There is a fight brewing in some towns between cafe and restaurant owners and retailers. The fight is over car parks and the proposal that they be used for outdoor dining. It is pitting business owner against business owners.

Local councils and tourism bodies appear to preference the re-purposing of car parks for dining, impacting accessibility for nearby retail businesses.

I am aware of a situation where the plan is to remove all street car parking in front of one newsagency and several shops so that a cafe located behind can serve meals and coffee on the street.

I am aware of another situation where a florist business that depends on the three car parks in front of their business for easy customer pick up is set to lose them for a cafe outdoor dining area.

While meetings have been held, there currently appears to be no easy solution.

While, for sure, hospitality businesses have done it tough through Corona, harming the prospects of other businesses solely for the benefit of hospitality businesses does not appear to be fair with those impacted businesses set to lose revenue.

This is an issue that requires thoughtful engagement by the business owners, local councils and other bodies that have a stake in resolution.

I don’t know what the answer is, I do winder if one solution could be to reconsider how the cafe indoor space could be adjusted to make it safer and therefore reduce the reliance of such businesses on car parks for outdoor space.

Further, thinking about some regional towns, there are areas of beautification on the Main Street – large median strips, garden areas with benches and more – that could be replaced with outdoor dining options and thereby reducing the impact on car parking.

Local high street retail relies on ease of access by car. Newsagents have seen the value of this especially since March this year. Top reduce or remove this amenity could negatively impact those retail businesses.

I urge any newsagent who may be impacted to actively engage with council and other bodies involved in decision making. Ensure that your voice is heard and that the possible impacts to your business are understood.

With many of these decisions being considered for weeks and even months out, now is the time to engage on this if it looks like you could be impacted.

I wrote this article for my POS software company’s blog a few days ago. I share it here as I think it is relevant to any business owner keen to drive support form local shoppers.

If Australian jobs matter to you and your family…
There is plenty of talk from politicians, in the media and on social media about the need to create local jobs, in Australia, for Australians, about the need to provide opportunities for job growth.

Too often, the talk is the end of it, the talk is only talk.

The best way to create jobs is to buy locally. However, buying locally applies to all of us, including us in business. We need to buy locally as much as possible.

While I am not an economist, I think I am right in saying that the more of our money that we spend entirely pithing Australia, the more the Australian economy benefits and the more local jobs that will be created.

This is why in the retaIl shops I own we preference Australian made. Now, by Australian made we do not mean the products that limp over a line that says a percentage of the product has to be from Australia. No, we want the whole thing made here if at all possible as it is this that adds real value to our economy.

In our own business where we develop POS software, our biggest competitors are overseas companies that spend huge sums promoting through search engines and social media. We don’t spend dollars advertising on those platforms. Our investment is in our people, our software designers and developers, our help desk team, our admin people, Australians who will spend their pay check in the local economy with that spend helping the types off businesses we sell to.

To us, this is what shop local looks like. It is about understanding your place in the economy and knowing that your buying decisions can make a difference to other local businesses and hopping that those in control off those other local businesses support more local businesses.

The ripple effect of shopping and sourcing locally can be wonderful not only for the individuals benefiting but for the whole local economy.

The importance of this is something we leverage in our POS software by providing retailers easy ways to indicate locally sourced products, to help them in their shops and online to shine a light on locally sourced products. We have coded these tools into the software to make it easier for local retailers to monetise locally sourced products.

Shop local to us is much more than a poster or a slogan. It is about active decisions we make that help other local businesses, in the hope that their decisions, too, help other local businesses.

Now, if only politicians went beyond lip service on the shop local front, if only they actively engaged in this in terms of their personal spending and any spending then engage in on behalf of their constituents.

The real power in the shop local discussion is in the dollar. Spend the dollar in your hand locally and you make a powerful, and appreciated, contribution.

Recent infections in several states where retail businesses and shopping centres have been named are a timely reminder to all retailers to manage Covid safe businesses. Here is the approach we continue to follow in my own shops:

1. All staff wear masks with masks available at no cost from the business.
2. Hand sanitiser for staff at the counter and encouraging its use. Ideally, a sanitiser that does not dry skin.
3. Hand sanitiser for customers at entrance and at the counter.
4. Perspex screens remain in place to provide a protective barrier for shoppers and staff.
5. Regular cleaning of main touch-point surfaces in the shop from the entrance through to deep into the shop.
6. Thorough clean after close each day including disinfectant surface clean.
7. Encouraging payment by contactless card.
8. Maintaining a smooth traffic flow with a designated entrance and designated exit.
9. Only using government issued signage in-store.
10. Reminding people through social media about the commitment of the business to safe shopping.
11. Continuing with the curbside pickup offer.
12. Continuing with the free local delivery offer for people in need, who cannot easily personally shop.

These steps have helped ensure consistent access to the workforce and good traffic flow from shoppers.

Newsagents in Victoria can now apply for stage 3 cash grants from the government. The process is straightforward and the data required is not onerous.

The key data points are: ABN, Workcover employer number, revenue in FY2019/20, when you applied for JobKeeper, number of employees, number of full time, weeks on JobKeeper.

Click here to go to the Business Victoria detail page about the stage 3 grant.

Given the anti mask rallies in Melbourne last weekend and that they grew out of similar rallies in the US, as reported in the media here, I wonder if we will see in-store idiots like these people in a Florida Target store a day ago. I know plenty of retailers who have had to deal with individuals. A group this size is a whole other thing.

#idiots