It comes as Victorian offices remain limited to having 25 per cent of their workforce on site for at least another month, meaning fewer office workers in Bendigo central than years gone by.

Bendigo cafes say trade has picked up since COVID-19 restrictions eased, but business is not as brisk as previous years.

Read more: Outdoor dining laws changed to help hospitality businesses

Client service manager Maree Stanley urged businesses to run meetings in Bendigo cafes that might otherwise have been on Zoom, to support eateries on otherwise slow weekdays.

Ms Stanley said many local cafes had told her they relied on the businesses around them for workday lunches and coffees.

She said like the shop local campaign, it would be great to see people meet local.

Ms Stanley said without a move like that, she feared Bendigo's cafes and eateries would become unsustainable.

"The world's changed. A lot of organisations will be thinking very hard about what percentage of their staff can come into offices forever," she said.

"If ordinary people don't step up and help then [cafes] will disappear and it'll be a sad day if that happens."

Cafe Hoo-gah Bendigo owner Gina Triolo said meeting local was a great idea, because it would help during the quieter periods of the day.

She said business had been going well since Christmas shopping began, but it had been a hard year. Trade was good, but definitely not the same as December 2019, she said.

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Ms Triolo's business is in the Fountain Court shopping centre, near the city's Bendigo Bank main offices and temporary council offices.

She said once queues of Bendigo Bank workers wanting a morning coffee stretched out the door for an hour, but that trade had dropped.

But Ms Triolo said Hoo-gah had developed a new customer base, without which the business would be in a dire situation.

"The bank's working from home, and that's a negative, but there might be more people working from home who seem to be more flexible," she said.

Cafe and chocolatier owner Hayley Tibbett said a lack of office workers meant she had changed the business focus, pushing the chocolate trade more.

Ms Tibbett said locals had really supported her business Indulge Fine Belgian Chocolates, with weekends so popular she had to introduce a time limit on tables. She said weekday coffee trade was quieter than this, but not too bad.

She said the business would have to evolve, as it was unlikely people would go back to working an office environment in the same way as previously.

Ms Tibbett said it had been a hard year despite the financial buffer of the chocolate production business.

"Myself like every other business owner, it's exhausting, it's been an exhausting year," she said.

"I think we're all just putting in as much as we can to get by, I know I'm exhausted."

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