Fast food, restaurants and cafés
Find everything you need to help understand your workplace rights and obligations in the fast food, restaurant or café industry (often called hospo or hospitality).
On this page:
- Tools and resources
- Understanding awards
- Pay and wages
- Hours of work
- Pay slip and record-keeping
- Related information
Tools and resources
- Interactive award tools – Use these interactive tools to help understand pay, hours of work, penalties, allowances, leave and termination in the:
- Interactive templates – Use our interactive templates on the Templates page
- Finding your award – If you’re not sure which award covers your employment, see:
- Leave Calculator – Calculate annual, sick and carer’s leave using our Leave Calculator
- Translating our information – To translate the information on this page, choose your language from the menu at the top of the page
- Tailored help – We have more tailored help for:
- Email updates – To get personalised workplace information, Subscribe to email updates
- My account – Ask us your questions online and save your pay rates to your profile by signing up for My account
Understanding awards
Awards are legally enforceable documents that provide employees with minimum pay rates and employment conditions. They cover employers and employees based on the industry they work in and the type of job they do.
The award that covers an employer and some or all of its employees may change if the primary nature of the business changes, or the primary nature of employee duties changes.
Employers should consider which award or awards cover their employees if the business or the employees' work changes. Find more information at I’m not sure which award covers my business.
Learn more about your award with our interactive tools:
Pay and wages
Employees have to be paid for their work in money. The amount an employee needs to be paid can depend on their age, duties and hours of work. Payment also needs to include any penalties, overtime and other award entitlements for that pay period, such as:
- weekend rates
- public holiday rates
- allowances
- overtime rates for working extra hours.
Casual employees are also paid a casual loading (a higher pay rate for being a casual employee).
For more information, see:
Salary payments and flat rates
An annual salary, or any flat rate, can't be less than the minimum amount an employee would have been paid under their award.
An award may allow an employer to pay their employee an annualised wage under an annualised wage arrangement that covers particular entitlements under their award. There are rules that need to be followed for an employee to have the benefit of an annualised wage arrangement. This arrangement is different to paying an annual salary under an employment contract.
The Hospitality Award and Restaurant Award both contain specific annualised wage arrangement rules. They outline how an annualised wage is set, recorded and reconciled.
For more information about annualised wage arrangements and salary payments see:
- Annualised salaries
- An employer’s guide to annualised wage arrangements in the hospitality and restaurant industries.
Hours of work
An employee's hours of work (including their minimum hours, breaks and overtime) are provided by their award. These entitlements can be different for full-time, part-time and casual employees.
For more information about these entitlements, see Hours of work, breaks and rosters.
Pay slips and record-keeping
Employees have to be given a pay slip within one working day of being paid.
As an employer, record-keeping is important to keep your business running smoothly, and is required by law.
For information about pay slips and record-keeping, see: