Key Takeaways
- ARCA represents nearly 56,000 restaurants and cafes and uses IBISWorld segment reports in almost every meeting with federal and state ministers.
- Consistent, nationwide reporting helps ARCA counter proximity bias, when policymakers judge an entire industry by the handful of high-performing venues they've personally visited.
- Full report benchmarking shows ARCA members exactly where rising costs are coming from, wages or cost of goods, so they know they're not doing anything wrong.
When the government only sees the busy cafes
A minister walks into a cafe on a Saturday morning. The line is out the door, the till is ringing, and the owner seems to be doing fine. That single visit can shape how an entire industry gets talked about in Canberra, even when it has nothing to do with what's happening at the other 55,999 venues across the country.
This is the problem Wes Lambert, chief executive of the Australian Restaurant and Cafe Association (ARCA), runs into constantly. Advocacy only works if the people making decisions understand what's actually happening in the sector, not just what they happened to see on a busy strip in a capital city. Watch the full conversation with Lambert below to hear how ARCA builds its case in Canberra.
Who ARCA speaks for, and how often they're in the room
ARCA represents nearly 56,000 restaurants and cafes across Australia, and advocates for the sector on migration and workforce, taxation, and industrial relations. Lambert has been lobbying for the hospitality industry for more than seven years, after decades in and around corporate hospitality, including as an investment banker in restaurant finance and as an owner of restaurant groups, pubs, and nightclubs.
At least half of Lambert's time goes into meetings with state and federal ministers and opposition ministers, alongside coordination with other associations across accommodation, food service, pubs, hotels, franchising, fast food, and retail, plus super peaks including COSBOA, ACCI, BCA, and Ai Group. That's a lot of rooms to walk into, and in each one, the credibility of the data ARCA brings determines whether the conversation goes anywhere.
Proximity bias is the enemy of good policy
Lambert's term for the busy-cafe problem is proximity bias. Government contact with the sector tends to happen in the places that are easiest to visit: high streets, city centers, tourist strips. Those venues aren't representative, but they're what shapes impressions.
"IBISWorld reports, which are over a period of time and are nationwide, can give us a better understanding of exactly what's going on," Lambert says. The value isn't a single data point. It's the same methodology applied consistently, across every segment in accommodation and food service, over years rather than a single site visit. That consistency is what lets ARCA show a minister the difference between one good Saturday and a five-year trend.
Two ways ARCA puts the data to work
ARCA uses IBISWorld's reporting in two distinct ways.
In meetings with parliamentarians, segment reports do the work of building a picture over time. Lambert says using many reports across a period lets ARCA show the direction the restaurant and cafe segment is heading, in comparison to every other segment in accommodation and food service. That comparative, longitudinal view is what makes the reports land in a room where the audience defaults to anecdote.
With members, the job is different. Full report benchmarking lets Lambert diagnose exactly where cost pressure is coming from for an individual operator: wages, or cost of goods. That diagnosis matters because it changes how a member understands their own numbers. As Lambert puts it, he can tell members "they're not doing anything wrong," and that they're experiencing the same economic conditions as every other restaurant and cafe in Australia.
The story ARCA is telling right now
The current story ARCA tells with IBISWorld data is about margins, not headlines: restaurant and cafe sales have increased, while profit margins have fallen, driven by the rising cost of doing business. It's a story that member surveys and one-off conversations can't tell on their own, because it depends on consistent measurement over time, not a snapshot.
What this means for advocacy work beyond hospitality
Lambert's experience points to something true for any association trying to shape policy: a handful of anecdotes will always lose to a minister's own eyes, unless there's a consistent, nationwide dataset to put next to it. For ARCA, that dataset is what turns "trust us" into a case a minister can actually see. Book a demo to see how the same segment reporting and benchmarking could support your own advocacy work.
