VSBA - Blog , Trader Stories

Forget the Hotel Ballroom: Your Christmas Party Belongs on Victoria Street

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 02:37:55 +1100

Victoria Street, Richmond and Abbotsford, can host any workplace Christmas party in 2026, from a 10-person team lunch to a 500-guest celebration, with 20 venues within walking distance.

The precinct offers six experiences: hands-on cooking classes, Vietnamese and Chinese banquets, Thai feasts, a food hall, historic pubs and bars, and rooftop and large-event venues. Groups can also combine them into a Victoria Street Christmas Crawl.

The offer is led by the Victoria Street Business Association (VSBA), which represents more than 300 local traders. Every booking keeps spending with local, family-run and multicultural businesses.

Call to action: choose an experience below, contact the venue directly, or email VSBA at hello@victoriastreet.org.au for help matching your group to a venue.

The street's story

Victoria Street has reinvented itself several times, and that history is part of what guests experience.

1850s: Simpson's Road was renamed Victoria Street, after Queen Victoria. It divided Collingwood and Richmond, with shops at one end and factories at the other.
1980s: Families who came to Australia after the Vietnam War opened groceries, bakeries and pho kitchens. The strip became known as Little Saigon.
1990s: The Lunar Festival began closing the street for Tet celebrations. In 2026 it drew around 35,000 people.
2014: A culturally themed gateway was installed at the Hoddle Street end.
Today: Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean and Indian kitchens sit beside Victorian-era pubs, wine bars and rooftop venues. VSBA's revitalisation work is adding cleaner, greener streets, trader storytelling and new marketing.

Source: Victoria Street, Melbourne – Wikipedia.

The offer

Six experiences cover every team size and budget; all prices are published rates and include GST.

Experience	Best for	Venues	Group size	Published price
Cook & feast	Team building	Otao Kitchen	Up to 50	From $159 pp
Vietnamese & Chinese banquet	Shared feasting	Tran Tran, Vinh Ky, Van Mai, Old Kingdom, TungThit	Varies	On request
Thai feast	Spice lovers	Thaiger Rabbit, Jinda Thai	Varies	On request
Food hall	Mixed tastes and diets	Abbotsford Food Hall	Varies	On request
Pubs, bars & wine	Classic party, drinks	The National, Aviary, Terminus, Bakers Arms, The Leadbeater, Duke of Albany, The Vic Bar, Cardwell Cellars	15 to 600	Aviary Christmas menu $95 pp; rooms from $400 minimum spend
Rooftops & big events	Whole-company celebrations	Two Hands Rooftop Bar, Abbots Yard	Up to 500	From $500 to $12,000 minimum spend
Victoria Street Christmas Crawl	A night to remember	Any combination	Any	Sum of venues

Venue stories

Behind every venue is a family, a building or a comeback worth telling your guests about.

Vietnamese and Chinese banquets

Tran Tran – 74 Victoria St, Richmond. The Tran family arrived in Australia as refugees after the Vietnam War and took over the restaurant in 1991. It sits in an 1890s building that began life as a chapel; a 2009 renovation uncovered the original chapel ceiling hidden above a false one. (03) 9429 6147 · trantran.com.au

Van Mai – 372 Victoria St, Richmond. A family restaurant serving Vietnamese food for more than 30 years. Some regulars have made dinner here a weekly tradition for two decades. (03) 9428 7948 · vanmairestaurant.com.au

Vinh Ky – Chinese and Vietnamese cooking, licensed and BYO, open daily 10.30am to 10.30pm. (03) 9427 7768 · vinhky.com.au

Old Kingdom – 82 Victoria St, Richmond. Known for its Peking duck, a centrepiece for any celebration table. (03) 9417 2438

TungThit Sizzling Steak – 297 Victoria St, Abbotsford. Asian-style steak served sizzling at the table. (03) 9317 3306 · tungthit.com

Thai feasts

Thaiger Rabbit – 391 Victoria St, Abbotsford. A quirky, market-style room with bird-cage lampshades and an upstairs area suited to groups. (03) 9077 5891 · thaigerrabbit.com.au

Jinda Thai – 3–7 Ferguson St, Abbotsford, just off Victoria St. One of Melbourne's best-known Thai restaurants, taking function enquiries. (03) 9419 5899 · jindathaimelbourne.com

Cook and feast

Otao Kitchen – 393 Victoria St, Abbotsford. A cooking school where teams cook together, then sit down to share the meal. Christmas formats include a social class and a MasterChef-style team challenge, from $159 pp. 0408 217 899 · otaokitchen.com.au

Pubs, bars and wine

The National Hotel – 340–344 Victoria St, Richmond. A Victorian-era corner pub that was once the pre- and post-game local for Collingwood fans at Victoria Park. Today it offers private dining, a beer garden with a retractable roof and Sunday roasts. (03) 9429 8811 · thenationalhotel.com.au

Terminus Hotel – 605 Victoria St, Abbotsford. Slated for demolition, the Terminus was saved by a group led by a former local, who reopened it in August 2014. Upstairs, the 1920s-inspired Paris Tropical bar has its own dance floor. (03) 9427 0615 · theterminushotel.com.au

The Aviary Hotel – 271–273 Victoria St, Abbotsford. A proper local with good food, music and trivia nights. Its five-course Christmas menu is $95 pp, with rooms for up to 150. (03) 9428 7727 · theaviary.com.au

The Vic Bar – 281 Victoria St, Abbotsford. DJs, a dance floor and an in-house micro-distillery, Route 109, making Bootlegger Vodka and Melbourne Dry Gin. 0435 069 565 · thevicbar.com.au

Cardwell Cellars – 461 Victoria St, Abbotsford. Opened in 2023, this wine bar and bottle shop champions small, sustainable producers. Staff will open any bottle to taste, and guests can bring food from nearby restaurants. (03) 7042 1022 · cardwellcellars.com

Bakers Arms Hotel – 355 Victoria St, Abbotsford. A local pub in the middle of the strip. (03) 9427 3200 · bakersarmshotel.com.au

The Leadbeater Hotel – 1 Church St, Richmond, on the Victoria St corner. A live music pub. 0406 696 466 · leadbeaterhotel.com.au

The Duke of Albany Hotel – 323 Victoria St, Abbotsford. Suits small team drinks. 0481 871 000 · dukeofalbany.com.au

Rooftops and big events

Two Hands Rooftop Bar – 311A Victoria St, Abbotsford. Drinks above the street, or the whole venue for up to 150. (03) 9973 9589 · twohandsbar.com.au

Abbots Yard – 329–341 Victoria St, Abbotsford. Street-front booths, shuffleboard and retro cinema containers, with room for up to 500 standing. 0410 232 376 · abbotsyard.com

Sample itineraries

Four ready-made plans show what a party could look like; costs use published rates only, before drinks.

Plan	Group	Itinerary	Indicative cost
Team bonding	12–20	2pm cooking class at Otao Kitchen, then a wine tasting at Cardwell Cellars	From $159 pp (minimum $1,950) + wine
Classic Christmas lunch	20–35	Five-course Christmas menu in the Aviary Hotel's White Room	$95 pp (room minimum spend from $2,500)
Christmas Crawl	20–40	4pm cooking class → 6.30pm Vietnamese, Thai or Peking duck banquet → 8.30pm rooftop drinks at Two Hands	From $159 pp + banquet on request + bar from $700 minimum spend
Whole company	150–500	Exclusive use of Abbots Yard, with booths, shuffleboard and retro cinemas	From $8,000 (Thu–Fri, 5–11pm) or $12,000 (Sat–Sun) minimum spend

Rates are from venue and booking-site listings (Otao Kitchen, Aviary Hotel, Abbots Yard) and must be confirmed with each venue.

Why it matters

A Christmas booking on Victoria Street puts end-of-year spending straight into local, family-run and multicultural businesses.

Many of these traders arrived as migrants and refugees and have served the street for decades, like the Tran family since 1991 and Van Mai for more than 30 years. A single group booking can fill a dining room on a quiet weeknight.

For workplaces, it is also a better story to tell staff: a celebration with real food, real history and a visible benefit to the community.

How to book

Book directly with each venue using the contacts above, ideally by mid-November, as December dates fill fast.

For help matching your group to a venue or building a Christmas Crawl, contact the Victoria Street Business Association: hello@victoriastreet.org.au · 0475 833 595 · victoriastreet.org.au.

To confirm before release

Confirm each venue is taking Christmas group bookings and wants to be listed
Vinh Ky address: the VSBA directory lists 114 Victoria St, Richmond; its website lists 345 Victoria St, Abbotsford
The Vic Bar phone: directory 0435 069 565 vs Time Out (03) 9077 4383
Duke of Albany phone: directory entry read as 0481 871 000
Request photos from each venue for use in this paper (Google listing photos belong to their contributors)
Note that Otao Kitchen is owned by the VSBA President
Confirm VSBA can coordinate Crawl bookings before promoting that service
Lunar Festival start year: Wikipedia says 1994; earlier VSBA media material said 2026 was the 26th year

Sources

Get Started Now

Ten Businesses, One Building, One Night — and Still No Financial Support

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 23:47:05 +1000

Ten Businesses, One Building, One Night — and Still No Financial Support

Image The Herald Sun

The Victoria Street Business Association is asking the Victorian Government for direct financial assistance for the traders whose businesses were destroyed in the Victoria Street fire.

Advisory support has been secured. Council has committed to rate and fee relief. What has not arrived is capital — the money these business owners need to replace a fitout, restock, cover the months they cannot trade, and either relocate or return.

That gap is now the only thing standing between several of these traders and permanent closure.

What happened

In the early hours of the morning, offenders drove a vehicle into a ground-floor business on Victoria Street and set the building alight. Fire Rescue Victoria brought the blaze under control with around 80 firefighters and some 25 trucks. Around ten shops within the single building were affected.

Among them: two accounting practices, an optometrist, a Chinese medicine clinic, two massage businesses, a hair and beauty salon, two restaurants and a convenience store. Family businesses, most of them. Several had traded on this street for years.

Nobody was inside. That is the only good news in this account.

What the Association did

Within the first hour we identified which shops were alight and opened a communication channel for affected traders and committee members. By the end of that day we had established a single public information channel for Victoria Street, held a first meeting with traders, and taken briefings from Council and Police.

Within 24 hours we had briefed the Council CEO and councillor team, who adopted our plan of action, and escalated to the Premier and the relevant Minister. We met the Minister for Small Business in the first week.

Since then the work has been unglamorous and continuous: site access, suspension of utilities and leases, legal and financial support, and case-by-case assistance for every affected trader — in Vietnamese or English, whichever they need. Lease exits. Bond recovery. Tax Office engagement. Service Australia coordination. Decisions about whether to resume trading at all.

We are grateful to the Small Business Minister, Mayor and Councillor and Council Staff, Business Victoria to Police and Fire Rescue Victoria, and to the officers who have worked alongside us.

What has been secured, and what has not

Small business advisory assistance has been secured, modelled on the support offered after bushfire events. Council has committed to rate and fee rebates and other fee relief for businesses that remain on Victoria Street.

Both of those matter. Neither of them is money in a trader's hand.

Advice does not replace a destroyed fitout. A rate rebate does not help a business that has no premises to be rated on. Traders tell us that insurance has been the single hardest part of this — slow, contested, and in several cases well short of what rebuilding actually costs.

Two businesses have already relocated away from Victoria Street. More are deciding now. Every week without a clear answer on financial support makes that decision for them.

Why this case is different

We understand the Government's difficulty. Victoria Police have confirmed more than 100 properties firebombed across Melbourne and regional Victoria, the overwhelming majority of them single shopfronts. A government cannot write a cheque for every one.

But this event was not that. This was a single attack that destroyed an entire building of unrelated businesses in one night — an optometrist, an accountant, a massage therapist and a nail salon who had nothing to do with one another beyond sharing a roof, and nothing whatsoever to do with the reason the building was targeted.

That is the distinction we are asking Government to recognise. Not compensation for arson generally, but support triggered where a single attack causes multi-tenancy collateral loss on this scale. It is a narrow category. It is a defensible one. And it is the difference between a policy that holds and a policy nobody can afford to write.

The rebuild

Talks about rebuilding are underway. The Association's is helpping the traders with new vacant shops along the strip.

This needs to be settled now, while the rebuild is still being planned.

Where this stands

Victoria Street is a precinct that has already absorbed a great deal — reduced foot traffic, rising rents, and a shopfront vacancy rate that the City of Yarra's own analysis puts at around 22 per cent. It does not have ten businesses to spare.

We will keep working with Council, with the Minister's office and with the traders themselves. We are asking the Victorian Government to move, and to move before the electoral cycle closes the window on new commitments.

The Victoria Street Business Association represents traders across Richmond and Abbotsford in the City of Yarra. If your business was affected by the fire, or if you can assist affected traders with premises, contact the Association.