Award minimum rates rose 4.75% on 1 July 2026, putting a Level 1 food and beverage attendant on A$26.44 an hour, A$33.05 on Saturday and A$39.66 on Sunday. Skai Solutions has set out every level and every penalty rate under the Hospitality Industry (General) Award MA000009 below.
The Hospitality Industry (General) Award MA000009 covers hotels, motels, serviced apartments, resorts, caravan parks, wine bars, taverns, caterers, casinos, and any restaurant attached to one of those. It does not cover a standalone restaurant or cafe. The Fair Work Ombudsman summary of MA000009 sets out that coverage list.
One cost sits on top of every rate in this table and is not in it. Permanent staff are paid a further 17.5% while they are on annual leave, and the clause says so in the award rather than in the pay guide. Annual leave loading in the hospitality awards covers what that adds over a year.
If you run a standalone restaurant, bistro or cafe, this is not your award and the rates below are not the ones you pay above Level 2. Go to Restaurant Industry Award MA000119 pay rates, which has the coverage test and the full MA000119 table. A fast food outlet is on MA000003 and a registered club is on the Registered Clubs Award.
At the bottom of the scale the two awards are identical. As at 1 July 2026 the base weekly and hourly rates at Introductory, Level 1 and Level 2 are the same figure on MA000009 and MA000119: A$1,004.90 a week and A$26.44 an hour at Level 1. The classifications and the penalties diverge above that, and the two awards define the working day differently, which is the section further down this page.
Adult full time and part time rates, taken from the Fair Work Ombudsman pay guide for the Restaurant Industry Award MA000119, published 24 June 2026. They apply from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 July 2026. All figures in AUD.
| Level | Weekly | Hourly | Saturday | Sunday | Public holiday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introductory | A$978.10 | A$25.74 | A$32.18 | A$38.61 | A$57.92 |
| Level 1, food and beverage attendant grade 1, kitchen attendant grade 1 | A$1,004.90 | A$26.44 | A$33.05 | A$39.66 | A$59.49 |
| Level 2, food and beverage attendant grade 2, cook grade 1 | A$1,029.10 | A$27.08 | A$33.85 | A$40.62 | A$60.93 |
| Level 3, food and beverage attendant grade 3, cook grade 2 | A$1,062.90 | A$27.97 | A$34.96 | A$41.96 | A$62.93 |
| Level 4, tradesperson cook or attendant | A$1,119.10 | A$29.45 | A$36.81 | A$44.18 | A$66.26 |
| Level 5, food and beverage supervisor, cook grade 4 | A$1,189.40 | A$31.30 | A$39.13 | A$46.95 | A$70.43 |
| Level 6, cook grade 5 | A$1,221.10 | A$32.13 | A$40.16 | A$48.20 | A$72.29 |
Two loadings get missed more than any others. Ordinary hours worked between 10pm and midnight Monday to Friday attract an extra A$2.95 an hour or part of an hour. Between midnight and 6am it is an extra A$4.42. Those apply on top of the hourly rate in the table, and they apply to part of an hour, so a kitchen that runs fifteen minutes past ten has triggered them.
Casual rates are the hourly rate plus the 25% casual loading. At Level 1 that is A$33.05 an hour, at Level 2 A$33.85. Casual weekend and public holiday rates are set separately in the award rather than by stacking the loading on the penalty, so check the pay guide rather than multiplying.
The Fair Work Commission Annual Wage Review 2026 lifted modern award minimum rates by 4.75% from 1 July 2026, and lifted the national minimum wage itself by 6% to A$26.44 an hour, or A$33.05 an hour casual. Note what that does to the bottom of the restaurant scale: Level 1 and the national minimum wage are now the same number. There is no gap left between the floor of the economy and the entry classification of a restaurant.
Set that against what wages in the sector are actually doing. The ABS Wage Price Index, June quarter 2026 put annual wage growth in Accommodation and Food Services at 2.8%, against 3.2% across all industries. So the legislated floor moved 4.75% while measured pay in the sector moved 2.8%. For venues already paying above award that gap is absorbed. For venues paying at award, and most casual hospitality rosters sit at or near it, the whole 4.75% is real cost.
The ATO small business benchmarks for restaurants, built from lodged 2023-24 tax returns, put labour at 18% to 30% of turnover for restaurants in the A$65,000 to A$500,000 band, and 23% to 32% for the A$500,001 to A$2,000,000 band. The ATO benchmarks for coffee shops put cafes at 21% to 32%. A 4.75% rise on the wage line alone moves a venue sitting at 28% to roughly 29.3%, before a single extra hour is rostered.
There are three levers and only three. Charge more, roster fewer hours, or get more revenue out of the hours you already roster. The first is a pricing decision. The second usually shows up as slower service. The third is where phone handling sits, which is why this page exists on a phone answering site. Our page on restaurant labour cost percentage works through the calculation itself.
Here is a worked example using the table above, so you can substitute your own numbers. Take a Level 2 food and beverage attendant on a Sunday: A$40.62 an hour. Suppose the phone takes 45 minutes of their shift across a Sunday service, which is not a large number for a venue taking bookings and takeaway orders on the same line. That is A$30.47 of Sunday labour spent on the phone, in one service.
Run it across a week with two weekend services and five weekdays at the Level 2 ordinary rate of A$27.08, at the same 45 minutes a service: A$30.47 twice, plus A$20.31 five times, is A$162.49 a week, or about A$8,450 a year. That is one venue, one line, on award minimums, with nobody rostered specifically to answer it. The real cost is higher, because the person answering was doing something else and stopped.
The comparison worth making is not phone versus no phone. It is which minutes of paid floor time you want going to the handset. A restaurant phone system does not change that number at all, because a phone system routes calls, it does not answer them. An AI receptionist changes it by taking the call itself, which is the argument Skai Solutions makes and the reason the numbers above are worth checking against your own roster.
The one operators ask about most is laundry, and the answer is not a rate: see what the laundry allowance under the Restaurant Award actually is, including why plain black and white attire attracts nothing at all.
The one operators ask about most is laundry, and the answer is not a rate: see what the laundry allowance under the Restaurant Award actually is, including why plain black and white attire attracts nothing at all.
Allowances sit outside the rate tables and they are award specific, so they are not reproduced here. Split shift, laundry, meal, tool and cold work allowances all have their own clauses and their own indexation, and the restaurant award schedules them separately to the hospitality award. The figures for a standalone restaurant or cafe are on Restaurant Industry Award MA000119 pay rates.
One item in that family is a penalty rather than an allowance and it belongs on this page, because it is one of the two things MA000009 charges that MA000119 does not. That is the evening loading, and it is covered below.
Put the two together. Someone rostered to 11pm on a Tuesday at Level 3 is on A$27.97 plus A$2.95 of late night loading, which is A$30.92 an ordinary hour, and if their day was broken they are owed the split shift allowance as well. That is what the person who stays back for the phone costs, every weeknight. An AI receptionist carries no allowance schedule at all, and what an AI receptionist costs per month is a single flat figure you can set against those penalty hours. Not better than a person, just not indexed to anything.
Fair Work publishes a separate pay guide PDF for each award, reissued every time the rates change, and the hospitality one is the pay guide for the Hospitality Industry (General) Award MA000009. The current edition carries the rates that started on 1 July 2026. If you run a restaurant or a cafe rather than a pub, hotel or club, the pay guide you want is the Restaurant Industry Award MA000119 instead, and which of the two applies to you is decided by your premises rather than your menu. That test is on which award covers my restaurant.
Two things the pay guide will not do for you. It does not tell you which classification a given job sits in, which is where most underpayments start: the duty lists for food and beverage attendant grade 2 and grade 3 are nearly identical and the difference is training, not tasks. The job title to level mapping is on hospitality award pay levels. And it does not include the allowances, which sit in the award text rather than the rate table.
One number worth holding next to the rates on this page. Award minimum wages rose 4.75% on 1 July 2026, and over the twelve months to July 2026 the ABS measured restaurant menu prices up 4.7% and take away prices up 4.2%. The industry put the wage rise on the menu almost exactly, and takeaways came up about half a point short. The working is on how much restaurant prices have gone up.
The smaller the venue, the harder it is to justify a graded hour on the phone at all. That trade off is worked through on our page on whether an AI receptionist works for a coffee shop.
If you need the exact rate for a specific classification, a junior, an apprentice, an overtime band or a split shift allowance, do not use this page. Use the Fair Work Ombudsman Pay and Conditions Tool, which is free, official and calculates against the facts you enter. This page is a benchmark for costing a roster, not a payroll instrument.
Two more honest limits. Rates change every 1 July, so anything you read that is not dated is a guess about the past. And an enterprise agreement overrides the award, so if your venue has one the table above tells you only the floor it must clear.
Count one week of calls, then price that block at the Sunday rate from the table above, because the expensive hours are the ones you cannot avoid staffing. The rest of the operating numbers are in our guides, alongside the staffing picture behind them.
Three rules sit next to the rates rather than in them. How short a shift you may roster at all is at minimum shift hours in hospitality. New Zealand has no award, so the same costing runs differently and is at hospitality wages in New Zealand. And which level a person sits on is decided by the duties they actually perform, which for a host or a phone person is worked through at restaurant receptionist duties and responsibilities.
In Victoria, NSW and Queensland, no: the rate is identical. In Western Australia, it depends on how your business is structured, and that exception is covered on its own below because almost nobody publishes it.
Modern awards are national instruments made under the Fair Work Act. There is no Victorian hospitality award rate and no separate NSW or Queensland one. A Level 3 food and beverage attendant in Geelong, Parramatta and Cairns is on the same ordinary hourly rate on the same date. Searching for the rate with a state name attached returns the national figure.
Four things genuinely do change by state, and they are the reason the question keeps getting asked.
If you run venues on both sides of a state border, the wage table is the part you do not have to duplicate, outside Western Australia. The public holiday calendar is.
Worth separating two costs before going further. The rate you pay a person on the floor is set by the award. The cost of having the phone answered is not, and an AI phone answering service for a restaurant is priced per month rather than per hour.
Only if your business is incorporated. Western Australia still runs its own industrial relations system alongside the national one, and which one you are in is decided by your structure, not your postcode. Private Sector Labour Relations, the WA government body that administers it, sets out which system of employment law applies. Read on 13 October 2026, it puts these employers in the WA STATE system: sole traders, unincorporated partnerships, and unincorporated trust arrangements where none of the trustees or other entities is a Pty Ltd entity. It puts these in the NATIONAL system: Pty Ltd businesses that are trading or financial corporations, incorporated partnerships where one or more partner is a Pty Ltd entity, and foreign corporations.
So a Perth cafe owned by a Pty Ltd company is on MA000119 and every figure on this page applies to it. The identical cafe across the road, run by its owner as a sole trader, is not a national system employer at all. MA000119 and MA000009 do not cover it. Its instrument is the Restaurant, Tearoom and Catering Workers' Award 1979, a WA state award, and its rates are set by the WA Industrial Relations Commission's own annual State Wage Case rather than by the Fair Work Commission's annual wage review.
No WA state rate is quoted here on purpose. The most recent summary of that award published on wa.gov.au carries rates from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2024, on a document dated 31 January 2025, two wage decisions behind the 1 July 2026 federal figures above. Get the current rate from Wageline on 1300 655 266, not from a federal pay guide. And note the consequence: a WA sole trader who incorporates moves from a WA state award onto a federal modern award, with different classifications and penalties, on the day the company starts employing.
Two differences, and both of them are money rather than paperwork. They are why a hotel bistro and the standalone cafe next door can pay different amounts for the same shift with the same people on it.
The evening loading starts three hours earlier. On MA000009 the evening loading of A$2.95 an hour begins at 7pm. On MA000119 it begins at 10pm. A 7pm to 11pm dinner shift therefore carries three loaded hours on the hospitality award that the same shift does not carry on the restaurant award: A$8.85 per person per night. Run four staff over a six night week and that is A$212.40 a week, A$11,044.80 a year, on rostering that looks identical on paper.
Casual Sunday is dearer at the bottom of the scale. A casual from Introductory to Level 2 is paid 175% of the ordinary rate on Sunday under MA000009, against 150% under MA000119. At Level 2 that is A$47.39 an hour against A$40.62, a gap of A$6.77 an hour or A$54.16 across an eight hour Sunday for one person.
Both figures come from the penalty tables of the two award texts as they stand from 1 July 2026. Neither is discretionary, and neither shows up in a payroll system that was set up on the wrong award code. If you are not certain which award you are on, the coverage test is on our restaurant award page.
One more thing this page does not do: it does not tell you which level a given staff member belongs on. That is decided by duties, not job titles, and it is worked through on hospitality award pay levels, including what one level of misclassification costs over a year.
Two related pages sit alongside this one: whether you can change an employee's roster covers the 7 days notice and the days off limits that decide when these rates get paid, and what a food handler certificate costs in Australia prices the training that goes with the classification.
Fifteen minutes, your menu, your busiest Sunday.
Book a Free DemoTwo related pages go deeper than this one on a single line of the award: what casual loading costs in hospitality, which prices the 25% loading level by level, and whether your venue needs a food safety supervisor, which is the other compliance obligation that lands on the same manager.
One cost the award does not contain at all: long service leave in hospitality comes from state law, not from the award, and a long serving casual can carry more than five weeks of it.
The rates above are also what a missed break is priced at. Do you have to pay staff for breaks works clause 16.5 through at the Level 2 rate: A$13.54 an hour extra, running from when the break was due until the shift ends.
From the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, a Level 1 food and beverage attendant grade 1 on the Restaurant Industry Award is on A$1,004.90 a week, A$26.44 an hour, A$33.05 on Saturday and A$39.66 on Sunday. Casual is the hourly rate plus the 25% loading, so A$33.05.
On the Restaurant Industry Award from 1 July 2026, public holidays are A$59.49 an hour at Level 1, A$60.93 at Level 2, A$62.93 at Level 3 and A$72.29 at Level 6 for full time and part time employees. Casual public holiday rates are set separately in the award.
Modern award minimum wages rose 4.75%. The national minimum wage rose 6% to A$26.44 an hour, or A$33.05 including the 25% casual loading. Both were set by the Fair Work Commission in the Annual Wage Review 2026.
7pm, and this is the difference that costs real money. On MA000009 ordinary hours from 7pm carry an extra A$2.95 an hour, where the restaurant award MA000119 does not start that loading until 10pm. From midnight to 6am both awards add A$4.42. A 7pm to 11pm dinner shift therefore costs A$8.85 more per person on the hospitality award.
Related: which award covers your restaurant or cafe, and what a public holiday surcharge has to cover.
Related: sales per labour hour, which turns these award rates into the sales each rostered hour has to produce.