How to find a new venue before the fitout spec is locked
If you're seeing the shopfront, you're already too late
By the time a new venue has a sign out the front, the fitout is usually done, the kitchen is in, and the supplier who got there first has been paid. You're not first through the door. You're the second or third call they make, competing on price against a spec someone else already wrote.
The venue was public information before that. Often it was in a government register twice — council planning, then the liquor licence register — and anyone could have read it.
Hospo Pulse reads those registers every night. The paid daily email lands by 9am with new records from the liquor licence registers in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia, plus council planning data across NSW and three Queensland councils. Every record is linked back to its official government source. One email, no portals, no daily hunting.
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Here's what's actually in those registers, so you can see what you've been missing.
Signal one: the planning application — often the earliest signal
Before a venue can fit out a space, it generally needs council approval: a development application (DA), or a faster "complying development" approval for smaller jobs. That gets lodged with the council before the venue opens, often weeks before a liquor licence application, and often before the fitout spec is finalised.
That last part is the whole opportunity. If your product goes in during the build — kitchen equipment, refrigeration, joinery, signage, POS wiring — this is the window where being early changes the order, because the spec often isn't locked yet.
In New South Wales, councils across the state publish development applications through one statewide government system, covering both standard DAs and the fast-track complying-development approvals. In Queensland it depends on the council: Brisbane, Moreton Bay and Sunshine Coast each publish their own planning data, and freshness varies. Some Sunshine Coast records appear within days, while Moreton Bay's run about a month behind lodgement.
Signal two: the liquor licence application — the second window
If the venue will serve alcohol it also needs a liquor licence, which is a separate process from planning approval and often lands later. That makes it a useful second signal, and a second chance if you missed the planning record.
How early it arrives depends on the state:
- New South Wales and South Australia publish liquor licence applications before a decision is made — a genuinely early read.
- Queensland mostly publishes licences on the day they're granted rather than when they're applied for. On its own that's a later signal, which is why the council planning feeds are the earlier Queensland signal for the same venue.
Two registers, two chances to be first
Where both registers are covered, a venue that needs a fitout and a liquor licence can surface twice: first in planning records, then in the licence register. Miss both and you find out the way everyone else does — when the shopfront goes up.
Why doing this by hand doesn't stick
Each register is public, run by a different government body, in a different format, with its own search. Checking three states' liquor registers, plus council planning in New South Wales and Queensland, every morning isn't a realistic habit on top of a sales week. That's the gap Hospo Pulse closes: one feed, read overnight, in your inbox by 9am, every record linked back to its official government source.
Get the free weekly summary — counts of new records by state and category, with a four-week trend, every Monday. Free. Join free →