A WA cafe registers or notifies its food business with the local government under the Food Act 2008, and the council acts as the enforcement agency. Seating outside is a separate approval, and each council runs its own. In the CBD, any outdoor dining area on public land needs a permit under the City of Perth's Outdoor Dining Local Law 2019; according to the Australian Business Licence and Information Service listing, the permit lasts 12 months, there's no application fee and you need a $20 million public liability policy. The City of Vincent, which takes in Leederville, North Perth, Mount Hawthorn and Highgate, has its own Outdoor Eating Area permit, and the Cities of South Perth, Belmont and Kalamunda each issue outdoor dining permits of their own. Whatever your council, the website should describe the seating the permit actually allows.
Customers do ask about smoking, and in WA the answer for a cafe is short. WA Health's page on smoking restrictions in outdoor eating areas defines an outdoor eating area as a public place, provided commercially for people to eat or drink at tables, that isn't enclosed, and says it must be smoke-free and vape-free. Only liquor-licensed venues that aren't trading under a restaurant licence may set aside a smoking and vaping zone, limited to half the outdoor area and at least 5 metres from a public entrance. A cafe with no liquor licence, or one trading under a restaurant licence, can't have one, so a line such as "our outside tables are smoke-free and vape-free" is simply accurate.
The cup rules come from the state's Plan for Plastics. Stage 2 banned disposable plastic coffee cups and plastic cup lids for hot or cold drinks from 1 March 2024, and it counts plastic linings and coatings as plastic. When the ban arrived, the government said that compostable paperboard cups certified to Australian composting standards were excluded, that lids must be entirely plastic-free, and that it expected hot drink cups to account for more than 154 million of the 700 million single-use items Stage 2 would save each year. The state's current guidance says that exclusion covers certain items only, and it sends exemption questions to the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation. For the website, it means the description of your takeaway cups can be checked, so it should be exact.
The public holiday calendar is about to change as well. Laws passed by the WA Parliament in October 2026 make Easter Saturday and a new Show Day public holidays from 2028, move WA Day to November, and move Labour Day and the King's Birthday to better align WA with other states and territories. From 2028 the WA Government's holiday page puts Labour Day on the second Monday in March (the third in a state election year), the King's Birthday on the second Monday in June and WA Day on the second Monday in November. Next year still runs on the current pattern, with WA Day on 7 June 2027 and the King's Birthday on 27 September 2027. A cafe that prints surcharge days on its menu will need those dates changed for 2028, which is a text edit we make when you email us.
We're an Adelaide team and build for Perth businesses by phone and email. Between October and April a 6 am opening in Perth is 8:30 am here, so we're usually at our desks by the time your morning rush eases. We haven't built a site for a WA business or for a cafe yet; our current clients are in SA, NSW, VIC and QLD, and the work below comes from two of those states. If you trade in Fremantle, our Fremantle page covers the port city and its bridge works in more detail.
