What "from $3,300 + GST" gets you at 3Danks, and why we price this way

Search for function venues in Sydney and you will find beautiful photography, moody videos and almost no prices. The number arrives later, by email, after you have handed over your phone number and a salesperson has sized you up. I find that tiresome as a customer, so as an owner we do the opposite. Our event pricing starts from $3,300 + GST, it is on the website, and this post explains exactly what that means.

That is venue hire. You are paying for the space itself: an 890 square metre blank canvas warehouse in Waterloo, close to the Sydney CBD, with three dance studios plus The Gantry, our production and event space. Not a per head price, not a minimum spend on a bar, not a package with someone else's catering baked in.

The rooms come with real infrastructure already in them. The Gantry alone gives you a 10.4 metre ceiling, a full lighting rig and a 117 square metre mezzanine over the main floor, all included. An LED screen is there too if your event wants one, as an optional extra. That kit being in the building is a genuine cost difference: at a bare-walls venue, lighting arrives on a truck with an invoice attached.

Because a fifty-person product launch on a weeknight and a four hundred person standing party are not the same event, and pretending one price covers both would just mean padding the small events to subsidise the big ones. The final quote moves on the things you would expect: which spaces you use, how many people you bring, how long you need the venue including your set-up and pack-down, and what your event asks of the building.

Across the full venue we hold 400 standing, 342 theatre style or 270 for a seated banquet. Tell us the shape of your event and you get a firm number for the whole booking, in writing, before you commit. No drip-fed extras after the deposit.

A few other figures we would rather you knew up front than discovered late:

• GST is on top, exactly as the pricing says. From $3,300 + GST means from $3,630 including it.
• We hold a bond of $500 to $1,000 depending on the event, and it comes back to you after the venue checks out clean.
• Amplified music and loud noise have to stop by 9:30pm. That is a curfew on the noise, not a lock-out on the building, so bump-out can keep going after if you need it to. Build the loud part of your run sheet backwards from 9:30 and nothing about the night will surprise you.
• Hourly studio hire exists for smaller jobs: the Ngarra Room from $60, the Walton Room from $65 and The Gantry from $150 an hour, plus GST. Not every booking needs the whole building.

Three reasons. First, it respects your time. If your budget and our pricing do not fit, you find out in ten seconds instead of after three emails and a sales call. Second, it keeps us honest. A published price is the same for everyone, which is not always true of quotes produced after a venue has guessed what you can afford. Third, it filters for the events that suit us. People who choose a blank canvas venue on purpose arrive with a plan, and those events run better for everyone, including their guests.

The venues that hide pricing are not villains. Some genuinely cannot quote without detail. But plenty use the enquiry form as a negotiating position, and you deserve to know that game exists before you play it.

Get every option to one comparable figure: your date, your guest count, your hours, all fees, GST included. Ask each venue the same questions you now know to ask us: what is the bond, when do we need to be out, is bump-in inside the hire time, and what does the room already contain. Then judge the numbers side by side.

Do that and we win some comparisons and lose others, which is exactly how it should work. The events we win are the ones this building was made for.