’t just pop-ups or temporary venues that make the city vibrant,” she said.
“Existing businesses can achieve the same or better results if they didn’t have the current regulatory restrictions and burdens that pop-ups or mobile food vans don’t have to contend with.
“Outdoor dining adds greatly to the city and we want (the) council to really understand that existing businesses are ratepayers and having vibrant businesses in CBD buildings is important too.”
The council charges between $34 and $39 per square metre for outdoor dining permits plus a once-off $350 processing fee.
Lord Mayor Martin Haese was open to the idea but said more information was needed before the council could make a decision.
“There is going to be a number of things that we will need to consider, not least of which is the potential implications on our budget,” he said.
“But I do welcome any idea or initiative to make our city a more vibrant place to be.”
Argo on the Square owner Dan Milky said it was an “interesting” notion but needed more punch to truly make an impact.
“I fully support the idea of scrapping it and encouraging people to stay open, but I’d like to see a bit more of a dynamic approach,” he said.
“They could go, ‘look, your outdoor dining fees you can use as a grant to buy new furniture, or fix a table’, to see the money go toward something to improve the street.
“With the money you could have a live artist in your cafe and bridge the gap between Fringe.
“What we really need to do is to bring out the stuff we have all year round from the Festival Centre and places like that.”
Source: The Australian, Anthony Templeton, 11th August 2015
Originally published as: Hospitality industry wants Adelaide City Council to waive outdoor dining fees for March festival season
