The zone table may never mention a café
That doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. Victorian planning works on defined use terms, and yours sits inside a broader one. Find out what applies before you sign the lease, not after the fitout.
Your use nests inside a bigger one
A café is a Food and drink premises — land used to prepare and sell food and drink for immediate consumption on, or off, the premises. That term in turn sits inside Retail premises.
So a zone use table listing only “Retail premises” is the provision that governs your café, and reading the table for the word “café” will tell you nothing. Which section of the table your use falls in — permit not required, permit required, or prohibited — is the whole question, and it varies by zone and by the schedule to it.
The terms, and what actually separates them
All of these sit under Food and drink premises. Which one you are determines the assessment, and operators frequently pick the wrong label for their own business.
Restaurant
Prepare and sell food and drink for consumption on the premises. May include entertainment and dancing, and the supply of liquor other than in association with meals where tables and chairs are provided.
Take away food premises
Prepare and sell food and drink for immediate consumption off the premises — and may include up to 10 seats for consumption on site. Above that, it is no longer this use.
Convenience restaurant
Substantial provision for consumption both on and off the premises. The drive-through case.
Bar
Sell liquor for consumption on the premises. May include food, entertainment, dancing, amusement machines and gambling.
Hotel
Sell liquor for consumption both on and off the premises. The take-home bottle sales are what separate it from a Bar.
The eleventh seat changes your use
A take away food premises may include up to 10 seats for consumption on site. Put in an eleventh and it is no longer a take away food premises — it is a different use, assessed differently, and quite possibly in a different section of the zone’s use table.
This is the most common way a straightforward fitout becomes a planning problem. A shop approved as take away, with a few tables added because customers asked, is operating a use it does not have approval for.
What a change of use brings with it
- Car parking. Clause 52.06 sets a rate by use. Taking over a site approved for a different use can create a shortfall on paper even when nothing physical changes, and a reduction has to be justified.
- Liquor. Selling or consuming liquor is its own permit trigger, separate from the food use and separate again from your liquor licence.
- Hours and amenity. Operating hours, noise, odour, waste and delivery times are ordinary conditions, and the usual grounds when neighbours object.
- Signage. Business identification signage is controlled separately under Clause 52.05.
- The building side. A change of use can change the building classification, which is a building surveyor question, not a planning one.
None of this is decided by the fitout. The planning question is about the use of the land, which is why it should be answered before the lease is signed.
Check the address before you commit
The free snapshot returns the zone and every overlay. The $39 Planning Insight reads the zone’s use table and schedule for that address and tells you which section your use falls in, and what a permit would have to address.
Use definitions are those in Clause 73.03 of the Victoria Planning Provisions. General information only — what applies to a particular tenancy depends on its zone, the schedule to that zone and any overlay affecting the land.