BE IN THE RUNNING

Cafe Registration

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Calling All Cafes: Get Involved

The Best Café Award 2024 is open to all cafes across South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales.

This isn’t just any Awards competition; it’s an exploration of our vibrant coffee culture, celebrating cafes that are the caffeinated heartbeat of our communities.

And you could win just under $15,000 in prizes.  But you have to be in it to win it!

cafe awards – What, Why, When, How
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Register to Participate!

To enter and be in the running, your café must first be registered on this site.  We’re searching for the public’s favourite cafés in postcodes across the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Wide Bay, Scenic West, Northern NSW, and Greater Brisbane.

Hurry, the first cafés to sign up will receive an exclusive promotional pack, including posters and table cards, to help encourage your customers to vote for you.  Once you’re registered, your café will appear on our leaderboard, showcasing the votes you’ve received so far.

Haven’t registered yet? Simply search for your café, click the Register Now button, and we’ll send you a registration link. Can’t find your cafe in our search, simply complete this form.  Cafe Registrations are now open!

REGISTRATION OPEN
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Mobilize Your Cafe Community

As a cafe operator, you have the power to rally your regulars and boost your votes. Encourage your loyal customers to vote daily and help spread the word on social media. We’ll provide everything you need to make it easy through our Connect App—including custom “I VOTED” signs, posters, flyers, and digital assets for Facebook and Instagram to keep your café top of mind.

With daily voting, you can inspire your customers to show their love for your café again and again. Plus, you can keep track of your café’s ranking on the leaderboard right here on our site. Let’s work together to create excitement amongst your voters!

GENERAL PICS
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District Finalists Revealed

We’ll announce the winning cafés for each district across our six regions —for example, the Wide Bay region is divided into three districts: Gympie, Fraser Coast, and Bundaberg. The café with the most votes in each district will move forward as a finalist for the overall regional winner. These district winners represent the heart and soul of their communities, and they’ll compete for the top spot in their region.

District winners will be announced on November 26.

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Celebrate the Winners!

The district winners will join us for the grand finale, where the Best Café 2024 for each region will be crowned. This event recognises the small businesses that are the beating heart of our local communities, with each of the six regional winners receiving over $10,000 in prizes! The winners will be announced on December 2 at The Coffee Commune in Brisbane. Join us for a celebration highlighting the incredible cafes that unite our community!

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The Rules

Eligibility

This competition is to reward and recognise the amazing work done by cafes in our local community.  We have had to limit what is a cafe for the purposes of this competition:

  1. Must be from a fixed physical location, that has been in business in its current form for at least 3 months and is and open to the general public at the time of the nomination and throughout the awards program.  The location must be open at least 4 hours a day for at least 4 days per week
  2. Cafes, as defined for the purpose of the Awards Program, are establishments primarily focused on serving and preparing coffee-based beverages, along with a menu of light refreshments or food items.
  3. Businesses that serve coffee but it is supplementary to their primary business are not eligible – this includes Petrol Stations, Fast Food, Corner stores, Bars, Hairdressers, Hardware stores.  This applies even if the café is a separate part within the main business.
  4. Businesses identified as Restaurants are not eligible for the Awards Program. The overall nature of the business will be considered, factors impacting if a business is a restaurant instead of a café include:  Extent of focus on food vs coffee; preparation and service of full meals; variety of menu options; full table service; formality of dining environment; emphasis on lunch and dinner options; operating hours; table reservations; Price range; Self-identification in google and other websites. The presence of one or more of these elements does not definitively categorize a business as a restaurant.  The Coffee Commune has discretion to determine if a particular business is eligible.
  5. Ownership – the Award Program is targeted to recognise and celebrate independent, locally owned businesses. The following are ineligibile: large chains with more than 70 locations across different businesses; franchises where the franchisor is a public company; businesses where the owner/franchisee/franchisor is international.
  6. Eligibility is completely at the discretion of The Coffee Commune.

GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS

  1. Cafes must be based in a predetermined set of postcodes in the Geographic areas:
    a) Brisbane – comprises the local government areas (councils) of Brisbane, Moreton Bay, Redland Bay, Ipswich and Logan.
    b) Gold Coast – comprises local government areas of Gold Coast
    c) Sunshine Coast – comprises the local government areas of Noosa and Sunshine Coast
    d) Wide Bay – comprises the local government areas of Fraser Coast, Bundaberg and Gympie
    e) Norther NSW – comprises the local government areas of Tweed, Ballina, Byron Bay and Lismore
    f) Scenic West – comprises the local government areas of Lockyer Valley, Toowoomba, Scenic Rim and Somerset.
  2. Districts have been defined where possible by local government areas.  In some instances they have been broken up by surburb to be in a districts e.g. Gold Coast split into North, South and Central.  The allocation of suburbs into districts is fixed.