An Australian restaurant or cafe can charge a public holiday surcharge without printing a second menu, but only if the menu carries the words a surcharge of [percentage] applies on [day or days] at least as prominently as its most prominent price. Skai Solutions works with venues in both countries, and the number underneath the whole argument is that a public holiday adds exactly 125% of the base hourly rate for every hour worked, which is A$33.85 an hour at Restaurant Industry Award Level 2.
New Zealand runs a different rule and it constrains the percentage rather than the wording. Australia gives you an exemption with a prominence test attached. Both are set out below, along with the wage arithmetic that decides whether 10% is a real recovery or a gesture, and why the card surcharge ban starting 1 October 2026 has nothing to do with any of it.
Start with the wage bill, because that is the only number the surcharge is trying to recover. Under the Restaurant Industry Award MA000119, ordinary hours on a public holiday are paid at 225% of the minimum hourly rate for a full time or part time employee and 250% for a casual, both applying from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026.
Subtract what you would have paid anyway and something tidy falls out. A permanent normally costs 100% and goes to 225%. A casual normally costs 125% and goes to 250%. Either way the public holiday adds exactly 125% of the base hourly rate for every hour worked, and it makes no difference whether the person is permanent or casual. At Level 2, where the base rate is A$27.08, the extra is A$33.85 an hour, per person.
| Level 2, MA000119, from 1 July 2026 | Permanent | Casual |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary weekday hour | A$27.08 | A$33.85 |
| Public holiday hour | A$60.93 | A$67.70 |
| Extra cost per hour | A$33.85 | A$33.85 |
This is our own arithmetic, and the inputs are all above, so check it. Take a venue that puts eight people on for an eight hour day, all at Level 2. That is 64 hours. At A$33.85 of extra cost an hour, the public holiday adds A$2,166.40 to the wage bill before anything else moves.
Now work backwards from the surcharge. A 10% surcharge recovers A$2,166.40 only once you take A$21,664 that day. A 15% surcharge gets there at A$14,443. That is the whole reason the market has settled on 10% to 15% rather than 5%: below about 10% the surcharge is decorative for most single site venues, and above 15% it starts costing you the walk in trade it was meant to protect.
Two honest caveats on our own numbers. Public holiday trade is usually stronger than a normal day, so the takings threshold is easier to clear than it looks. And the wage bill is not the only cost that moves, but it is the only one you can source and defend, which matters for the New Zealand rule further down this page. Our page on restaurant labour cost percentage sets the same figures against turnover across a normal week.
Australian Consumer Law normally makes you display a single total price including every unavoidable fee. Weekend and public holiday surcharges get an exemption from that rule, which is why you do not have to print a second menu. The exemption comes with a condition, and the condition is a specific sentence.
The ACCC states that a restaurant or cafe charging such a surcharge must include these words on the menu: a surcharge of [percentage] applies on [day or days]. And then the part almost everybody misses: those words must be at least as prominent as the most prominent price on the menu. Not legible. Not present. As prominent as your biggest price. If the menu does not list prices at all, the information has to be displayed some other prominent way.
Western Australia's Consumer Protection, whose guidance was last updated on 1 September 2026, puts the test in plainer words: customers must be able to immediately tell that the price shown on the menu is not the final price they will be charged on those days. A line of six point grey type at the bottom of the last page does not pass that test, and it is the single most common way a compliant surcharge becomes a non compliant one.
Fifteen minutes, your venue, and the public holiday call you never get to answer.
Book a Free DemoNo, and the confusion is about to get expensive because the date is close. From 1 October 2026 the Visa, Mastercard, American Express and eftpos networks introduce no surcharge rules for prepaid, debit and credit card payments, which means businesses cannot charge customers a surcharge for those payment types.
The ACCC is explicit on the point: those changes apply to card payment surcharges only, and they do not apply to hospitality sector weekend or public holiday surcharges, or to other fees such as booking fees. Two different charges, two different rule sets. Your 1.5% card fee is going. Your 15% public holiday surcharge is not. Until 30 September 2026 the current card surcharging law still applies, and the ceiling on a card surcharge remains what the payment type actually costs you.
New Zealand has no exemption to sit inside, no prescribed sentence and no prominence test written down. It has something narrower instead, and it bites harder on the number you choose.
The Commerce Commission puts it this way: a business can set its own prices and can charge a surcharge, but the surcharge must be clearly disclosed before the customer decides to buy, and the reason for it must be accurately described. If you say the surcharge covers the extra wages you pay on a public holiday, then the surcharge should not exceed those costs, and the costs have to have actually been incurred. That is a real constraint on the percentage, and it is why the arithmetic higher up this page belongs in your own file rather than in your head.
Then the trap that catches New Zealand venues every year. Public holidays are Mondayised, so when Waitangi Day or Anzac Day falls on a weekend the observed holiday moves for staff who do not ordinarily work that day. Some venues incur the extra cost on the Saturday, some on the Monday, some on both. The Commission says it is likely to be misleading, and a breach of the Fair Trading Act, to charge a public holiday surcharge on a day when you do not actually incur the extra cost. Under the Fair Trading Act the maximum is NZ$200,000 for an individual and NZ$600,000 for a business, per offence.
The wage input on the New Zealand side is different too. The Holidays Act 2003 requires at least time and a half for working a public holiday, and an alternative holiday, a paid day off later, if it was an otherwise working day for that person. That second entitlement is the one operators leave out of the sum. Our page on hospitality wages in New Zealand works through the rates.
A surcharge is one option, not the only one, and it is not always the right one.
Public holidays are the days people ring to ask whether you are open, what the surcharge is, and whether there is a table at one. It is the highest volume phone day of the quarter and the day you have the fewest staff standing near a handset, because every hour of standing there costs 225%.
That is a real cost, not a rhetorical one. Forty minutes of phone time on a public holiday at the Level 2 permanent rate of A$60.93 an hour is A$40.62 of labour, against A$18.05 on a normal Tuesday. And an unanswered call on the day is worse than usual, because the caller is choosing between you and whoever picks up first. Skai Solutions sells an AI receptionist that answers those calls and can be told what the surcharge is and which days it applies to, and setup takes five days. It is not the right buy for every venue. If your holiday phone is quiet, a recorded message with the surcharge on it is free, and our page on the restaurant answering machine message shows how to word one.
This page summarises published regulator guidance and award text. It is general information, not legal advice.
Most venues charge 10% to 15%. There is no legal cap under the price display rules, but the arithmetic above shows why: at Level 2 rates a public holiday adds A$33.85 an hour per person, so a 10% surcharge only recovers eight staff for eight hours once you take about A$21,664 that day.
No. Restaurants and cafes are exempt from including the surcharge in the displayed total price, provided the menu carries the words a surcharge of [percentage] applies on [day or days], at least as prominently as the most prominent price on the menu.
Yes, but it must be clearly disclosed before the customer decides to buy and the stated reason must be accurate. If you say it covers extra wage costs, the Commerce Commission says the surcharge should not exceed those costs and the costs must actually have been incurred, including on Mondayised holidays.
Five days from sign up to live calls with Skai Solutions. You keep your number, and the divert can run on the holiday only if that is all you want.
More: hospitality award rates in Australia, whether you can charge a no show fee, or what a normal restaurant profit margin looks like.