A level 1 food and beverage attendant's ordinary hour is worth $26.44 under the Hospitality Industry (General) Award. The same hour is worth $33.05 on a Saturday, $39.66 on a Sunday and $59.49 on a public holiday, and if the employee is casual, every one of those numbers changes again. One award, seven classification levels, separate casino classifications, penalty rates across five time windows and two published loaded rate schedules. That is the pay architecture a hospitality business is expected to run correctly every single week.
This summary covers the hospitality award (MA000009) as it applies from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026: who it covers, the current rates of pay, the penalty and overtime rules, loaded rates, allowances, and the places where hospitality payrolls commonly go wrong. Every figure is taken from the current award pay guide published by the Fair Work Ombudsman and cross-checked in the Pay and Conditions Tool. Treat this as general information: rates change, so confirm the current pay guide against your own circumstances before acting.
Checking the award covers your venue
The Hospitality Industry (General) Award covers employers in the hospitality industry throughout Australia and their employees in the classifications it lists. The coverage clause reaches:
- Hotels, motels, resorts and casinos
- Caterers, including function and convention catering
- Tourist and residential accommodation
- Restaurants operating in, or in connection with, premises owned or operated by employers otherwise covered by the award
That last line is the one that matters for food businesses. A restaurant inside a hotel is hospitality award territory. A standalone restaurant on the high street is not: it belongs to the Restaurant Industry Award, and the hospitality award's own coverage clause expressly excludes restaurants covered by the Restaurant Industry Award, the Fast Food Industry Award or the Registered and Licensed Clubs Award.
What sits outside MA000009
The exclusions are specific, and several of them surprise employers. The award does not cover:
- Standalone restaurants, cafés, fast food outlets and registered clubs, which have their own awards
- Boarding schools, hospitals and aged care catering
- Local government and in-flight catering
- Contract cleaning, security and gardening delivered by external providers, which stay with their own industry awards even when the work happens inside a hotel
Coverage follows the employer's industry and the employee's work, never the job title or what the last bookkeeper assumed. If you are not certain which instrument applies, start with working out which award covers your venue before touching a single pay rate, because every figure below is wrong for you if the coverage answer is wrong.
Setting pay by classification
Employees are classified into levels based on the duties they actually perform, with grade descriptors for each stream of work. The classification level, not the role advertised, sets the minimum pay rate.
Rates from 1 July 2026
Current adult minimum pay rates for full-time and part-time employees in the general (non-casino) classifications:
| Classification level | Weekly rate | Hourly rate | Casual hourly (25% loading) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introductory | $978.10 | $25.74 | $32.18 |
| Level 1 (e.g. food and beverage attendant grade 1) | $1,004.90 | $26.44 | $33.05 |
| Level 2 (e.g. cook grade 1) | $1,029.10 | $27.08 | $33.85 |
| Level 3 (e.g. food and beverage attendant grade 3) | $1,062.90 | $27.97 | $34.96 |
| Level 4 (e.g. cook (tradesperson) grade 3) | $1,119.10 | $29.45 | $36.81 |
| Level 5 (e.g. food and beverage supervisor) | $1,189.40 | $31.30 | $39.13 |
| Level 6 (cook (tradesperson) grade 5) | $1,221.10 | $32.13 | $40.16 |
Casino classifications carry their own scale across gaming, finance, security and surveillance streams, running from $993.00 per week at the casino introductory rate, through $1,171.70 for a level 3A table gaming employee, to $1,260.00 for a level 6 surveillance operator. Managerial staff in hotels have a dedicated rate of $1,223.39 per week. A venue with both general and casino operations classifies each employee against the stream their duties belong to, not against a single house scale.
Why Level 1 moved more than 4.75 per cent this year
The 2026 Annual Wage Review did two separate things, and payroll teams that treat them as one thing derive wrong numbers. The general increase lifted modern award minimum rates by 4.75 per cent. Separately, the Fair Work Commission continued phasing out the C13 classification rate, applying a larger structural adjustment so that the lowest rate for ongoing employment in any award is now $1,004.90 per week or $26.44 per hour, with entry-level rates limited to the first six months of employment at $978.10 or $25.74. In this award, the Introductory rate is the entry-level rate and Level 1 sits on the structural floor.
The practical rule: never calculate a 2026 rate by adding a flat percentage to last year's figure. The bottom of the scale moved by more than the headline increase, and the Commission has flagged further structural change in the next two reviews. Load each rate from the current award pay guide instead.
Introductory level is temporary by design
The Introductory classification applies while a new employee learns the job. It is not a rate a business can park someone on indefinitely: the award limits how long an employee stays at Introductory before they must be classified at Level 1 or above. An employee still on $25.74 a year after starting is a misclassification, and every pay run extends the underpayment.
Rostering and penalty rates
Ordinary hours for full-time employees average 38 hours per week over the roster cycle. The loadings then attach to when the hours fall, and a typical hospitality roster touches several of these windows in a single week.
Weekends and public holidays
| Time worked | Full-time and part-time | Casual |
|---|---|---|
| Saturday | 125% | 150% |
| Sunday | 150% | 175% |
| Public holiday | 225% (minimum 4 hours payment) | 250% (minimum 2 hours payment) |
Those percentages compound from different bases, which is why the published dollar figures matter more than the multipliers. A casual level 2 cook on a public holiday is $67.70 per hour on the published scale, not a number anyone should reconstruct by stacking loadings in a spreadsheet. The public holiday minimum payment rules also mean a one-hour call-in still costs four paid hours for a permanent employee.
Evening and night loadings
Monday to Friday work attracts flat additional amounts rather than percentages:
- 7pm to midnight: an extra $2.95 per hour or part of an hour
- Midnight to 7am: an extra $4.42 per hour or part of an hour
These amounts apply on top of the applicable hourly rate, including for casuals. A dinner service that runs past 7pm puts every rostered employee into the evening window, and payroll systems that only know about weekend penalties miss it silently.
Overtime and split shifts
Overtime runs at 150 per cent for the first two hours Monday to Friday and 200 per cent after that, with 200 per cent applying to overtime on weekends. Split shifts, a fixture of hospitality rostering, attract their own allowance: $3.69 per day where the break between work periods is two to three hours, and $5.60 where it exceeds three hours.
Penalty settings are where hospitality audits find money. If your point of sale roster feeds a payroll system that has never been independently checked against the award, a fixed-fee check of classifications and penalty settings establishes whether the numbers coming out are the numbers the award requires. Brookvale HR Solutions is fixed-fee with no lock-in contracts. Call Daniel on 1300 23 44 23.
Loaded rates: the hospitality-only salary alternative
The hospitality award contains something few other awards have: published loaded rate schedules. A loaded rate is a single higher hourly rate that lawfully absorbs identified penalty and overtime entitlements for a full-time employee, within strict caps on hours. The current pay guide publishes loaded rate tables for full-time employees working Monday to Sunday up to a maximum of 40 hours per week, and a second schedule up to 45 hours.
The attraction is administrative: one rate instead of five windows. The risk is the boundary. The loaded rate only covers the work pattern it is built for, the arrangement carries agreement and record requirements under the award, and hours or patterns outside the schedule must be paid under the ordinary rules. A loaded rate adopted informally, without the required records, is not a loaded rate. It is an above-award hourly rate with all penalty entitlements still owing, which is the worst of both worlds.
Allowances that get missed
Allowances are the quiet corner of hospitality underpayment. The award contains dozens; these are the ones that recur in real venues, at current published figures.
Wage-related allowances
- First aid allowance: $13.43 per week for a full-time employee appointed to perform first aid duty, and $2.69 per day for part-time and casual employees, capped at $13.43 per week.
- Fork-lift driver allowance: $0.44 per hour, and it is an all purpose allowance, meaning it must be added to the minimum rate before penalties and overtime are calculated. All purpose allowances are the ones payroll systems mishandle by paying them flat.
- Overnight stay allowance: $67.15 per overnight stay period where an employee is required to stay on the premises.
Expense-related allowances
- Meal allowance: $17.42 where an employee works overtime without the required notice.
- Laundry allowance: for catering employees, $6.16 per week full-time and $2.10 for each uniform laundered for part-time and casual staff; for motel employees, $2.46 per uniform laundered up to $7.65 per week.
- Apprentice reimbursements: training fees and prescribed textbook costs, plus reasonable travel costs for block release training.
Expense allowances move on their own cycle rather than with the July wage increase, which is one more reason to reload the award pay guide each year instead of rolling figures forward. And every allowance has a trigger condition in the award text: the compliance failure is usually not the amount, it is that nobody connected the trigger to payroll in the first place.
Casuals and juniors
Casual conversion and the information statement obligations
Casual employees receive the 25 per cent loading on the minimum hourly rate for their classification level, with the casual penalty figures shown in the tables above. Alongside the pay rates sit the paperwork obligations that apply to every hospitality business employing casuals:
- The Fair Work Information Statement must be given to every new employee, and the Casual Employment Information Statement to every new casual, with repeat provision at the intervals the Fair Work Act sets
- Casual conversion now runs on the employee choice pathway: an eligible casual who believes they no longer meet the casual definition can notify their employer of an intention to convert, and the employer must respond within the statutory timeframe with limited grounds to refuse
- National Employment Standards entitlements apply to casuals in their casual form, including unpaid carer's leave, family and domestic violence leave and, for eligible regular casuals, access to unpaid parental leave
None of this is optional, and the information statement obligations are the easiest compliance failure for an inspector to establish because the record either exists or it does not.
Junior rates, and what the 2026 decision did not change
Juniors under this award are paid percentage rates: 70 per cent of the adult rate at 18, 80 per cent at 19 and 90 per cent at 20, with lower percentages below 18 and a separate scale for office juniors. Two award-specific rules override the percentages: a junior with a trade qualification must be paid the adult rate, and so must any junior working as a liquor service employee. A 17 year old clearing tables can be on junior rates. The moment their duties include serving alcohol, the adult rate applies.
The Fair Work Commission's junior rates decision in March 2026 does not touch this award. That decision phases out junior rates for 18 to 20 year olds with more than six months' service with their employer, starting provisionally from December 2026 and completing by mid 2029, with under-18 rates unchanged, and it applies to three awards only: General Retail, Fast Food and Pharmacy. Hospitality employers keep the existing junior scale, though venues competing with retail and fast food for the same young workforce will feel the labour market effect. The full detail sits in the junior rates decision covering retail, fast food and pharmacy.
Where hospitality payrolls go wrong
The recurring failures in hospitality wage compliance are consistent:
- The wrong award at the boundary. A restaurant treated as hospitality, or a hotel café paid under the restaurant award. The coverage clauses decide, and many operators have never read them.
- Penalty windows missing from payroll configuration. Weekend rates configured, evening and night loadings absent. The flat dollar loadings are small per hour and large per year.
- Casuals paid the loading but not the casual penalty rates. The 25 per cent loading and the weekend penalties interact as published figures, not as stacked multipliers.
- Introductory rates that never end. Entry classification, permanent price.
- Informal salary deals doing the job of a loaded rate arrangement without the records that make one lawful.
Each of these repeats weekly until someone looks, and with intentional underpayment now a criminal matter, the cost of never looking has changed category. An annual check when the new rates land each July, against the award pay guide rather than last year's spreadsheet, is the cheapest compliance control available to a hospitality business.
