The Restaurant Industry Award, MA000119, sets minimum rates, classifications and penalties for stand alone restaurants, cafes and similar food service venues. It is not the same instrument as the Hospitality Award, and the difference shows up most on a Sunday.
What does this award cover, and what does it not?
Food service venues that stand on their own. Stand alone restaurants not attached to a hotel, cafes, coffee shops and brunch venues, tea rooms, catering businesses, and reception and function centres not connected to accommodation. Takeaway food businesses fall inside it in some circumstances.
It does not cover restaurants inside hotels, which sit under the Hospitality Award, fast food outlets, which have their own award, or any workplace covered by an enterprise agreement that displaces the award. Our guide to award classifications sets out which instrument applies when it is not obvious.
Which classification applies to you?
One of six grades, and the grade tracks duties rather than titles. Introductory covers the first period with no relevant experience. Level 1 covers setting and clearing tables and collecting glasses. Level 2 covers pouring drinks, taking orders, serving food and basic cooking. Level 3 covers supervising a small section or cook grade 1. Levels 4 to 6 run through cook grade 2, chef de partie, head chef and restaurant manager.
Most working holiday makers in front of house sit at Level 1 or Level 2, and experienced baristas at Level 2 or Level 3. Duties drift upward faster than classifications do, which is how this award is quietly underapplied: someone taking orders and pouring drinks is not a Level 1 worker whatever the roster calls them.
How do the rates and penalties build up?
From the classification base, reviewed each 1 July, with the 25% casual loading applied for casuals and then the penalty for the day and time on top.
- Monday to Friday between 7pm and midnight: a modest evening loading
- Saturday: typically a 50% loading for casuals, which incorporates the casual loading in some classifications
- Sunday: typically 75% for casuals
- Public holidays: typically 150% for casuals
- Midnight to 7am: a higher overnight loading
The exact figures and cut off times sit in the current version of the award. Restaurant penalties are not identical to hotel penalties, so an employer applying the wrong award is paying the wrong Sunday rate.
What allowances does it carry?
More than most people claim. A meal allowance where overtime is worked without a break, a uniform allowance where the employer requires a uniform and does not supply it, a laundry allowance for washing a required uniform, a first aid allowance for the designated officer, and a tools allowance where you must provide your own equipment such as knives.
The tools allowance matters in kitchens, because chefs and cooks frequently supply their own knives and are entitled to be compensated rather than only to deduct the cost at tax time.
What happens if the wrong award has been applied?
You have been paid against the wrong rate schedule, and the shortfall accumulates every week rather than once. It is a consistent pattern of underpayment in food service, partly deliberate and partly because small venue payroll is set up once and never revisited.
Identifying the correct award is the first step, not a detail. Comparing your payslip against Hospitality Award rates when the Restaurant Award applies produces the wrong answer in both directions.
What does it do to your tax and super?
Underpaid wages understate everything downstream. The income reported to the ATO is lower than it should have been, and the 12% superannuation calculated on it is lower with it.
Wages recovered later are assessable in the year you receive them, not the year you earned them, and super on the corrected figure is recoverable separately. Our guide to unpaid super and what to do about it covers that side; the wages themselves run through the Fair Work Ombudsman.
Venue, level and roster set your figure.
The award is public and the rates are published. What you were owed depends on the venue and your roster, and the first point below decides all the rest.
- Whether the venue stands alone or sits inside a hotel, which decides the award entirely.
- Which classification your actual duties correspond to, rather than the title you were given.
- Whether you were left at introductory level beyond the point it applies.
- Whether you are casual, which brings the loading on top of every penalty.
- Which hours you worked, since Saturday, Sunday, evening and holiday penalties differ from the Hospitality Award.
- Whether allowances for uniform, laundry and your own tools were paid.
- Whether an enterprise agreement applies instead of the award.
Everything withheld across each venue reconciles at the end of the financial year, and you can estimate your tax refund from your year to date figures.