Visitor caps, opening hours, setback rules and pick-your-own — the exempt development standards for farm gate premises and farm experiences, and where the line to a DA sits.
Selling honey at the gate, running a pick-your-own orchard, hosting farm tours or running weekend workshops — these are the farm gate premises and farm experience premises categories, and small-scale versions can run as exempt development with no planning approval.
The headline standards for exempt farm gate premises: no more than 100 visitors at any one time (pick-your-own visitors are excluded from the cap), trading hours of 8am–5pm Sunday to Friday and 7am–5pm Saturday, at least 50 metres from property boundaries and 250 metres from neighbouring dwellings. Parking, signage size and waste management have their own standards too.
Selling food to the public adds a second layer: notification and licensing through your council's environmental health team, and liquor licensing if you pour tastings. These aren't planning approvals — they run in parallel, and forgetting them is the most common trip-up.
Cross the standards — bigger crowds, longer hours, a permanent café or function space — and you're in complying development or DA territory. A wedding venue or restaurant is a different land use entirely (function centre), so don't let a farm gate stall quietly grow into one.
The toolkit's farm gate and experiences section maps each idea to its pathway, with the visitor caps, hours and setback tables in plain English, plus the licence checklist for food and tastings — so you can plan the business around the rules, not into them.
Keep in mind
This guide is general education, not advice on your specific property. Planning requirements vary by council, site and proposal — confirm with your local council or book a consultation before acting.
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