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When entrepreneur Thin Neu saw the pink terrazzo tiles in an empty shopfront on Little Bourke Street, he knew it was time to bring his business back to the CBD.
For years he had been planning a city comeback for his cult dessert bar Cupcake Central, tracking shopfront and office vacancy rates and crunching pedestrian traffic data in various city precincts.
And yet it was also instinct that told this self-described “baker of businesses” that the city was ready again for the aroma of his fresh-baked cupcakes.
“I started walking around my favourite areas of the CBD, looking for the right empty shopfront. When I walked past this place on Little Bourke Street, the floors spoke to me,” Thin said.
“I have this love for design and aesthetics, and I just stopped out the front of this vacant shop and went, wow, that is actually beautiful.”
To transform the empty shopfront at 353 Little Bourke Street into a cupcake-ready wonderland, Thin applied for a Small Business Grant from the City of Melbourne.
Cupcake Central was one of four small businesses to receive a grant through the shopfront occupancy stream in 2025.
Designed to add good vibes at street level, these grants of up to $25,000 support small businesses moving into ground-floor, street-facing commercial shopfronts that have been vacant for more than four months.
“The grant was critical for us to open this place. It has allowed me to build a better shop. Add seating. Make the finishes nicer. Make the fit-out nicer.
“When you open a shop, you need to make it warm and welcoming and friendly.
"The grant really gave us that extra room to do the little things to make the space a bit more special.”
“We are also making a hidden cafe upstairs as well, a cosy ‘if you know you know’ type space, very Melbourne.”
Shopfront Audit reveals city business boost
More than 84 per cent of all shopfronts across the City of Melbourne are now occupied, according to our latest Shopfront Audit.
Occupancy rates are steadily climbing after the pandemic brought about a low of 68 per cent occupancy in November 2021.
Vacancy rates across the municipality continue to trend downward to 9.1 per cent from a high of 31.5 per cent in November 2021.
Across the CBD, shopfront vacancy rates are down to 7.8 per cent in 2025, dropping from 8.4 per cent last year and coming off a high of 30 per cent in November 2021.
In the area around Cupcake Central’s sweet new locale – the CBD retail core from Russell to Queen streets and Flinders to La Trobe streets – vacancy rates are down to 5.5 per cent, dropping from 6.5 per cent in late 2024 after a high of 27.9 per cent in November 2021.
More high-quality building stock is coming online to meet demand as businesses turn their attention back to the city. The number of buildings under construction has dropped to 6.5 per cent after peaking last year at 7.3 per cent.
New retail and hospitality spaces are set to open in the Bourke Street Mall and Collins Arcade, and five new Metro Tunnel train stations will follow, creating even more opportunities for businesses keen to make a statement in the CBD for years to come.
How to bake a business
Returning to the CBD was slightly bittersweet for Thin. Starting out with a big idea and a small loan from his mother 15 years earlier, he had built a dessert bar with a cult following and seven locations across the city, including a flagship store in Melbourne Central.
“When I went to my mum and said I wanted to make cupcakes, she was like ‘Are you crazy? Who is going to pay $4 for a cupcake!’
“She didn't necessarily believe in the idea, but she believed in her son,” Thin said.
“Borrowing money from my parents was no small thing. They came as refugees from Cambodia in the 1980s with nothing and worked every odd job from picking fruit to sewing clothes in factories," Thin said.
“You do what you need to do to make good on that loan. You get up at 4am, you finish late in the evenings."
“It took a long time for my mum to be proud. The turning point was when I opened the first city store 13 years ago. There's a level of prestige when you open in the CBD. Then she was on board, telling everyone ‘Oh, my son has a cupcake store in the city!’"
After a decade of growth, the pandemic forced Thin to close six of his seven venues and move Cupcake Central mostly online. And yet he held out hope that he would be back one day.
“Throughout it all, my partner Audrey was always the one who kept me going, pushing me to keep trying and never give up. She added so much energy and creativity to marketing the business back to where it is now.”
“We need more places to make life a little bit sweeter for the CBD.”
“We listened to our customers. I knew we still had lots of CBD customers from our online orders. I knew the demographics of this part of the city and I’d been watching the precinct around Hardware Lane.
"I felt like it could do with another dessert offering,” Thin said.
Will our customers remember us?
From concept to launch, it took four months to bring Cupcake Central back to the CBD, according to area manager and aspiring pastry chef Trisha Tolentino.
“Uncertainty was hanging over our heads as we got ready to open the CBD store. We weren’t sure if we’d be remembered. We weren’t sure if we’d still have our regular come in.”
"We weren’t sure if people would still want a sweet treat throughout the day.”
“Then on our grand opening day when we saw the line out the front wrapping all the way around the corner, around the block, it was worth all of those sleepless nights,” Trisha said.
The first person in the queue had been there since 6.30am.
Others told Trisha they had been regular customers at Melbourne Central.
“We didn’t need to worry after all! We have our old regulars who find us. And we have our regular online so we know their names, and now we can put faces to the names when they come into the store to pick up their cupcakes.”
The new neighbours are fast becoming regulars too.
“The hairdresser across the street comes in daily for her oat cappuccino and a sweet treat, and she sends her clients across as well.
“Sometimes her clients come over with their hair still in foils, and they get a coffee and a cupcake and head back for the rest of their treatment."
“It’s these interactions we have every day. It’s really nice. You never know who's going to walk through the door.”
“We’re a little store, but a little quirky store to match the vibes for the CBD,” Trisha said.
A sweet treat a day in the CBD, even for coeliacs
Turns out Melburnians still like a sweet treat throughout the day. Cupcake Central bakes and sells up to 600 cupcakes a day in the CBD.
The team hopes to launch a range of weekly, seasonal and one-off flavour combinations that will set the CBD store apart from other city dessert bars.
“I’m all about flavour combinations,” Trisha said. She is studying commercial cookery at the nearby William Anglis Institute.
“A cupcake is a really good canvas to test flavour combinations, play with crunchy textures and fillings.”
Trisha's favourite flavour?
“The gluten-free carrot cupcake, for sure. I’m not coeliac, but we’re accredited by Coeliac Australia and really proud of that,” Trisha said.
“I’ve been working in hospo for a decade now, and I know that cafes only ever offer a gluten-free friand or an almond cookie,” Trisha said.
From food preparation to storage, Cupcake Central uses separate utensils, baking surfaces, containers and cabinets to make sure each gluten-free treat is safe for coeliacs.
“We get coeliacs coming into the shop really excited," Trisha said.
"They find us online and they’re like, ‘Oh, you actually have flavours for us’. They love it, and they come back.”
Entrepreneur Thin Neu also loves the gluten-free carrot cupcake, but says the flavour they’re best-known for is the red velvet cupcake.
He has long held a passion for sweets and making things.
"I've always liked cakes and hospitality," Thin said.
“I’m not a baker, but I know how to ‘bake a business’. Just like real-life baking, you learn to bake a business through trial and error.
“Making a lot of mistakes and learning from them,” Thin said.
Top 5 tips for opening a small business in Melbourne
- Choose the right location for your business. Search Commercial Property Lookup External link to find a vacant property and get a report on a property you’re interested in.
- Know your customers. Understand the demographics and foot traffic in the area. A cafe on Queen Street in the legal precinct will have different customers to a cafe in Hardware Lane, for example. Use the City of Melbourne’s pedestrian counting system to predict pedestrian activity throughout the day, the week and the year.
- Contact the City of Melbourne’s Business Concierge. Talk to the Business Concierge team early in your journey to opening in the city. They can help you find the right location, show how to check restrictions on the building, give you tips on permits, and walk you through the steps for getting them approved.
- Check the property condition. Look for good services to the building: gas, electricity, water. Is there hot water piped to the hand sink? What about the mop sink? Does the air conditioning work? If you don’t catch those things early, it can cost you time and money later.
- Promote well and accurately: Make sure your online presence is strong, and that it matches the look and feel of your store. Keep your business’s location updated on Google Maps so people can find it. And check if you’re eligible for a listing on What’s On Melbourne External link.
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