Update from the EO

Hello to all of our wonderful businesses,

We have been working on some business stakeholder events this month, so hope to see as many of you as possible in the coming month.

Anti-social behaviour

Due to an increase in reports of anti-social behaviour in recent months, we have approached Tasmania Police and organised a really great information session for all city business workers to attend with their staff, if they want to. There will be two sessions held at The Lounge on Brisbane Street, one morning and one evening. Details are in the body of this newsletter.

The sessions will be full of practical help and tips to assist with dealing with theft and anti-social incidents.

Grow your business

For those looking to grow, start, or increase the profile of your business – make sure you reserve a spot at the free Building a Thriving Business session. You will hear from the amazing and vibrant Dr Louise Grimmer on the latest in shopping trends and consumer behaviour, and have all the free government support agencies, plus other organisations that can help you lift your profile, in one room with an opportunity to network and find out what resources are available, too. Thank you to City of Launceston and Business Tasmania, who are co-hosting this event at Town Hall.

Soupalicious

Our winter foodie competition to find Launceston's best soup is back! Thanks to all those who have entered. Soupalicious will run throughout the month of August and the public will be able to go and try any of the nominated soups and vote for their favourite. We will be putting up posters and promoting the competition towards the end of this month. Defending champions Saigon Kitchen have entered, but have some strong competition, so watch this space! Please promote and share this competition to help six of your fellow city hospitality venues promote their best soup and see who takes out the prize of a business photography package. The public love this one, so get your staff to enter with a chance to win too and make the last month of winter the warmest and tastiest! A perfect way to close out winter.

Find Hawka & friends

Please promote this to your customers! Launnie’s local AFL players and Hawka can be found in sports stores around the city and there are some tickets for the footy and a free guersney of your choice of team to be won for one lucky entrant. These are all ways of promoting vibrancy and activity and reasons to visit the city, so please talk to your customers and point them to our website for more information.

The Lounge

Our empty shop activation on Brisbane Street has ended up being far bigger, wider reaching, and more successful than we could ever have dreamed.

With 150-200 people a day coming through and using the space, we have had so much feedback from all parts of our Launceston community reporting how much they love the space and that they are staying in town longer and coming to town to visit, all increasing footfall, vibrancy and spend – many visitors bring in takeaway drinks and lunch and shopping bags!

Thanks to the generous donations from four more groups, we have been able to extend The Lounge until the end of August. A shout out to Northern Employment and Business Hub, Mental Health Council of Tasmania, Bridget Archer, and Lonnie's Nightclub for your generosity. Our last day will be 31 August, but we will be looking at trying to secure community grants over the coming months to run The Lounge in winter 2025.

I am headed to the Mainstreet Australia Conference this week as they had heard about this project and asked me to speak to conference attendees from all over Australia about The Lounge as an example of an empty shop activation project. This is a huge win for Launceston to gain national recognition for our creativity in this space.

Further business

Other than that we have been putting together an amazing program for NORTH. Make sure 9-23 October are in your calendars.

We are looking for volunteer committee members to start taking a leadership role of this extremely successful event, so email Madi if this is something that you may be interested in - [email protected].

Stay warm and make sure you check out the website to see when we have groups of people visiting the city for sports, business, and other events and the city may be busy. We keep the list as up to date as we can and it can help you plan whether you may need extra staff if it will be busy.

Amanda McEvoy

Executive Officer

Launceston Central