Restaurant meal prices in Australia rose 4.7% in the 12 months to July 2026 on the ABS Consumer Price Index, while the CPI as a whole rose 3.5%, so on Skai Solutions' reading the market rate for a 2026 menu rise is about 4.7%.
That figure matters because award minimum wages went up 4.75% on 1 July 2026. The average restaurant passed almost exactly that through to the menu. The average takeaway did not. If you raised prices by 3% this year you are behind the market, and the gap is measurable rather than a feeling.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes a monthly Consumer Price Index with a separate index for restaurant meals and another for take away and fast foods, both as a weighted average of the eight capital cities. These are the index numbers from the July 2026 release, published 26 August 2026.
| ABS CPI series | July 2025 | July 2026 | Change over 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant meals | 98.98 | 103.65 | 4.7% |
| Take away and fast foods | 99.20 | 103.41 | 4.2% |
| Food and non-alcoholic beverages (all groups) | - | - | 3.2% |
| CPI, all groups | - | - | 3.5% |
The arithmetic on the first two rows is ours and you can check it: 103.65 divided by 98.98 is 1.047, so 4.7%. For take away, 103.41 divided by 99.20 is 1.042, so 4.2%. The bottom two rows are the annual rates the ABS states directly in that release.
The useful part is the spread. Eating out got more expensive faster than everything else in the economy, and faster than the groceries that go into it. Your suppliers raised prices 3.2%. Restaurants raised menus 4.7%. That difference is the labour bill arriving on the menu.
For sit-down restaurants, almost exactly. For takeaways, no.
The Fair Work Commission lifted modern award minimum wages 4.75% from 1 July 2026. Restaurant meal prices rose 4.7% over the year to July 2026. That is a shortfall of 0.05 percentage points, which on any honest reading is a full pass-through: the industry put the wage rise on the menu.
Take away and fast foods rose 4.2%. Against the same 4.75% wage rise that is a shortfall of 0.55 percentage points, and it is the single most useful number on this page if you run a takeaway. Takeaway operators, as a group, absorbed rather than recovered about half a point of the 2026 wage rise.
What that costs, on our arithmetic with the inputs shown: 0.55% of A$900,000 of annual sales is A$4,950 a year. At A$1.5 million it is A$8,250. That is not a rounding error, and it compounds, because next year's rise starts from the lower base.
Two honest caveats. These are national averages across the eight capital cities, so your suburb, your rent and your mix will move your own number. And a wage rise is not the only cost in a menu price, which is why the pass-through comparison is a sanity check rather than a formula. The detail on the wage side is on our page covering hospitality award rates from 1 July 2026.
Start from 4.7% as the market rate, then adjust with your own three numbers rather than copying the average.
Added together, a venue at 33% labour with award-heavy rostering and average supplier increases needs roughly 2.6% to stand still on those two lines alone, before rent, power, insurance or a dollar of extra profit. The 4.7% the market took is the number that also pays for the rest. That is the real argument for not being timid: a rise that only covers wages leaves every other rising cost unfunded, and margin is what absorbs it.
Legally, no. There is no requirement in Australia to announce a menu price change or to give notice of one. The price you must honour is the price displayed at the time of sale, so the obligation is that your menus, your website, your online ordering and your specials board all say the same thing on the day the new prices start. Mismatched prices are where complaints and refunds come from, not the increase itself.
Practically, the venues that get the least pushback do four things.
Avoid one thing: a written notice apologising for the increase. It draws attention to the change and invites the argument. The ABS data says the whole category moved. You are not doing anything unusual.
A price rise works on the covers you serve. It does nothing at all about the covers you never hear from.
The phone is where that shows up. A venue raising prices 4.7% on A$900,000 of sales is chasing about A$42,300 a year. A phone that goes unanswered through the dinner peak can be worth more than that on its own, and unlike a price rise it costs nothing to test: pull your call records for last Friday and count the missed ones. Our page on no shows and the one on how long a restaurant phone should ring both cover how to measure it.
Being straight about this: if your phone mostly carries supplier calls and general enquiries rather than bookings and orders, a basic message-taking plan will serve you better than anything clever, and that is not us. The venues where an AI receptionist earns its keep are the ones whose phone rings hardest at exactly the hour nobody can pick it up.
The ABS release is free and it is the only Australian source that measures restaurant menu prices as a series rather than as an opinion. It updates monthly. For the cost side of the same sum, the pages on prime cost and overhead costs hold the method, and award pay levels holds the rates your roster is actually built from.
Fifteen minutes, your menu, your hardest order. Live in five days.
Book a Free DemoBefore raising every price, it is worth knowing which items can absorb it and which cannot. Menu engineering sorts a menu on units sold against contribution margin in dollars, and the group it calls Plowhorses is exactly where a small increase does the least damage.
How much have restaurant prices gone up in Australia in 2026?
Restaurant meal prices rose 4.7% in the 12 months to July 2026 on the ABS Consumer Price Index, from an index of 98.98 to 103.65 as a weighted average of the eight capital cities. Take away and fast foods rose 4.2% over the same period. The CPI as a whole rose 3.5%.
Is a 5% menu price increase too much?
It is close to the market rate rather than above it. The published average for restaurant meals was 4.7% for the year to July 2026, and award minimum wages rose 4.75% on 1 July 2026, so a 5% rise recovers the wage increase and very little else.
Do I have to give notice of a menu price increase?
No. There is no notice requirement in Australia. What matters is that the price displayed at the time of sale is the price you charge, so every menu, board, website and ordering platform needs to change on the same day.
Why did takeaway prices rise less than restaurant prices?
The ABS measured take away and fast foods at 4.2% against 4.7% for restaurant meals over the year to July 2026. Both faced the same 4.75% award wage rise, so takeaway operators as a group recovered about 0.55 percentage points less of it. On A$900,000 of sales that is about A$4,950 a year, on our arithmetic.
How long does it take to set up Skai Solutions?
Five days from sign up to live calls. You keep your existing number and divert calls to the agent, and the divert can be switched on during service only, after hours only, or always.