2024–25 Federal Budget: 10 Things Small Business Owners Need to Know

Hailing from Brisbane, via Barcelona, Adele Arkell burst onto the café scene in 2001 and has been shaping our tastes ever since. The founder and owner of St Kilda’s popular Radio Mexico was a trailblazer in Melbourne’s burgeoning breakfast circuit before turning her hand to chilaquiles and tacos. We sat down with the hospitality veteran to talk about BLATs, barbacoas, and the secret sauce to a successful restaurant. When Adele Arkell started running cafés, the menus were big and English. “Everything was all about big breakfasts and eggs Benedict.” she explains. “As a self-taught chef, I had my own ideas about what I liked to eat, so I didn't really follow the convention of what was already available.” Armed with a fierce conviction, she and a group of friends from her home city of Brisbane made the bold move to open a coffee shop directly next to a well-established competitor “It was massive, it was a really big deal. It’d been there for about 5 years and was killing it. And we opened up right next to them because we wanted to do something different.” At the time, Melbourne’s coffee culture was still burgeoning; lattes were served with skim milk and you’d be hard-pressed to find one topped with ‘art’. So when Adele’s team started pouring full-cream and soy milk coffees adorned with hearts and rosettas, it didn’t take long for the word to get out. Champions of breakfast. It was in these early years that Adele’s signature style for ‘everyday eating’ began to take form. “We wanted to make food that you could eat every day… Something simple, something that was easy to eat, really yummy, but something you wouldn't really make at home.” Perhaps the archetype of Adele’s everyday cuisine came in the form of the beloved BLT remixed with avocado. “It's really ubiquitous now, but we actually introduced the expression BLAT”, a dish that now graces café menus all over the world. This fact of making an otherwise simple breakfast a little bit fancy was what Adele and her team became known for, setting a tone for the way that café culture would develop over the next few years, and inadvertently joining the founding members of Melbourne’s world-renowned breakfast scene. Off the back of their success on Acland Street, the group went on to open more than a dozen cafés over the next fifteen years, breathing new life into old, dilapidated spaces before moving onto something else. “We'd do the café, we'd build the clientele, then we'd renovate it and then we’d sell,” explains Adele, “we worked very hard. It was very bootstrap.” Through this process, however, there came a point when she realised she was ready to focus her attention on something else. By accident or by design, while on a trip to New York, she discovered Mexican cuisine. “I wanted to keep doing casual dining, with high quality, accessible, healthy food that you could eat every day… and Mexican fit that to a tee.” The birth of ‘Mel-Mex’. Adele spent three years researching Mexican food. A fluent Spanish speaker, – having spent several years living and working in Barcelona – Adele was able to delve deep into the cuisine, rather than relying on the Tex Mex influences that dominated the English-speaking search results. “I’m not Mexican, I don’t have a Mexican grandmother who can tell me all the secrets, I had to work it out on my own. I had to meet people and search YouTube videos. I had to read cookbooks in Spanish, because I wanted to get to this thing that was really unique and different.” She opened the doors to Radio Mexico in St Kilda in 2012 with a menu that boasted myriad flavours from all over the country: barbacoa tacos from Guadalajara, classic Yucatan cochinita pibil pulled pork, and tacos al pastor, a popular dish from the capital. While Adele has always strived to do justice to the original dishes, she understands her market, and has always kept her customers front of mind. “We try to hit authenticity from a different angle. Our food is not ‘authentic’ per se, you'd never find this in Mexico, but there are so many influences that only come from there.” What she wound up with, is what she deems today as “Mel-Mex”, a distinct hybrid that takes Mexican flavours, and combines them with Melbourne’s unique dining culture. A restaurant is what your customers make it. Located a stone’s throw from St Kilda’s iconic Palais Theatre and Luna Park, and surrounded by the neighbourhood’s newly developed residential highrises, Radio Mexico’s clientele is unique. “We get a lot of people going to shows, but we also have a lot of regulars with the high-density population. So, we cater for people who just want a beer and a taco, but we also cater for people who want to sit for a few hours.” Responding to the needs of her clientele didn’t happen by chance. In each venue Adele has run, she has worked to uncover its individual character, something that can’t always be forced, but that develops in response to the people, the location, the space, and with time. When asked what she believes is the making of a successful venue, she repeats the idea of sustainability, “It takes so much effort to build these restaurants, you want the idea to be something that can really take root in people’s sensibility in the area, particularly your locals.” Find a product that is approachable, accessible, and high quality, and stick with it, she advises. “It's sticking to something that will actually make it really refined… Sometimes you’ve gotta go through the pain, but I really think the best long term sustainable choice is to just stick with it, because no one can run it like you.” When asked if she’s ever considered selling Radio Mexico, she admits that she has, but that not selling it was the best decision she’s ever made, “I'm here forever. I've decided. I'm committed for life. I'm married to Radio Mexico.” she laughs. The true meaning of hospitality. A sustainable business that continues to service the community into the future doesn't just come from good products, it requires good management. “You want to employ staff that you can keep for a long time, you can’t work them into the ground. Everyone's gotta be part of the organism.” Adele says. Over her career she has worked tirelessly to develop her own style of operating, and in each venue she’s run, has made sure that everybody is on the same page. “Twenty years ago I’d get these young male chefs coming in and calling me ‘chef’. I’d say "Let's drop it and just focus on the food instead of the hierarchy.”” Not having come up through the traditional chef training, Adele has lent more on her instincts than her technical skills, and she believes it’s what more women in hospitality should be doing. “Women have a feel for the true sense of hospitality.” she says. “Hospitality is often approached as an accounting proposition, but people forget what the word ‘hospitality’ means… it’s all about collaboration and interaction and face to face.” Something she believes women do inherently well. “I would just say to any woman in business, do it in a woman’s way. Do it in your own way.” To give good service, you need to receive it. As an active member of the service industry, Adele knows how to recognise good service, and she doesn’t stand for anything less than the best. “Service is a big deal for me. That’s why I love using local startup companies because often I'm in contact with the people who are very close to the development of the business… so I can relate better.” Her question to any service providers, be them suppliers or tech companies, is always “If I have a problem, will somebody pick up the phone?” Since transitioning to Zeller in early 2022, someone has always been at the other end of the line. “Zeller’s service is very good,” she says. “What's really important is that the Terminals work, they don't fail, they're fast, they connect. And also I love being able to easily search transactions in a hurry… we could never do that through the bank terminal.” For a fast-paced business like Radio Mexico, being able to visualise their cash flow has also been a huge advantage, especially when it comes to recognising dips or spikes in revenue “I use the Zeller Dashboard a lot. It’s a great back-of-house tool and it’s very easy to use… It’s a great way of getting that information that you most likely wouldn’t have searched for, but because it’s there, you might notice something that you’ll want to follow up on.” If Adele Arkell were to write a book about opening a restaurant, the chapters might read something like ‘carving out a point of difference’, ‘defining your own style’, and ‘sticking with it’. However she knows more than anyone that to be truly successful in hospitality you have to work hard, and you have to love what you do. As she says, “hospitality is to care for someone, to give service, to be of service, and to listen”. Indeed, taking a seat at Radio Mexico is to feel truly looked after, and it’s this feeling that might just be the secret sauce that keeps people coming back year after year. To read about other Australians growing their businesses with Zeller, head to the Zeller Business Blog and  sign up to our newsletter  to receive stories straight to your inbox.

Meet your newest recruit: a sleek, reliable multitasker that takes payments, processes sales, cuts costs, grows tips, splits bills, and boosts your brand. Once upon a time,  EFTPOS terminals did one thing: accept card payments. In 2024, they have become the beating heart of a business’s finances, incorporating myriad tools and features to help merchants not only deal with the increasing volume of card payments, but also make informed business decisions, deliver premium and branded customer service, and get you paid faster. Zeller Terminal is one such device that’s leading the way in payment technology in Australia. Integrated into Zeller’s financial ecosystem, which offers a  point-of-sale system ,  transaction account  and  savings account ,  debit cards  and  corporate cards , a  contact directory  and  mobile app , Zeller EFTPOS Terminal is a key component of an all-in-one system that gives businesses real-time visibility of their cash position, important sales insights, and near-instant access to their funds. So much more than an EFTPOS machine, Zeller Terminal is a key growth driver for your business, and below, we explain twelve reasons why. Top 12 benefits of Zeller Terminal 1. It saves your business money. Zeller Terminal is yours to own outright for the low cost of $99, or $199 if you choose Zeller Terminal 2, which comes with a built-in point-of-sale system. There are no monthly rental fees, no lock-in contracts, and no hidden costs. Once you start taking payments, you will only ever incur a 1.4% transaction fee for all card types – including AMEX – or 1.7% for over-the-phone transactions. Plus, with Zeller Terminal’s flexible surcharging capability, you can choose to pass on all or part of your merchant fee to the customer. Unlike many merchant services providers which lock you into surcharging for an added fee, Zeller’s zero-cost EFTPOS  option can be turned on, off, or customised at the press of a button. 2. It accepts every payment method. Zeller Terminal gives your customers the option to pay however is most convenient for them. To make payment, a customer can: tap their smartphone, watch, or other  NFC-enabled device  to the terminal tap their contactless debit and credit cards to the terminal insert a chip card into Zeller Terminal and, if needed, securely enter their PIN swipe their card and enter their PIN, or sign directly on the screen (available on Zeller Terminal 1 only) call you and read their card details over the phone 3. It simplifies checkout with a free, built-in point-of-sale system. Traditional point-of-sale software can be costly to growing businesses, which is why Zeller Terminal 2 incorporates a simple POS solution right into the hardware, for free:  Zeller POS Lite . Designed for micro, small, and mobile businesses, this easy-to-use POS solution records sales and delivers a fast and secure customer checkout experience. With Zeller POS Lite, you can: Manage a library of items directly on the terminal or via Zeller Dashboard or App Customise your product offering with modifiers and variants Design your home screen grid to allow quick access to frequently used items Generate itemised receipts which customers can receive via email, SMS, or QR code View detailed sales reports to understand what you are selling and when Create and manage discounts Get set up instantly – Zeller POS Lite comes automatically installed on Zeller Terminal 2 4. It boosts your brand with customisable receipts and screensavers. Zeller ensures your brand is central to the payment process by allowing you to customise both your receipts and your machine’s screensaver. Whether they’re printed or sent digitally as an email or SMS, Zeller receipts can incorporate a custom image at the top of the receipt, as well as business details, social media handles, a brief message or returns policy. Similarly, Zeller Terminal’s large digital screen can be customised with an image of your choice, allowing you to engage your customers with your brand while you scan their items or pull up their order on your point-of-sale. Much more than a simple payment device, Zeller Terminal is an innovative marketing tool that can be leveraged to instil your brand messaging. Customise your Terminal screensaver and your receipt to align with your brand. 5. It splits payments. Gone are the days of making your customers get out their phone calculator to figure out who owes what after a group meal. Zeller Terminal’s  Split Payments  functionality gives customers the option of splitting by custom value or by number of people. Not only is this more convenient for your patrons, but it speeds up the payment process, freeing up the EFTPOS terminal for it to be used by other staff. Additionally, by giving each individual customer the option to pay their share, it gives them all the opportunity to provide a tip. Everyone tips differently, so by giving more power to each customer, it is not only a more democratic process, it's likely to result in cumulatively greater tips for your business. 6. It settles the bill, tableside. Zeller Terminal’s  Pay at Table  feature is revolutionising the dining experience. Where before waitstaff would have to jostle between the diner’s table and the point-of-sale machine to settle a bill, Zeller Terminal now allows you to see total outstanding bills, take payments and close tables — all on one device. Rather than the customer paying at the counter or finalising the bill in the traditional, time-consuming manner, waitstaff can deliver the bill and the mobile payment device, all at the same time. The status of a table is updated in real time and synced across all machines, reducing human error and optimising the whole operation. 7. It makes processing refunds easy. Zeller Terminal supports both complete and partial refunds – and you, as a business owner, have the ability to restrict who can provide a customer with a refund. It’s an added level of protection for your business. Refunding a payment doesn’t cost your business anything; Zeller doesn’t charge any additional fees for refunding a customer. 7. It gives you real-time insights. Track key metrics from your Zeller Terminal in your own Zeller Dashboard or on  Zeller App . By providing powerful real-time data and a searchable transaction history, Zeller equips you with the tools you need to better manage cash flow, identify cost-saving opportunities and sales patterns. With most payment services providers, daily transaction information is unavailable until totals are tallied up at close of business — and important business information can only be found in a monthly merchant services statement. Having the ability to see how your business is performing at a glance enables you to quickly understand your short-term cash flow, progress sales targets to meet (and outperform) business objectives, and ultimately make smarter business decisions. 9. It gets you paid faster with same-day settlements. When you settle your funds into a Zeller Transaction Account, your day’s takings from Zeller Terminal will be deposited into your account the very same night, 365 days a year. If you choose to settle your funds into a third-party bank account, you will receive them the next business day. Speeding up the settlement process means you have access to your funds faster, helping to keep your cash flow healthy, and helping to avoid delays to wage payments or supply orders. 10. It can be controlled remotely. If your business operates across multiple locations, you need an easy way to manage your EFTPOS payment terminals. Every one of your Zeller Terminals can be controlled from your Zeller account, ensuring consistency across your entire operation. Update your staff permissions, enable and disable surcharging, update the information on your receipts, and more from one easy, online location. 11. It increases your tips. Zeller Terminal makes it easy for customers to leave a tip. This is particularly useful for hospitality businesses — you don’t have to enable the feature, but the functionality is there. You can configure your Zeller Terminal to provide a range of tipping options, either prompting a customer to leave a tip calculated on a percentage of their purchase or allowing them to enter a custom amount. This is a proven tactic, designed to grow tips for your business. 12. It reduces paper with digital and QR code receipts. A recent study* revealed that Australia produces 10.6 billion paper receipts annually, but because of their chemical coating, none of them can be recycled. With consumers and businesses becoming increasingly aware of their environmental footprint, many are choosing digital receipts as a convenient and sustainable alternative. Zeller Terminal embraces this step forward by offering customers the choice to have their receipts sent via email or SMS (available on both terminal models), or they can quickly scan a QR code which appears on-screen after the payment has been processed and download their receipt directly to their smartphone (Zeller Terminal 2 only). *‘Life Journey of an Average Receipt’ report, commissioned by Slyp, undertaken by the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Plus protection for your business. Zeller uses end-to-end encryption and industry best practices to protect transactions from the time they are taken at the terminal to the time your money is received. Whether you choose to use an open or secured Wi-Fi connection or a mobile broadband-based connection, all the information Zeller processes is encrypted to our servers. Our team adheres to industry best practices in cybersecurity and threat management, constantly monitoring transactions for suspicious activity and blocking fraudulent transactions. When payment disputes occur, our team of experts deals with the bank for you, helping you avoid costly chargebacks. We’re always looking ahead. Our team of developers are hard at work, continuously building new functionality to give your business an edge. That's why, when you sign up for Zeller, there are no lock-in contracts or commitments. We know you’ll love our solution enough to never want to leave. Learn more about how  Zeller Terminal  can help your business grow by accepting every card payment, quickly and securely, for one low rate. By sharing your details with us, we may contact you from time to time. We promise we won’t bug you — and you can unsubscribe from communications at any time.

When an architect and a banker met while volunteering at a charity raising money for cancer, it set in motion a friendship and a project that has helped rehome over 1,800 families in need. We sat down with Renuka Fernando and Ben Stammer of Sydney-based not-for-profit,  ReLove , to talk about addressing a social problem with an environmental solution, and how Zeller is facilitating new revenue streams for the organisation. For the past six years, power duo ‘Ren and Ben’ have been active participants in the not-for-profit sector in Sydney. Having met running and volunteering at  CanToo , they quickly realised their heads were in the same place. After accompanying a fundraising group to the New York Marathon, they went on to set up a social running group that offered participants practical ways of giving back to the community. The Run for Good Project kicked off at the end of 2019, connecting runners with local grassroots organisations that help people in need and address important social issues including homelessness, asylum seekers, domestic violence, mental health, and First Nations causes. Home truths. When COVID lockdowns scuppered their social running plans, Ben and Ren held steadfast, finding new projects and initiatives to mobilise their community. While the stay-at-home orders were a good impetus for some to spring clean their homes and replace outdated furniture, for others less fortunate, it exacerbated a housing and domestic violence crisis. “We just connected the dots,” explains Ren. “We had gone out to visit one of the women's refuges in Sydney, and realised that, while people could still access social or transitional housing, they lacked the resources to set up a home,” she says. The duo began collecting donated furniture and homewares from friends and family with the goal of helping set up five women. Three years later, their initiative has evolved into ReLove , a registered charity and critical support service in Sydney that has helped rehouse over 1,800 families. “We thought it was a COVID problem, but it turns out it's actually a really critical problem that continues today,” says Ren. Recycle, reuse, ReLove. Since it began, ReLove has saved over 2,250 tonnes of furniture and homewares from going into landfill. “We've created an environmental solution to a social problem,” explains Ren. ReLove collects commercial grade furniture and homewares at scale from corporate relocations, companies with excess stock or return stock, hotels, film sets, property stylists, and individuals. Thanks to an army of volunteers, donations are sorted, stored, and distributed in the charity’s warehouse in Sydney’s South East, also known as the ReLove Free Store. It’s here that people who have been referred to the organisation by caseworkers can walk around and pick out everything they need to set up a home, for free. “We want to give people this really joyous experience… and allow them the opportunity to picture a new life the way they want it,” explains Ren, who says that 75-80% of the people they support are women who have experienced homelessness or domestic violence. Keeping the lights on. While ReLove is well on track to reach its goal of supporting 1000 families this year, the founders’ dream to scale the organisation nationally, starting with Melbourne and Brisbane, is at the mercy of funding. “It costs us half a million dollars a year just to pay the rent,” explains Ren, "but we can’t do what we do without a warehouse.” With the exception of six professional removalists and one operations manager, ReLove is entirely volunteer run, but it can’t stay that way long term. “We can't maintain and scale and make this national until we get funding to pay some staff,” says Ren. Philanthropy, grant rounds, and corporate sponsorship account for the majority of the organisation’s current funding, but Ben and Ren are actively building out alternative revenue streams that can generate income and help keep the lights on. In the past year, ReLove has begun running fundraising events and corporate volunteering programs, selling merchandise, and launching its Shop for Good – a store offering a selection of donated furniture pieces, which can be purchased by the public online or from the warehouse. Tap to pay it forward. Keeping costs down while also streamlining and maximising opportunities to take payments was what led Ben and Ren to Zeller . “We watch every single dollar,” says Ren, “and Zeller’s fees were way lower than what we were paying with the bank.” When they launched their first event in November last year – attended by 220 people – they needed a solution to accept payments for raffle tickets, merchandise, donations, and silent auction purchases, without footing the bill for dozens of EFTPOS machines. “We had our 20 volunteers using their phones to accept payments with Tap to Pay ,” explains Ben, “the ability to scale it up really quickly was fantastic.” Rather than paying for a single EFTPOS machine, the group simply had to download the Zeller App on each of the volunteers’ phones and enable the function. “That flexibility has been brilliant,” says Ren, “We also use Zeller to take payments at the Shop for Good and because we have so many volunteers, it needs to be simple. Zeller is so user friendly. I love it.” Lower fees and flexibility. Ben, who has spent over thirty years in investment banking, including a 17-year stint at Deutsche Bank, is no stranger to the financial sector. It didn’t take him long to recognise the shortcomings of the big four banks in providing not-for-profit organisations with the support they require. “The monthly fees, the ongoing transaction fees, and just the lack of flexibility were the reasons we switched to Zeller,” he says. “At the bank, for something as simple as switching on or off surcharging , you have to make a phone call, you can’t do it on the app… or when we needed to roll over an existing term deposit into a new one, we had to provide board approval. It’s just too much,” he explains. ReLove settles funds into Zeller Transaction Account and sweeps any excess funds into a high-interest-bearing Zeller Savings Account . “Setting up our Zeller Account was very very easy and straightforward,” says Ben, “Plus our team also uses Zeller Debit Cards as fuel cards, and they work really well for us.” The missing link. Working with limited financial and human resources, charities and non-profit organisations have a pressing requirement to identify and mitigate inefficiencies or profit leaks. As Ben and Ren have uncovered in their work, one missing part is enough to undermine a whole. “There’s a lot of funding that goes into crisis programmes around mentorship and trauma recovery… but none of it works when you're sleeping on the floor,” says Ren. Finding the missing links – in society, as in business – is the key to success, and so far, the founders of ReLove have demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for doing just that.