Public holiday surcharges as high as 20 per cent are hitting the hip pocket of diners, exposing a lack of rules about how much businesses can charge.
Many cafes and restaurants added the long-held standard 10-15 per cent surcharge to menu prices across the recent Easter long weekend.
But inflation, rising costs of living and staff penalty rates have been blamed for surcharges on some menus ballooning to 20 per cent — even for a simple serve of hot chips.
With more public holidays looming – including Anzac Day, and in some states, Labour Day and the King's Birthday holiday – such surcharges remain unregulated.
The only requirement for restaurants, cafes and takeaway outlets is to clearly display a public holiday surcharge percentage on their standard menus.
Australian Retailers Association chief executive Paul Zahra said businesses were left to set their own public holiday surcharge rates.
"There actually are no rules, and that's probably why there's problems because each business owner is actually required to make that determination for themselves," Mr Zahra told ABC Radio Brisbane.
"And of course, this all comes down to the fact that with public holidays, they need to pay their staff more as part of their award or their contract with the individual staff members.
"So to try and recover some of their costs, small businesses are actually looking at ways to pass on the cost of living crisis, but small business particularly are going through this cost of doing business."
Mr Zahra said public holiday surcharges could be tricky for businesses to navigate, particularly as the cost of living crisis impacted bottom lines and consumer spending.
"It comes down to customers' willingness to pay because the issue for a small business owner is that if they start surcharging to recover costs, they risk losing customers completely."
Business Chamber Queensland general manager of workplace relations, Joanna Michinton, said the cost of opening the doors for a business on a public holiday could impact them in a positive or negative way.
"There's a long history of penalty rates in Australia and they have been designed to provide extra compensation to employees on days which are public holidays," she said.
"Public holidays can be significant for people and businesses want to be open to support their community but they also need to be able to keep the doors open and remain viable."
A representative from Tognini's CafeDeli in Milton, Brisbane, said staff costs played a role in their four-day close over Easter.
"We were closed for the entire Easter break due to staff costs, and the majority of families in the area were away anyway for the Easter break," they said.
St Coco Café Daisy Hill manager Shannon Coleman said the business closed over the Easter break, but only to give their staff some time off.
"We generally close over Christmas and Easter as we are open for all the other public holidays, so we were ensuring we were looking after our staff," she said.
Informing customers
Mr Zahra said some businesses needed to be clearer on whether or not they were surcharging.
He said the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission required that any surcharge be clearly shown on the menu, at least as prominently as other prices.
"Many don't, and that's probably one rule we should see implemented because retailers and hospitality if they're surcharging, they should make sure that that's really clear," he said.
