What is Café Scout?
Café Scout is an online survey tool to help café, kiosk, canteen and vending machine owners, food outlet staff, public health practitioners, and researchers evaluate how effectively these food outlets promote healthier customer food and drink purchases. Café Scout provides instant feedback, scores and practical strategies to help food outlets improve the availability and marketing of nutritious options.
Originally developed and successfully used in sport and recreation settings across Victoria (Australia), this tool can be used to support healthy food retail practices across a range of foodservice settings.
Why use Café Scout?
Café Scout is a practical tool that provides a quick snapshot of how your outlet is performing across key areas, along with instant feedback and tailored actions. These can be used to develop an action plan aligned with your outlet’s priorities and available resources. Café Scout focuses not just on assessment, but on supporting ongoing, staged improvements.
‘You've got a result and some actions instantly as opposed to waiting for a report to come back… when your mind is there, that just makes it more efficient and more likely to translate into action.’Health Promotion Officer, Healthcare Setting
How Café Scout works?
Café Scout audit overview
Café Scout guides you through a structured assessment of food outlet product offerings and in-store marketing practices, providing instant, practical feedback.
- Complete the audit: Answer a series of guided yes/no- questions about your outlet
- Discuss with the outlet manager (optional): Use the Store Manager Survey in Café Scout to better understand current practices and policies, and to support shared planning of improvements.
- Get your score: Receive an overall score and specific scores for each marketing and product category based on how well your outlet supports healthier choices.
- Review your suggested actions: See where there are opportunities to improve.
- Plan your next steps: Use tailored recommendations to prioritise actions that suit your setting, capacity and goals
Each Café Scout audit takes between 10-40 minutes to complete, depending on the outlet size. New users may need more time when using the tool for the first time.
What is assessed? The 4Ps of marketing
Café Scout assesses food outlets across four key areas that influence customer purchases:
- Product – What food and drinks are available
- Placement – What items are most visible and easy to access
- Price – How items are priced or promoted through pricing strategies
- Promotion – How items are promoted and communicated
Café Scout training
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How to interpret your Café Scout scores?
A higher Café Scout score indicates that your food outlet is more closely aligned with best-practice principles for supporting healthier customer food and drink purchases.
Your total score reflects how strongly your current practices support healthier food and drink purchases:
- 0-44 = Limited support
- 45-60 = Developing support
- 61-80 = Supportive
- 81-100 = Highly supportive
Note: These score ranges are indicative and should be interpreted in context. Smaller outlets with limited product offerings may need higher scores to be considered supportive, while larger outlets may still provide substantial support for healthier purchasing with relatively lower scores.
A higher score may indicate closer alignment with relevant policy guidelines. However, for a detailed menu or policy-compliance assessment, please refer to your state’s official policy guidelines and tools.
Café Scout support and resources
Questions or queries? Contact us at caféscout@deakin.edu.au
For more information check out:
- Café Scout Explainer
- Café Scout User Guide [LINK COMING SOON]
- Café Scout Peer-reviewed Publication [LINK COMING SOON]
- Test Food Outlet Photos [LINK COMING SOON]
Other useful resources
Healthy food retail support
RE-FRESH: Next Generation Practice Guides: A series of evidence-based practice guide summaries on policies and practice to support the successful implementation and sustainment of healthy food retail across identified priority areas. Visit the website.
Vic Kids Eat Well resources: Vic Kids Eat Well focuses provides clear, simple and achievable steps to making healthy food and drink options available for kids in environments where they spend their time (e.g., schools, sporting centres). Visit the website.
Healthy Eating Advisory Service (HEAS): HEAS supports community-based food retailers —such as schools, hospitals, and sport and recreation centres— across multiple Australian states to provide healthier food and drink options. Visit the website.
Other tools for monitoring the healthiness of food outlets
Store Scout App: Café Scout is adapted from Store Scout app (developed by Monash University and Menzies School of Health Research). Café Scout is developed for kiosk, cafe and canteen types of settings. For supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol stations, we recommend using the original Store Scout app (for Android, for Apple). Visit the website.
Food Checker: Food Checker is an online tool that helps organisations like schools, childcare services, and sports clubs assess how healthy their food and drink menus are according to state- and setting-specific food classification guidelines. Visit the website.
University food environments: The Uni-Food initiative aimed to assess the extent to which universities in Australia are creating healthy, equitable and environmentally sustainable campus food environments. The initiative also aimed to identify practical actions to improve university policies and practices in this area. Visit the website.
Evidence & Research
Promoting-CHANGE: A partnership to test and refine real-world solutions for promoting nutritious purchases in food outlets within local government settings across Australia and beyond, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council. Visit the website.
Best Practice Guides for Conducting Healthy Food Retail Research: An innovative series of best practice guides for conducting healthy food retail research across all stages of the research process, including practical considerations for engaging with retailers and developing partnerships, co-designing initiatives, data collection and analysis, and research translation. Visit the website.
Research paper: Concordance of Australian state and territory government guidelines for classifying the healthiness of foods in public settings by Backman et al. and published in 2025 assess the alignment between food policies for classifying healthiness. Read the paper.
Policy & Benchmarking
Australian Dietary Guidelines: The Australian Dietary Guidelines provide evidence based recommendations on the types and amounts of foods Australians should eat to meet nutritional requirements. Visit the website.
Local Food Systems Policy Index (Local Food-EPI+) Tool: The Local Food-EPI+ tool is designed to benchmark local governments on their implementation of policies to improve the healthiness, equity and environmental sustainability of food systems. The purpose of the tool is to assist local governments in prioritising their actions to improve the healthiness, equity and environmental sustainability of food systems. Learn more about the tool and the implementation toolkit.
Looking for more resources on healthy retail food environments? Visit our website’s Resource Hub
Intellectual property & privacy statement
Café Scout was developed by Deakin University in partnership with researchers from Monash University. The development of Café Scout tool was informed by the Victorian Government’s Healthy Choices: food and drink classification guidelines (2020).
Café Scout is adapted from Store Scout app (developed by Monash University and Menzies School of Health Research). Café Scout is developed for kiosk, cafe and canteen types of settings. For supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol stations, we recommend using the original Store Scout app (for Android, for iPhone).
This work was supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Partnership Project Grant (GNT2015440) and the NHMRC funded Centre of Research Excellence in Food Retail Environments for Health: Next Generation (REFRESH: Next Generation) (APP2024716).
Promoting CHANGE is a joint initiative led by Deakin University, in partnership with City of Greater Bendigo, City of Greater Geelong, City of Greater Shepparton, City of Merri-bek, City of Monash, City of Yarra, Maroondah City Council, Menzies School of Health Research, Monash University, Municipal Association of Victoria, Nillumbik Shire Council, National Nutrition Foundation, Sport & Recreation Victoria, The University of Newcastle and the Victorian Department of Health. The opinions, analysis and conclusions in this website are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
Access our privacy statement. [LINK COMING SOON]
Get in touch
Café Scout is free for anyone to use. If you’re interested in using the tool for research purposes or would like access to more detailed data outputs (e.g. Excel reports), please get in touch with our research team at cafescout@deakin.edu.au
We also welcome enquiries about project collaborations or adapting Café Scout for different settings or states, including ongoing work to support national-level application.
If you’ve used Café Scout, we’d love your feedback to help us continue improving the tool. Share your feedback below.
