Melbourne cafe owner slams WFH legislation
A Melbourne cafe owner has launched a pointed public rebuke of the Allan government over Victoria’s new flexible working laws, saying they will devastate small businesses already struggling with the fallout from widespread work-from-home arrangements.
Greg LaManna, who operates LaManna & Sons cafe in Cremorne and a greengrocer in South Yarra, has taken to displaying handwritten signs in his venue to highlight the financial reality facing CBD-fringe hospitality operators.
He channelled his frustration into verse, which he co-wrote with his sons Jordan and Brandon.
One sign, titled The Little Red Brick Building, addresses the collapse in commercial foot traffic and the difficulty of offloading property rendered redundant by empty office precincts. "Once a Victorian dream, now a has been," it reads. "Passion chasing glory, now hardly a story … A party of killers wearing suits, sending us packing in our boots."
A second sign, covering a formerly busy seating area now closed off, spells out the human cost of the shift: "Behind this wall was a space well used, now squeezed by the Government and the cost abused. Regulations, laws, tax and crime, we work harder but can't keep a dime. The heartbreak of small businesses you are breaking, more and more you are taking."
The signs went up a week before the Allan government introduced legislation into the Victorian parliament formally enshrining the right to work from home within the Equal Opportunity Act 2010.
"(Small businesses) don't ask for much, but we don't ask to be treated like fools," he told news.com.au. "Making it a regulation to work from home, that's treating us like fools. We work in retail, we don't have that option, how are we going to employ staff who want to work from home?"
The impact on LaManna's operation has been stark. Customer numbers have halved since the pandemic normalised remote working, with the cafe's workforce shrinking from 150 staff to 75. A venue that once couldn't seat the lunchtime crowds and was running 200 chairs at its peak, now operates with half the floor space blocked off.
"We extended the cafe to make it bigger because Cremorne, and Melbourne, was the best city in the world so we built extra space," LaManna said. "One hundred seats is enough. It's been six years and (the government) has stuffed it."
Jonathan Jackson, 18th June 2026
