Yes.
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I get paid to stay home on both the Head of State’s Birthday as well as Jesus’. I also get the day off on full pay for ANZAC Day, Labour Day, Australia Day as well as the days that Jesus died and came back to life (I don’t even need to believe that this happened to get the day off). I also get paid to stay home on Boxing Day (and I really have no idea what this is for). If I choose to go and sit in a pub on these days, I don’t mind paying 10% more for my food. The real scam is not the workers getting double time for their work on a public holiday, but me getting paid to do nothing.
Penalty rates were cut in five Modern Awards in 2017:
- Fast food
- Pharmacy
- Retail
- Hospitality
- Restaurant
This was meant to reduce prices and create employment in these industries. Every single study shows that neither happened. Income was simply transferred from the workers at Chemist Warehouse and Maccas to the owners of these businesses.
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Newsflash: Not everyone gets to choose if they want to work Sundays (or Saturdays for that matter). Public holidays has mostly been voluntary but given the nature of the occasion, and that you’re receiving some sort of service for it that you’d otherwise not get if they don’t open (which is quite common), shouldn’t you be grateful for it instead? Otherwise places will be shutting down on those days altogether anyway.
Anyway with surcharges the blame lies with greedy restaurants and cafes. All for a bit of extra cash that shouldn’t otherwise be legal. It’s not like they can’t run properly with penalty rates and without surcharges. If they have to charge surcharges then they might as well close down altogether because their finance was already down the drain anyway.
Even if some of those wanted to work on those days, they probably can’t because their businesses aren’t open.
Things like mortgages would have been negotiated based on an annual income including those paid days off.
The workaround would be to adjust hourly rates upwards for the days they do work and then have no pay on those public holidays.
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Yeah. Although paying different prices at different times of the day has long been a part of hospitality. Hence why there’s often a lunch menu with different prices to a dinner menu. Jerry Seinfeld got in trouble from his parents by taking them for dinner at dinner time and not for the ‘early bird special’.
Sizzler was like that. Cheaper at lunch and before 4PM. And different prices depending on how old the kids were.
Dominoes and Pizza Hut have existed on the idea most customers never pay full price. The priceboard may say $15.95, but everyone has a voucher of some sort and so some pay $8.95, some $7.95, and some are lucky enough to have a voucher for $6.95.
All perfectly legal.
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Chucky E. Cheese is arriving in Perth I saw
For some reason, for me, the pizzas never seem to taste as nice when I use a coupon.. I suspect they might skimp on toppings to compensate.
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If i buy Domino’s pizza I almost always have a coupon as compared to the local pizza store it will never be as good especially in Inner West Sydney but sometimes you just want something cheap and quick and Domino’s is generally open longer
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Chadstone’s new food precinct opened on Thursday.
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This was such a non event. The way the media ran with it speaks volumes.
From the linked article:
Imagine freshly fried crispy golden sticks topped with a sticky sweet cream cheese glaze and finished off with a sprinkle of vanilla crumb.
Yeah, I’m sure the kid behind the counter will take so much care to present them just like that.
If you’re lucky it won’t just be a massive sticky blob.
Saw today that Marrybrown opening at Highpoint.
Japanese Italian cuisine chain Saizeriya is landing in Australia, with its first location opening in Melbourne as early as next year.
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Saizeriya currently has a factory in Melton in Melbourne’s outer west, producing food for its restaurants around Asia, but has never owned a restaurant here in Australia.
Saizeriya specialises in Japanese-style Italian cuisine.
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Will be interesting just how cheap they can be - I’d expect wages and operating costs for the restaurants will make the overheads much higher - but if they could be a strong value restaurant it would be a very unique offering.
Nearly every new entrant that has struggled has the same problem - pricing well above even expensive local places. The Singapore pricing sounds reasonable, so it could be doable, but it would make or break any expansion, aside from how well Japanese-style Italian food would do in a market with quite good Italian food.
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And every fast food entrant has to go “upmarket” and charge more like Taco Bell.