The One Line a Menu Needs Before It Adds a Public Holiday Surcharge

The long table by the window is full by ten, the kind of table that takes two families and a spare chair dragged over from somewhere else. Orders go in on a wave of “and one of those, and the eggs the other way”. Coffee arrives in the wrong order, then the right one. A toddler discovers the sugar sachets. It’s a public holiday, the sun is out, and nobody at the table is checking anything.

The plates come and go. Then the bill comes back, folded once, and the person who unfolds it goes quiet. Under the food and the drinks sits one more line, a public holiday surcharge, with a number beside it. Nobody can remember seeing it mentioned. The question that travels round the table, handed from one person to the next along with the bill, is whether they’re allowed to do that.

Two rules, one bill

A café or restaurant that adds a public holiday surcharge on top of its menu prices needs the right words on the menu, because regulation 80A is the exemption from the single-price rule in section 48 of the Australian Consumer Law. The regulation puts no ceiling on the percentage. The rest of this post is the detail behind those two clauses.

A café or restaurant may add the surcharge on top of its item prices rather than building it in. The condition is the menu. Under regulation 80A of the Competition and Consumer Regulations 2010, the menu has to say “a surcharge of [percentage] applies on [the specified day or days]”, show it transparently, and show it at least as prominently as the most prominent price, fee or surcharge on that menu. A diner who wants to challenge a holiday charge has a stronger case on the wording, the prominence and the days charged than on the size of the number.

Two separate rules sit behind a bill like this, and they get tangled constantly. The first is what staff are paid. Under the Restaurant Industry Award 2020, public holiday work is paid at 225 per cent of the minimum rate for permanent staff and 250 per cent for casuals, which includes the 25 per cent casual loading (clause 24.2(c), Table 8, and clause 11.1). The second is what a customer is charged, a matter for consumer law, and nothing in regulation 80A routes one into the other. Online, a common claim is that the surcharge must go to the staff; Consumer Protection WA says only that venues may choose to pass the cost on.

The line the menu has to carry

Regulation 80A is brief and exact. A restaurant, café, bistro or similar business that wants to charge extra on particular days can do it by stating the surcharge on the menu instead of lifting every price. The ACCC’s own version of the sentence is “A surcharge of [percentage] applies on [day or days].” Filled in, it might read: a surcharge of 15 per cent applies on public holidays. The line has three jobs.

The first is the words. The percentage and the days both have to appear, so “holiday loading may apply” doesn’t do it. The second is transparency: the surcharge has to be shown plainly, not left for the diner to work out. The third is prominence. It has to be displayed at least as prominently as the most prominent display of the item price or of any fee or surcharge, and where a menu shows no prices at all, the notice has to be conspicuous and visible. No separate holiday menu is needed.

This is why small print at the bottom of the page is unlikely to pass. The test is comparative: set the line beside the biggest price on the menu and ask whether a reader would meet it as readily. The regulation speaks of prominence, not a particular font size, whatever gets repeated in online discussions.

Older advice is still in circulation, and it’s out of date. Guides written years ago say the surcharge must be built into the displayed price. That was the rule behind the ACCC’s Federal Court case in December 2010, when an ACT café operator was ordered to pay a $20,000 penalty over a 10 per cent surcharge on Sundays and public holidays, under the old single-price provision. The Competition and Consumer Amendment Regulation 2013 (No. 3), made in July 2013, added regulation 80A, and that is the exemption venues now rely on.

The percentage has no cap

Nothing in the regulation sets a percentage. Consumer Protection WA says there’s no limit, but that the amount should reasonably reflect the additional costs a venue faces, and that a surcharge which doesn’t can be challenged. Its suggested first step is a friendly one: raise it with the owner or manager. The ACCC’s worked example uses 5, 10 and 15 per cent, as an illustration. It isn’t a limit, and it isn’t a recommendation.

So the test for a diner runs in order: wording, prominence, days, and only then size. A poorly worded line, or one tucked in a corner, is open to challenge at any percentage.

The other side deserves its fair say. An unbundled price is harder to compare. A diner choosing between two cafés on a holiday weekend sees one menu price that includes the cost and another that adds it at the end, and the second can look cheaper until the bill arrives. Preferring the venue that prices it in is a reasonable choice, and one many diners online say they make. The hospitality view is that holiday wages are real and somebody has to cover them. Both feelings are fair, and neither is what the regulation tests, which is whether the diner was told, clearly, in advance.

What the wages say about 10 or 15 per cent

The arithmetic below is hypothetical, and the table says so. It asks how much of a holiday’s extra wage bill a 10 or 15 per cent surcharge actually recovers.

Start with the award rates from the first section. A permanent employee working the holiday is paid 225 per cent of the ordinary rate, so the extra is 125 per cent of what that hour costs on an ordinary day. A casual is paid 250 per cent against an ordinary 125 per cent once the loading is counted, so the extra is 100 per cent. That gives a multiplier of 1.25 for an all-permanent roster and 1.0 for an all-casual one. Multiply either by ordinary-day wages as a share of takings, and the result is the surcharge that would cover the extra wages exactly.

Roster and takings match an ordinary day. Only wages are counted, so super, workers compensation, other on-costs and GST are left out. For the ordinary-day wage share, the table borrows the Australian Taxation Office’s small business benchmarks for 2023-24, which give labour costs divided by turnover (the pages do not say exactly what labour includes, and the table treats it as wages): 18 to 30 per cent for restaurants turning over $65,000 to $500,000, rising to 27 to 34 per cent above $2 million, and 21 to 32 per cent for coffee shops up to $600,000, rising to 27 to 35 per cent above that. These are tax-return benchmarks, not a measure of any one venue. The four rows below span the lowest and highest values, 18 and 35, plus two between them. They are a bracket, not a typical venue.

Hypothetical break-even surcharge, Restaurant Industry Award 2020 rates

Read across the first row. With ordinary-day wages at 18 per cent of takings, an all-casual roster would need an 18 per cent surcharge to cover the extra wages, and an all-permanent roster 22.5 per cent. A 10 per cent surcharge covers 56 per cent of the casual extra and 44 per cent of the permanent extra. Going down the table, the share falls. A 10 per cent surcharge covers all the extra wages only where ordinary-day wages are about 8 per cent (permanent) to 10 per cent (casual) of takings, and a 15 per cent surcharge only where they’re about 12 to 15 per cent. Both sit below the lowest ATO range.

A real venue’s roster, takings and staff mix will differ, and the table is not a claim about any venue. The on-costs left out here widen the gap. Weekend loading already inside ordinary-day labour narrows it, and so does a lean public holiday roster, or closing. The sums also use only the Restaurant Industry Award; fast food, hotels and pubs have their own awards with their own rates.

On these inputs, a 10 or 15 per cent line usually recovers less than the extra wages, which makes the percentage the weaker thing to argue about at the table.

A surcharge on every day is a different animal

Not every surcharge is a holiday surcharge. The ACCC’s example is a restaurant charging 5 per cent every day, 10 per cent on Sundays and 15 per cent on public holidays. The 5 per cent applies all week, so it’s part of the minimum price and belongs in the displayed price. Only the extra amounts on Sundays and public holidays use the 80A wording. A diner who sees a holiday surcharge on an ordinary Tuesday should read the menu to find out which kind it is.

The card surcharge ban that began on 1 October 2026 is a separate matter. The ACCC says it covers card payments only and doesn’t touch weekend or public holiday surcharges.

A bill that grows at the till is a familiar surprise, and the habit that works for extras that cost more than the daily rate on a car hire booking works on a menu too: ask what’s in the price and what gets added after.

Saturdays, stacking and cash

Three questions keep coming up. The answers below are our reading of the regulation.

Saturday. A Saturday is a public holiday only where the state list says so. The 2026 Fair Work list shows Boxing Day on Saturday 26 December in the ACT, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia (as the Proclamation Day holiday), Victoria and Western Australia, and Easter Saturday in several states. Tasmania’s Boxing Day is Monday 28 December. On the Saturday of an ordinary long weekend, the holiday is the Monday, and the Saturday is just a Saturday. Many diners online make that point, and it holds as far as the calendar goes. But the menu governs the charge, because the wording has to name the specified days. If the menu names Saturdays, a Saturday charge is on the menu. If it names Sundays and public holidays, a plain Saturday sits outside it.

Stacking. The regulation sets no stacking rule; it requires the menu to state the percentage for the days. Where one day is two things, a Sunday that is also a public holiday, the menu has to make clear what’s charged on it, and if it doesn’t, that’s a transparency question to raise. Some diners say a venue applies only one surcharge to a given day. That is the venue’s choice, because the regulation sets no stacking rule. A group that has spent the meal ordering shared plates one wave at a time ends up with one bill and one surcharge line. Diners also report separate fees for splitting a bill, a different line that falls outside this post.

Cash. Nothing in regulation 80A ties the surcharge to how a diner pays. It attaches to the food and drink, so paying cash doesn’t avoid it.

This Christmas and New Year

The December dates, from the Fair Work Ombudsman’s 2026 list (updated 9 November 2026), differ by state. Christmas Day is Friday 25 December. Boxing Day is Saturday 26 December in the seven jurisdictions named above, with an additional day on Monday 28 December; in Tasmania, Boxing Day itself is Monday 28 December. In the Northern Territory, Queensland and South Australia, Christmas Eve is also a part-day public holiday, from 6 pm in Queensland and from 7 pm in the other two, and New Year’s Eve is one from 7 pm in the Northern Territory and South Australia. New Year’s Day 2027 is Friday 1 January in every state and territory (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2027 list). The venue’s state decides which of these a menu means.

Visitors planning a holiday week, a week in Sydney on a budget for instance, can treat a surcharge line as one more line in the budget, and a glance at the menu’s wording before ordering turns it into a known cost.

If the bill looks wrong

Ask at the table first. That’s the first step Consumer Protection WA suggests, and it settles more than it sounds like it would. A venue can make an honest mistake, such as a point-of-sale system applying one state’s holiday in another, and a polite question gets it fixed on the spot.

If it isn’t fixed, note what the menu said, in what words, for which days, and what the bill charged. The calculator above does the arithmetic: enter the menu total and the percentage printed on the menu, and it shows what the surcharge and the total should be, ready to set beside the receipt. The next step is your state or territory consumer protection agency. The ACCC does not resolve individual disputes about price displays, but it accepts reports, and it has taken this subject to court before, in the 2010 case above. None of that needs a confrontation, only the menu wording and the bill side by side.

When the bill arrives

Back at the long table, the bill is still folded once. Somebody finds the line, somebody else finds the menu, and a minute later the whole thing is settled, one way or the other, on the words and the days rather than on the mood.

Before ordering, find the line that names the percentage and the days. When the bill arrives, check that one number.

Sources: Competition and Consumer Regulations 2010, regulation 80A, compilation No. 100 of 1 September 2026 (https://www.legislation.gov.au/F1996B01420/2026-09-01/2026-09-01/text/original/epub/OEBPS/document_1/document_1.html); Competition and Consumer Act 2010, Schedule 2 (Australian Consumer Law), section 48 (https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A00109/2026-10-27/2026-10-27/text/original/epub/OEBPS/document_4/document_4.html); ACCC, Price displays (https://www.accc.gov.au/business/pricing/price-displays); Fair Work Commission, Restaurant Industry Award 2020 [MA000119], clauses 11.1 and 24.2 (https://awards.fairwork.gov.au/MA000119.html); Australian Taxation Office, Small business benchmarks, Restaurants and Coffee shops, 2023-24 (https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/income-deductions-and-concessions/small-business-benchmarks/in-detail/restaurants and https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/income-deductions-and-concessions/small-business-benchmarks/in-detail/coffee-shops); Consumer Protection WA, From the Commissioner: Do you know what your consumer rights are for restaurant surcharges?, 30 April 2026 (https://www.consumerprotection.wa.gov.au/announcements/the-commissioner-do-you-know-what-your-consumer-rights-are-restaurant-surcharges); Fair Work Ombudsman, 2026 public holidays (https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/public-holidays/2026-public-holidays); Fair Work Ombudsman, 2027 public holidays (https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/public-holidays/2027-public-holidays); ACCC, Problem with a product or service you bought (https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/problem-with-a-product-or-service-you-bought); ACCC, former café operator ordered to pay $20,000 penalty, 8 December 2010 (https://accc.gov.au/media-release/former-caf%C3%A9-operator-ordered-to-pay-20000-penalty); Competition and Consumer Amendment Regulation 2013 (No. 3), SLI No. 177 of 2013 (https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2013L01387/asmade/2013-07-15/text/original/epub/OEBPS/document_1/document_1.html)