Melissa's Filipino Shop
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Back in October 2022, we were engaged by Melissa Aguasa, owner and operator of Melissa’s Filipino Shop in Huntingdale to assist with their application for a liquor store licence. Their goal was to create a small liquor store within their supermarket that celebrated Filipino liquor (and other liquor from South East Asia). Almost one and a half years later, Melissa opened the doors to this new liquor store.
Canford were onboard to assist with their public interest assessment, health & planning applications, as well as negotiations on trading conditions with the Chief Health Officer. While we were successful in the outcomes achieved for our client, there were many hurdles to jump with various governing bodies. The biggest of which, was satisfying the reasonable requirements test from Section 36(B)(4) of the Liquor Control Act.
With a very specialized packaged liquor offer, and convincing objective witness evidence from the enthusiastic local Filipino community, we were able to put together submissions that showed a requirement for the packaged liquor service to be offered by Melissa.
Her supermarket is a pillar of the Filipino & South-East Asian community, not just in the surrounding suburbs, but throughout Perth and Western Australia. Melissa has made her place a ‘one-stop’ service destination, providing her community with job and migration services, on-top of the enormous range of imported Filipino / South-East Asian grocery products.
Now, with this new liquor store, Melissa can expand her service offering even further. We are very happy to have been involved in this project, and we hope to see continued success for Melissa, her team and this new liquor store going forwards.