No official body publishes an average spend per head for Australian or New Zealand restaurants, and the closest real figure is the NZ$55 average card transaction value Stats NZ published for August 2026.
Skai Solutions answers the phones for restaurants and cafes across Australia and New Zealand, and this is the benchmark operators ask for most and find least. The figures that come up in a search are mostly estimates with no source behind them. Below are the only official numbers that exist on either side of the Tasman, what they actually measure, and how to work out your own instead.
Total sales for a period divided by the number of customers served in that period. Covers, not transactions, if you can get covers: a table of four paying on one card is four heads, and counting it as one will flatter the number by a factor of four.
Three details decide whether the figure is any use:
Very few, and that is the honest headline of this page. New Zealand is the better served of the two markets, because Stats NZ publishes an averages table inside its monthly electronic card transactions release.
| Stats NZ, electronic card transactions | Figure |
|---|---|
| Average value per transaction, August 2026 | NZ$55 |
| Average value per transaction, year ended March 2026 (provisional) | NZ$55 |
| Transactions per head of population, year ended March 2026 (provisional) | 382 |
| Value of transactions per head of population, year ended March 2026 (provisional) | NZ$20,854 |
| Hospitality card spend, August 2026 (actual) | NZ$1,387 million |
Those come from the Electronic card transactions: August 2026 release, published by Stats NZ on 15 September 2026. Note what they are and are not. They are card spending across all industries, not restaurant spending, and the hospitality figure is an industry grouping that includes accommodation and bars. They include GST.
Australia has no equivalent per head series. The nearest official figure is the ABS Monthly Household Spending Indicator, which put household spending on hotels, cafes and restaurants at A$11,530.9 million in August 2026 in original terms, and A$11,382.1 million seasonally adjusted, up 0.8 per cent on the month and 6.9 per cent through the year. That release is dated 29 September 2026. The category covers hotels and pubs as well as restaurants and cafes, so it is not a restaurant number either.
Look at the Stats NZ averages table across a decade rather than a month and something useful falls out. Value per transaction was NZ$50 in the year ended March 2017 and NZ$55 in the year ended March 2026. Over the same nine years, transactions per head of population went from 331 to 382.
So the average basket grew about 10 per cent in nominal dollars across nine years, which is to say it went backwards in real terms, while the number of times people reached for a card rose about 15 per cent. New Zealanders are paying more often, in smaller amounts.
That matters if you are setting a spend per head target, because the industry advice is almost always to lift the basket, and the published data says the market has been moving the other way for most of a decade. The one exception in the series is December, which reached NZ$58 in December 2025 against NZ$54 to NZ$55 for the rest of that year. If your own spend per head only works in December, you are reading a seasonal effect, not a trend.
Less than it looks, and here is the arithmetic that shows why. This calculation is Skai Solutions' own, not either agency's, and the inputs are both linked above. Take the ABS August 2026 figure of A$11,530.9 million and divide it by Australia's estimated resident population of 27,921,150 at 31 March 2026. That is about A$413 per resident for the month on hotels, cafes and restaurants. Doing the same on the New Zealand side, NZ$1,387 million of hospitality card spend divided by an estimated resident population of 5,357,300 at 30 June 2026 is about NZ$259 per resident for the month.
Two caveats we are publishing rather than hiding. The spending months are August 2026 but the population estimates are March and June 2026, so the periods do not line up exactly. And both categories are broader than restaurants. Use those figures as the scale of the market, not as a target for your own average bill.
For business level scale, the ABS Australian Industry release for 2024-25 put sales and service income for the food and beverage services subdivision at A$134,077 million with employment of about 1.1 million at the end of June. That subdivision includes pubs and clubs as well as cafes, restaurants and takeaway, so do not relabel it.
Work on the one lever that does not fight the trend above: attachment rate rather than price. If a cafe takes 180 transactions a day at A$18.50, that is A$3,330. Adding A$1.20 of average basket, roughly one pastry attached to one coffee in four, is A$216 a day and about A$1,512 a week on the same door count. That is Skai Solutions' arithmetic on round numbers, and the point of it is the ratio, not the dollars: a small attachment gain beats a price rise you have to defend to every customer.
Before you chase it, measure the inputs properly. The Restaurant Association of New Zealand's food costing guideline gives the formula for food cost and names the five usual causes of a bad one, and it is a method document rather than a benchmark, so use it that way. Our guides to food cost percentage, table turnover and sales per labour hour cover the three numbers that usually move before spend per head does. If you want the revenue side first, start with average restaurant revenue in Australia.
Spend per head is one half of revenue. The other half is how many people come through, and that can be built from published figures too. The arithmetic is on our page on how many customers a cafe gets a day.
Spend per head is one of two numbers that make up a day. The other is how many people come through the door, which our page on how many customers a cafe gets a day works through.
Single item takeaways, coffee only sites and anyone whose menu has almost no range. If there is nothing to attach, spend per head is close to fixed and watching it will only make you feel bad. Covers, labour cost and waste are the numbers that move in those businesses, and prime cost is the one that decides whether the week worked. The same goes for a venue in its first three months, where the figure is mostly noise from an unsettled menu.
One thing, and it is arithmetic rather than a claim. An unanswered call is not a lost line item, it is a lost basket, and in a group booking it is several. If your average spend per head is A$42 and a missed call was a table of four, the arithmetic is A$168, not A$42. Work out your own number before buying anything to fix it: if the monthly value of the calls you are missing is smaller than the monthly fee, do not buy it. Skai Solutions answers every call, takes the booking or the order against your live menu, and hands the call to a person when it needs one. Setup is five days.
Spend per head is also how you price a missed cafe call. What a coffee shop call is worth and whether an AI receptionist pays for itself runs that test on a cafe average rather than a restaurant one.
How do you work out average spend per head?
Divide total sales for a period by the number of customers served in that period. Use covers rather than transactions, because a table of four paying on one card is four heads, and keep the same definition of sales every month.
What is the average spend per head in a restaurant in Australia?
Neither the ABS nor any other official Australian body publishes an average spend per head for restaurants. Figures circulating online are generally estimates with no stated source. The nearest official number is household spending on hotels, cafes and restaurants, which the ABS put at A$11,530.9 million in August 2026.
Is there an official spend per head figure for New Zealand?
Stats NZ publishes an averages table in its electronic card transactions release. Average value per transaction was NZ$55 in August 2026, and 382 transactions per head of population with NZ$20,854 of card spending per head in the year ended March 2026.
Should spend per head include GST?
Either is defensible as long as you never change it. The Stats NZ card figures include GST, so compare like with like if you benchmark against them.
Why is my spend per head falling when sales are up?
Usually because transaction count is growing faster than basket size. The Stats NZ series shows the same pattern across the market: value per transaction rose from NZ$50 to NZ$55 across nine years while transactions per head rose from 331 to 382.
What is a good spend per head target?
There is no published benchmark to set one against, so the only sound target is your own figure from the same daypart and channel last year. Split the number by daypart before you set anything.