Restaurant Industry Award Summary: MA000119 Pay Rates and Rules for 2026

The Restaurant Industry Award 2020 (MA000119) sets minimum pay and conditions for standalone restaurants, cafés, reception centres, night clubs and roadhouses across Australia. Since intentional underpayment became a criminal offence under the Fair Work Act 2009, applying it correctly is no longer just an industrial obligation. The catch is that many food businesses aren't covered by it at all: the boundary between this award and the Hospitality Industry (General) Award decides which rate book applies before a single roster is built. Daniel Holbrook of Brookvale HR Solutions sets out where the boundary sits, the current pay rates, and the rules that catch restaurant employers.

This restaurant industry award summary uses figures current from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, drawn from the Fair Work Ombudsman's pay guide for MA000119 and cross-checked in the Pay and Conditions Tool. It's a simple guide to a detailed instrument, and it's general information: rates and award terms change, so confirm the current published figures against your own circumstances before relying on them.

Restaurant, hospitality, fast food or clubs: which award applies

The award defines the restaurant industry as restaurants, reception centres, night clubs, cafés and roadhouses, including catering by a restaurant business. The exclusions do the real sorting work, and they run in both directions.

The coverage decision

The Restaurant Award expressly doesn't cover restaurants operated in or in connection with hotels, motels, hostels, registered clubs, hospitals, aged care facilities or boarding schools, or in-flight and contract catering operations. The Hospitality Award mirrors this from the other side: it captures restaurants connected with premises its own employers operate, and excludes restaurants covered by the Restaurant, Fast Food and Clubs awards. Where the question is takeaway rather than table service, the Fast Food Industry Award summary sets out that boundary.

Getting this wrong is not a technicality. The Restaurant Award and the award for businesses covered by the hospitality industry share a base rate scale, but they differ in penalty structures, overtime rules and allowances, so a restaurant paid under the wrong award produces systematic errors in both directions at once. The method for resolving a genuinely unclear case is the standard coverage analysis, working from the coverage clauses and classification definitions, and the general framework for award coverage walks through it. For venues that land on the hospitality side of the line, the Hospitality Award employer summary is the companion guide to this one.

If the boundary is a question your business has never formally answered, answer it before the next pay run: an independent review of award coverage and pay settings documents the coverage decision and checks the rates built on top of it.

Restaurant Industry Award pay rates by level from 1 July 2026

The classification streams

Employees are classified by stream and level against the award's classification definitions in Schedule A. The streams are:

• Food and beverage: attendants from grade 1 through grade 4 (tradesperson), and the food and beverage supervisor
• Kitchen: kitchen attendants grades 1 to 3, and cooks grades 1 to 5, with grades 3 to 5 being tradesperson classifications
• Administrative and general: clerical grades, storepersons, security and handypersons

In the food and beverage stream, the dividing line is training. A food and beverage attendant grade 2 is someone who hasn't yet achieved the "appropriate level of training" as the award defines it, while grade 3 and above require it. In practice, an attendant without the appropriate level of training cannot be classified higher than Level 2 in that stream. Classification follows the duties actually performed and the training actually held, not the job title on the roster.

Two further rules shape the bottom and the middle of the scale. The Introductory level is for someone new to the industry, for a maximum of three months while they train, extendable by up to a further three months only if the employer and employee agree more training is needed. And where an employee performs higher duties for two hours or more on a day, the employer must pay the employee the higher classification's rate for the whole of that day; for less than 2 hours, the higher classification's rate for the time spent on those duties applies (clause 18.8).

Rates table

Current adult minimum pay rates for full-time and part-time employees:

The two wage movements this year

The 2026 Annual Wage Review raised modern award minimum rates by 4.75 per cent, and separately continued the phase-out of the lowest classification rates: the minimum for ongoing employment in any award is now $1,004.90 per week or $26.44 per hour, with entry-level rates at $978.10 or $25.74. In this award, the Introductory level carries the entry rate and Level 1 sits on the structural floor. Level 1 moved from $24.95 to $26.44 an hour, which means the bottom of the scale moved by more than 4.75 per cent. Deriving any 2026 rate by inflating last year's figure produces wrong numbers at exactly the classifications where restaurants concentrate their headcount. Reload the pay guide instead.

Penalty rates and overtime rates, day by day

Weekends and public holidays

For full-time and part-time employees, ordinary hours attract a penalty rate of 125 per cent on Saturday, 150 per cent on Sunday and 225 per cent on a public holiday. Casual employees are paid 150 per cent on Saturday and 250 per cent on a public holiday, with the casual loading already built into those published figures. Sunday is where the casual rates split by level: 150 per cent at the Introductory level, Level 1 and Level 2, and 175 per cent at Levels 3 to 6.

Public holidays carry two more rules. A full-time or part-time employee who works a public holiday must be paid for at least 4 hours, and a casual for at least 2. And the employer and employee may agree that, instead of being paid 225 per cent, the employee is paid 125 per cent and the hours worked are added to their annual leave or taken as a day off in lieu within 28 days (clause 24.4). At Level 2, the full spread runs from $27.08 for a weekday ordinary hour to $60.93 for a permanent employee on a public holiday.

Overtime rates: the weekend rules differ from weekdays

Overtime under this award is not one multiplier. For full-time and part-time employees:

• Monday to Friday: 150 per cent for the first 2 hours, 200 per cent after that
• Saturday: 175 per cent for the first 2 hours, 200 per cent after that
• Sunday: 200 per cent for all overtime hours
• Rostered day off: 200 per cent, with a minimum payment of 4 hours even if the employee is required to work less (clause 23.1)

Overtime on each day stands alone, so two hours of overtime on Tuesday and two on Wednesday are each paid at the first-two-hours rate. A payroll system configured with a single overtime rule will be wrong on weekends, and weekend overtime is precisely when restaurants generate it. The published overtime rates of pay per classification are in the pay guide's tables, and they're the numbers to configure, not reconstructed multiples.

What a real week costs

Put the pieces together for one employee. A full-time Level 2 cook at $27.08 per hour works 38 ordinary hours Tuesday to Saturday, with Friday service finishing at 11.30pm and seven of the ordinary hours falling on Saturday. On Sunday, their rostered day off, they're called in for two hours.

• Friday late night: the ninety minutes after 10pm attract the late night loading of $2.95 per hour or part of an hour, adding $5.90.
• Saturday: seven ordinary hours at the 125 per cent rate of $33.85 instead of $27.08 adds $47.39.
• Sunday call-in: Sunday is the cook's rostered day off, so the two hours are paid at the 200 per cent rate of $54.16 with a minimum payment of 4 hours, which is $216.64.

That single, entirely ordinary restaurant week costs $269.93 more than paying the 38 rostered hours at the base rate and nothing else. Repeated across 48 working weeks, it's close to $13,000 a year for one cook. A payroll that misses the late night loading, prices Saturday at base, or pays the Sunday call-in as two hours at time and a half is quietly wrong three separate ways, and every figure in the example is sitting in the published pay guide waiting to be configured.

Late night and early morning work

Work between 10pm and midnight Monday to Friday attracts an additional $2.95 per hour or part of an hour, and work between midnight and 6am an additional $4.42 per hour or part of an hour, on top of the applicable rate, for casuals as well as permanents. A venue where the shift ends after 10pm has these loadings in play every single service, and they're flat dollar amounts that payroll templates built for daytime businesses simply don't contain.

Ordinary hours, rosters and meal breaks

Full-time employees work an average of 38 ordinary hours per week over a period of no more than four weeks. Under clause 15.1, a full-timer works at least 6 ordinary hours on any rostered day, no employee works more than 11.5 ordinary hours in any one day, and a split shift must fit within a 12 hour spread. Rosters must be posted where employees can see them, and can change by agreement or on 7 days' notice.

Meal breaks are where busy services go wrong. An employee who works 5 hours or more is entitled to an unpaid meal break of at least 30 minutes, taken after the first hour and within the first 6 hours of work. If the unpaid break is rostered to be taken later than 5 hours after starting, an extra 20 minute paid meal break is due as well, and a shift of more than 10 hours adds two paid 20 minute rest breaks (clause 16.2).

If the meal break isn't given at the rostered time, the employer must pay the employee an extra 50 per cent of their ordinary hourly rate of pay until either the meal break is given or the shift ends (clause 16.5). On a Saturday night with a full dining room, that clause is triggered far more often than most payroll records show.

Casuals, part-time employees, juniors and apprentices

Casual employment under the award

Casual employees receive a casual loading of 25 per cent on top of the minimum hourly rate, the casual penalty rates above, and the National Employment Standards protections that attach to casual employment. Casual employees do not receive paid annual leave or paid personal leave; the loading is paid instead. A casual must be engaged and paid for at least 2 consecutive hours each time they're required to attend work (clause 11.3), and rostering software that pays actual minutes worked rather than the award minimum will underpay short shifts systematically. Every new casual must receive the Casual Employment Information Statement, and eligible casuals can use the employee choice pathway to convert to permanent employment.

Part-time employees and guaranteed hours

A part-time employee works at least 8 and fewer than 38 ordinary hours per week. At engagement, the employer must agree in writing with the employee on their guaranteed hours of work and the days and times they're available (clause 10.4). Additional hours can be rostered within that availability, but a part-time employee must be rostered for at least 3 hours and no more than 11.5 hours in a day, and must have 2 days off each week.

Guaranteed hours only change with the employee's written consent. If a part-time employee has regularly worked more ordinary hours than their guaranteed hours for at least 12 months, they can ask in writing for the guarantee to be increased, and the employer may only refuse on reasonable business grounds. A genuine and ongoing change in the employee's personal circumstances also lets them alter their availability on 14 days' written notice. Hours worked beyond the rostered hours are overtime.

Juniors, and the junior rates decision

Junior employees are paid a percentage of the adult rate: 50 per cent under 17, 60 per cent at 17, 70 per cent at 18, 85 per cent at 19, and the full adult rate from 20. Two rules override the scale. A junior working as a liquor service employee must be paid the adult rate for the work being performed (clause 13.5), and a cook who has completed a full apprenticeship must be paid at least the standard rate. An employee under 18 can't be required to work more than 10 hours in a shift.

The Fair Work Commission's junior rates decision doesn't apply here. Its phase-out of junior rates for 18 to 20 year olds with more than six months' service covers the General Retail, Fast Food and Pharmacy awards only, and the implementation decision of 26 August 2026 ([2026] FWCFB 222) confirmed it runs from the first full pay period on or after 1 December 2026 to 1 July 2029, with under-18 rates untouched. Restaurant employers keep the existing junior scale. The exposure is competitive rather than legal: the fast food outlet down the street will be paying its experienced young adults more on a fixed timetable. The decision itself is covered in the junior rates phase-out explained.

Apprentice cooks

Apprentices have their own rate scale by year or stage of apprenticeship, plus entitlements that are easy to miss:

• Reimbursement of fees for the courses the apprentice is required to attend and the cost of required textbooks
• Reimbursement of reasonable travel costs for block release training that requires an overnight stay
• The tool and equipment allowance of $2.03 per day, up to $9.94 per week, where a cook or apprentice cook is required to use their own tools

A kitchen that requires chefs to supply their own knives owes the tool allowance, and many payrolls that miss it have missed it for every cook, every week, for years.

Allowances that get missed

The pay guide carries the list of all allowances. These are the recurring ones:

• Split shift allowance: $5.60 for each separate work period of 2 hours or more, for full-time and part-time employees on a broken working day. The lunch-and-dinner roster shape that defines restaurant work is exactly what this allowance prices, and a day with two qualifying work periods earns it twice.
• Meal allowance: $17.42 where an employee is required to work more than 2 hours of overtime without being told on or before the previous day, unless a meal is supplied.
• Special clothing and laundry: reimbursement for required special clothing, and a laundry allowance or reimbursement of laundering costs where the employee launders it.
• Distant work: travel time at ordinary rates plus transport costs where an employee works away from the usual workplace.

Each allowance has a trigger in the award text, and the failure mode is configuration, not calculation: the trigger event happens on the floor and nothing in payroll is listening for it.

Staying on the right side of the award

The restaurant compliance failures that recur are consistent: the wrong award at the coverage boundary, a single casual Sunday rate across every level, single-rule overtime, the rostered day off minimum ignored, missing late night loadings, meal break penalties never paid, and tool and split shift allowances never configured. None of them requires bad intent, and all of them compound weekly until someone checks the settings against the current award pay guide.

The settings checklist

Worked through once and documented, the whole compliance position fits on a page:

1. Confirm coverage in writing against the clause 4 definitions of both MA000119 and MA000009, and record why the answer is what it is.
2. Classify each employee against Schedule A, by duties and training, and notify them in writing.
3. Load the published pay rates for each classification from the current pay guide, never derived figures.
4. Configure all five time windows: Saturday, Sunday, public holiday, late night and early morning, with casual Sunday rates split by level.
5. Configure the overtime rules separately for weekdays, Saturday, Sunday and rostered days off, including the 4 hour minimum.
6. Switch on the split shift, tool and meal allowances with their trigger conditions, and the meal break penalty.
7. Put every part-time employee's guaranteed hours and availability in writing.
8. Issue the Fair Work Information Statement to every new starter and the Casual Employment Information Statement to every new casual, and record it.
9. Diarise a July reload of every rate when the new pay guide publishes.

An annual settings check each July, against the pay guide rather than last year's configuration, is the cheapest control available. On the coverage question specifically, a documented answer beats an assumed one every time a dispute, an audit or a sale of the business puts the payroll under a microscope.