Overview

The Youth Training Cafe, now known as 'The Deck', provides a food and drink outlet located in the popular Viaduct Park Skatepark.

This project was identified out of a community survey where the community outlined their preferences for the future additions to the Viaduct Park Youth Hub. A café was identified as the most popular choice and this assisted us in targeting funding opportunities for future additions to the park.

The café provides a range of accredited hospitality training programs and the young trainees work across areas including; customer services, food handling, preparation and cooking, stock rotation, point of sale, small business skills and more.

As a social enterprise, the café reinvests 100% of surplus into supporting and training young people in the area. Trainees develop transferable employability skills, nationally accredited units of competency and structured workplace experience with the aim of enabling a successful transition to sustainable mainstream employment.

The cafe is now open every day from 7:30am - 4pm. Head down to Viaduct Park and grab a coffee soon!

Construction of the cafe

Goals

The project aims to:

  • Provide employment for local workers through the construction of the facility,
  • Provide employment for local people in operating the facility once constructed, and;
  • Continue development of the Viaduct Park Youth Hub which will help bring more events to town which, in turn, provides economic benefit to the wider community.

Funding

In February 2020, a grant valued at $369,176 was awarded to Tamworth Regional Council from the NSW Government’s Stronger Country Communities Fund for the construction of a Youth Training Café at Viaduct Youth Hub.

Additional embellishments to the café including a rooftop dining space with shade sails and alfresco area downstairs have been included as one of the projects funded by the Australian Government’s Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program. In the first phase of funding, our region was allocated $2.65 million, with a further $3.41 million received under the program’s second phase.

Cafe Design

Cafe Design

Site plan