Agency chef rates in Australia start near A$41 an hour on an ordinary weekday, because Skai Solutions costed the floor first: a casual Level 4 chef on the Restaurant Industry Award is A$36.81 an hour and superannuation adds 12 per cent. Everything an agency charges above that is its own cost and its margin.
Nobody publishes agency chef rates, because agencies quote per venue, per shift and per city, and most of them will not put a number on a web page. So this guide does the opposite. It builds the rate from the bottom up out of figures you can check yourself, so when a quote arrives you can tell in about thirty seconds whether it is a fair margin on a properly paid chef or a number that only works if somebody is being underpaid. It also covers the licence check that carries a bigger penalty than a year of agency shifts.
An agency quotes a charge-out rate, not a wage. That single hourly number has to cover the chef's pay, every on-cost the agency is legally carrying for that person, the agency's own overheads, and its margin. Understanding what sits inside it is the whole job, because two quotes that look ten dollars apart are often quoting different things.
Here is what an agency is paying for out of one hour of charge-out, for a qualified chef working an ordinary weekday shift in a standalone restaurant or cafe.
| What the agency is carrying | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|
| The chef's hourly rate | Restaurant Industry Award MA000119, Level 3 to Level 6 depending on the qualification and the duties |
| Casual loading of 25 per cent | The award, because almost all agency placements are casual engagements |
| Superannuation at 12.00 per cent | ATO super guarantee rate for 2026-27, now payable on each payday rather than quarterly |
| Workers compensation premium | State scheme, priced off the agency's payroll and claims history, not yours |
| Public liability and professional indemnity | Commercial cover the agency carries |
| Payroll administration and recruitment cost | The agency's own overhead, including the cost of the placements that fall through |
| Non-payment risk | The agency pays the chef whether or not you pay the invoice |
| Margin | Whatever is left |
Only the first three of those are fixed by law and published. The rest vary by agency, and that is the honest reason nobody puts a rate card on a web page. What you can do is price the fixed part exactly, and then judge the rest.
The Restaurant Industry Award MA000119 rates below apply from 1 July 2026. The casual column is the ordinary rate plus the 25 per cent casual loading. The third column adds the superannuation guarantee at 12.00 per cent, which is the number an agency actually has to fund before a single dollar of its own costs is covered.
| Award level | Ordinary hourly | Casual hourly | Casual plus 12% super |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 3, cook grade 2 | A$27.97 | A$34.96 | A$39.16 |
| Level 4, tradesperson (qualified chef) | A$29.45 | A$36.81 | A$41.23 |
| Level 5, cook grade 4 | A$31.30 | A$39.13 | A$43.83 |
| Level 6, cook grade 5 | A$32.13 | A$40.16 | A$44.98 |
Rates from the Fair Work Ombudsman pay guide for MA000119, effective 1 July 2026. Super guarantee rate from the ATO super guarantee page. The last column is our arithmetic on those two published figures, and you can redo it in a line: casual hourly multiplied by 1.12.
So the number to hold is about A$41 an hour. That is what a qualified Level 4 chef costs an agency for one ordinary weekday hour, before workers compensation, before insurance, before administration, before margin. A quote of A$45 an hour for a qualified chef on a Tuesday is a margin of roughly nine per cent over the statutory floor, which is thin. A quote of A$38 is not possible for a properly paid Level 4 casual, and the right question to ask is which level the agency is actually classifying that person at.
Two warnings on reading the table. First, these are ordinary weekday hours only. Saturday, Sunday and public holiday casual rates are set separately in the award, and you must never derive them by stacking the loading on the penalty, which is the single most common payroll error in this industry. We have written the level by level detail up in our guide to hospitality award pay levels, and the loading itself in casual loading in Australia. Second, a public holiday changes the arithmetic more than any other variable, which is why agency cover on Boxing Day and Anzac Day is quoted so far above the weekday number.
The award of the venue where the person works, not the award of the agency that employs them. MA000119 clause 4.3 puts labour hire and agency staff on the award of the industry in which they are working. So a chef supplied by a general staffing agency into a standalone restaurant is covered by the Restaurant Industry Award, and a chef supplied into a pub bistro is covered by the Hospitality Industry (General) Award MA000009, because that award follows the premises rather than the menu.
This matters commercially as well as legally. It means the floor above is the floor, and an agency cannot quote you a lower rate on the basis that it is a labour hire company rather than a hospitality one. If you are not sure which instrument your venue sits on, our guide to which award covers your restaurant works through the coverage clauses.
This is the part almost nothing written about agency staff in hospitality mentions, and it is the one with real money attached. Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory each run a labour hire licensing scheme, and in Victoria the offence sits on the host, meaning your venue, not just on the provider.
The Victorian Labour Hire Authority states it in plain terms: under the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018 (Vic), hosts must only use licensed providers, and a host business that engages an unlicensed labour hire provider can face penalties exceeding A$660,000 for a corporation and A$160,000 for an individual. The Authority also notes that hosts can be liable for a provider's contraventions under workplace and migration law, and share responsibility for workplace safety.
Queensland runs its scheme under the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2017 (Qld), and it prosecutes. On 30 October 2025 the Queensland Labour Hire Licensing Compliance Unit successfully prosecuted an unlicensed provider in the Mount Isa Magistrates Court, and the court imposed a fine of A$240,000 on the company and A$80,000 on the director on 13 charges. Two further prosecutions were finalised in 2025 and 2026. These are not theoretical penalties.
The check takes about two minutes and the Victorian Authority publishes the method: look the provider up on the public licence register rather than accepting paper documentation, confirm the company offering the service is the one named on the register, contact the nominated officer using the details on the register rather than the ones on the quote, and keep a record that you did it. It also suggests subscribing to be notified if a provider's licence status changes, which matters because a licence can be suspended between the day you sign and the day the chef turns up.
Set that against the rate discussion above. A venue chasing A$4 an hour off a charge-out rate is chasing about A$160 on a ten-hour shift. A venue that takes the cheapest quote from an unlicensed provider in Victoria is exposed to a penalty three orders of magnitude larger than that. If a quote is materially below the floor in the table, the licence register is the first place to look, not the last.
Honestly, less often than agencies would like and more often than owners admit. Agency cover is expensive per hour and it is the correct decision in three situations.
And the honest opposite, because a page that only sells one answer is not worth reading. If you are using agency chefs most weeks, the rate is not your problem. Your roster is. At roughly A$45 an hour against a permanent Level 4 ordinary rate of A$29.45, thirty agency hours a week is A$24,258 a year of difference on the base rates alone, and the permanent side of that still has super and leave to add. Even so, the direction is not close, and at that point the money belongs in a wage rather than an invoice. Our guide to restaurant labour cost percentage is the place to check whether that is what is happening to you.
Here is the operational bit nobody costs. On the day you are short a chef, the phone is the first thing that gets dropped. The owner is on the pass, the floor is one person light because somebody has gone to help plate, and the handset rings out. That is exactly the shift where a missed booking hurts most, because you have already committed to an expensive hour of labour and you need the covers to carry it.
We have written separately about what happens when a staff member calls in sick and about whether the hospitality staff shortage is still real in the vacancy data. The short version for this page: agency cover fixes the kitchen and does nothing for the phone, and the phone is where the revenue that pays for the agency comes from.
That is the gap Skai Solutions fills. An AI receptionist answers every call on the first ring, takes the booking or the order, and does it identically whether the kitchen is fully staffed or running on borrowed hands. It takes about five days to set up against your own menu and your own booking rules, so it is in place before the next short week rather than after it. For contrast, the cost of an AI receptionist is a flat monthly figure rather than an hourly one.
If an hourly rate is what you are weighing, the phone is the cheapest hour in the building to cover. What an AI receptionist costs a coffee shop against a person on the counter has that comparison with the wage inputs shown.
Expect quotes in a band starting around A$45 an hour for a qualified chef on an ordinary weekday, rising sharply for weekends, public holidays and short-notice cover. The statutory floor underneath that is about A$41.23 an hour for a casual Level 4 on MA000119 including 12 per cent superannuation, so a weekday quote below roughly A$41 should prompt a question about how the chef is being classified.
Not directly. The agency employs the chef and is responsible for the super guarantee, and it is funded out of the charge-out rate you pay. From 1 July 2026 that super has to be paid on each payday rather than quarterly, which is one reason charge-out rates moved during 2026.
Sometimes, and it depends entirely on which day it is. Overtime and penalty rates on your own staff can exceed an agency weekday rate, while an agency public holiday rate will usually exceed anything you can pay in-house. Price both against the same shift rather than in general.
In Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT, yes, and in Victoria engaging an unlicensed provider is an offence for your business with penalties exceeding A$660,000 for a corporation. Check the public register, not the paperwork the provider hands you.
No. Clause 4.3 of MA000119 puts agency and labour hire staff on the award of the industry in which they are working, so the venue's award applies rather than the agency's.