Function Spaces: Fill the Gaps Between Big Bookings
The calendar is the whole business
A function space earns nothing on its own. No walk-in trade, no regulars at the bar on a slow Wednesday, no lunch service ticking over to cover the lights. The room has a booking in it or it has nothing in it, and the gap between those two states is the profit and loss.
So the diary is the business, and you can read a month at a glance. Two weddings, a corporate, a milestone birthday, a wake. You can also read what sits between them, and nobody puts that in the brochure. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, doors shut, lights off, the best room you own doing nothing.
Those dates are hard to sell. Too midweek for the private market, too small to justify a promotion of their own. Most operators quietly write them off.
There is another way to use them. Paint Juicy runs ticketed paint and sip nights inside venues across Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory. We fill the room with paying guests, we run the night from setup to pack down, and every drink goes through your bar.
The partnership, in plain terms
No venue fee. No commission. No hire charge. The venue pays nothing, and that is not an introductory rate that hardens once the night works.
A hire fee of zero always raises an eyebrow, so here is the mechanism. Our income is ticket revenue, paid by the people in the seats. Tickets are $59 AUD a head for a standard session, or $99 AUD a head for a bottomless session, which is strictly 18+. That is the only revenue we take from the night. Yours is the bar, entirely.
From you we need the room and a bar that is open. Nothing further. We supply everything else. Ticket sales, the marketing and the advertising, customer service and enquiries, the host artist, the PA, every art material, complete setup and complete pack down. Your staff do nothing different. They work the bar as they would on any other night.
Guests arrive early evening. The session runs about three hours. The room is cleared and back to normal shortly after the finish, exactly as we found it. If you want a first booking laid out end to end, the full explainer on how hosting works walks through it.
Filling the white space between the big bookings
The dates that were never going to sell
Every function space runs two calendars. There is the one you are actively selling, the Fridays, Saturdays and good Sundays. Then there is the other one. The midweek run. The flat fortnight once the Christmas party season burns out. The stretch of winter when the enquiry inbox goes quiet. You are not losing those dates in a competitive pitch. Nobody is bidding on them at all.
That second calendar is where a paint and sip night belongs. We are not asking for your peak. We are asking for a Tuesday six weeks out that is blank today and will almost certainly still be blank on the day. If it stops being blank because a paying enquiry lands, you tell us and we move.
One session does not reshape a year. A standing midweek date does something more useful. It gives the room a rhythm, it gives your bar staff shifts they would not otherwise be rostered, and it turns a column of empty rows into trade you can forecast.
Forty to eighty people who have never seen your room
This is the part that matters more than the bar take, and it is why function spaces get more out of the format than other venue types.
A typical session brings 40 to 80 guests, and they spend three hours inside your room. They are not crossing a foyer on the way to somebody else's wedding, and they are not being walked around by a sales manager holding a folder. They are at a table, with a drink, in a very good mood, for a whole evening.
The ordinary ways to get a stranger into a function room are expensive, and you already pay for most of them. Open days. Styled shoots. An expo stand. A premium directory listing. All of it money going out well before an enquiry comes back. A session costs you nothing and holds people in the room longer than any showround will.
Guests tonight, enquiries later
Consider who is in the room. Paint Juicy guests are women, 30 to 90, with the biggest group between 35 and 65. For a venue like yours that is not an incidental detail. That is the exact person who books the 50th, organises the work Christmas lunch, plans the engagement party, and gets asked by her daughter where the reception should go.
She will see the room lit, staffed and full of people having a genuinely good night, which sells harder than an empty hall on a Tuesday morning with the chairs stacked. She will take photographs, because every guest photographs a finished canvas and your room ends up behind it. She will learn where to park and what your bar is like busy.
We will not promise you a wedding out of a Wednesday, and you would not believe us if we did. What we will say is that a closed room has never referred anybody. If you want to help it along, leave a rate card at the bar and have your duty manager mention the room is available. We are relaxed about the night doubling as a showing. A venue that wins bookings out of hosting us keeps hosting us.
What you supply, what we supply
The venue supplies
- The room, with roughly 60cm of table per painter
- The bar, open and staffed as normal
- Nothing else at all
Paint Juicy supplies
- Ticket sales and the full guest list
- All marketing, advertising and promotion
- Customer service and every enquiry
- The host artist and the PA
- Every art material, canvases included
- Complete setup and complete pack down
Who turns up, and why they suit your room
Groups. Almost nobody books a ticket alone. Guests arrive in twos, fours, sixes and the occasional table of twelve, which is why the bar behaves as it does on a session night. Rounds, not singles, and a celebratory tone from the door.
They are also, bluntly, the crowd your building was designed around. A function space is already set up for seated groups at long tables, a bar within reach, and enough floor to move about. That is exactly what a session needs. Roughly 60cm of table per painter is the only spatial requirement we bring.
While a layer dries, people get up, stretch and wander over for another drink. There is music, singing and plenty of happy noise. If your room handles a hens night, it handles this.
If your venue also runs a dining room, the way this sits around service is set out on our page for restaurants hosting a paint and sip. If part of your space is open air, read how rooftop venues host a paint and sip night instead.
We charge for this room, so why would we give it away?
It is the fairest question here, and it deserves a straight answer, not a slogan.
Start with what is actually being compared. It is not paid hire against free hire. If someone were offering your midweek rate for that Wednesday right now, you would take their money and we would not be having this conversation. The real comparison is a full room against a dark one. A dark room earns zero, and holding firm on the rate card will not convert an empty Wednesday into revenue when nobody is buying it.
Second, nothing is displaced. We only ever take dates you have told us are open, and if a paying booking wants that date, the paying booking gets it and we move. The room stays on the market throughout, at your usual rate, on your usual terms. Hosting a session puts no discount in anyone's head either, because there is no hire transaction for a future client to hear about.
Third, be honest about the cost, because there is one. You are unlocking the doors, running the lights and the air conditioning, and putting staff behind the bar. That is real money and we will not wave it away. The question is whether the takings from 40 to 80 guests drinking across three hours, on a date worth nothing, clear it with room to spare. That is your maths, and you can run it better than we can.
And then there is the part that never appears on that night's till. Forty to eighty people who now know your room exists, have stood in it, and liked it. You cannot buy that attention as cheaply anywhere else.
Paint Juicy, the facts
- More than 42,000 guests entertained
- 4.9 stars on Google
- Recognised as a Best of Queensland Experience every year since 2022
- 100% mobile across Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory, no travel fees inside our service regions
- Public sessions $59 AUD a head, bottomless sessions $99 AUD a head and strictly 18+
- Private bookings $700 AUD flat for the first 10 guests, then $65 AUD per additional guest, minimum 10 paid seats
- Guests are women aged 30 to 90, biggest group between 35 and 65
To see how a session reaches guests before it reaches your room, browse the Queensland paint and sip events calendar.
Questions function space operators ask
If a paying enquiry comes in for the same date, can we take it?
Yes, and you should. We only book dates you have told us are empty, and the date remains yours until the session runs. If a paid booking wants it, tell us and we will move the session to another night or another venue. We will never ask you to turn away paid hire to keep our night.
Does a session need the whole venue, or can it run alongside another booking?
It needs one room to itself for the evening, not the whole building. If your venue has separate function rooms with their own access, a session can run in one while a different booking runs in another. It is loud, with music and singing throughout, so the rooms need enough separation that neither night bothers the other.
What should we say if a guest asks us about hiring the room?
Tell them everything. Quote them, book them, take a deposit on the spot if you like. Any business that comes out of the night belongs to you, we take no cut of it and we never will. A rate card at the bar is the easiest way to get more out of hosting.
Will guests know whose venue they are standing in?
Yes. Every event listing, ticket page and reminder we send names the venue and the address, and guests find you by your name before they ever find the room. Your signage stays up, your staff serve them, and the space is presented as yours, because it is.
What does the venue actually pay?
Nothing. There is no venue fee, no commission and no hire charge, and no travel fees inside our service regions of Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory. Paint Juicy is paid by the guests through ticket sales, and the venue keeps every dollar taken at the bar.
Talk to us about a date
If you have midweek dates you have quietly stopped trying to sell, that is the conversation worth having. Tell us the room, the town, and the nights that are usually empty. We will tell you honestly whether we can fill them.
Not sure this is the right fit? The venue partnership directory points you to the page for your venue type.
Trent & James
