Which trading hours pay for themselves: costing a Sunday roster against a Tuesday one

Put five casuals on the floor from midday to 8pm and the roster costs you $1,413.47 on a Tuesday. The identical roster on Sunday costs $1,958.24. Nobody worked an extra minute, and the day now has to find another $939 through the till just to be as good a day as Tuesday was.

Plenty of pages will tell you a casual is on 175% on Sunday and 125% midweek. Almost none of them turn that into the decision you're actually making, which is whether a daypart earns its roster. Here's the version with the break-even numbers in it, costed at the rates that took effect from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026.

The short version. A daypart pays for itself when its gross profit covers the wages and the other direct costs of opening. Rent doesn't come into that decision, because rent turns up whether you open or not. For a five-person, 40-hour service in a suburban bistro, Tuesday clears that line at about $2,666 in sales and Sunday at about $3,605. Every rostered Sunday hour has to take roughly $23.50 more than the same Tuesday hour. General information only, not financial or legal advice.

What the same hour actually costs on each day

Under the Hospitality Award (MA000009), a casual is paid 125% of the ordinary hourly rate Monday to Friday, 150% on Saturday, 175% on Sunday and 250% on a public holiday. Those percentages already include the 25% casual loading. The evening loading of $2.95 an hour for work between 7pm and midnight applies Monday to Friday only, so a Sunday 8pm hour costs exactly what a Sunday 1pm hour costs, while a Tuesday 8pm hour costs $2.95 more per head than a Tuesday lunch hour.

The crew below is a realistic small bistro: one Level 1 kitchen attendant, two Level 2 food and beverage attendants, one Level 3 on the bar, one Level 5 chef, all casual. Ordinary rates run from $26.44 at Level 1 to $31.30 at Level 5, which blends to $27.97 across the five. If you're unsure which level your people genuinely sit at, the MA000009 levels are worth checking, because a misclassified chef moves every number on this page.

At a $48 average spend excluding GST, that last column is about 13.6 covers an hour on Tuesday and 19.0 on Sunday. Same five people, same eight hours, and Sunday needs five and a half more covers every single hour. Whether your roster is the right size in the first place is a separate question, answered in covers per labour hour for Australian venues.

Every rostered hour on a Sunday has to bring in about $23.50 more than the same hour on a Tuesday, before the day is a dollar better off. Across a 40-hour roster that's $939 of extra trade, just to stand still.

The number that decides it is break-even, not labour percentage

Labour percentage is a report card. Break-even is the decision. And there are two break-even lines that get confused constantly, which is how venues end up closing a day that was making them money.

• Contribution break-even. The sales where gross profit covers the wages, super and the other direct costs of opening: energy above baseline, laundry, cleaning, breakages. Rent is not in here, because shutting the day doesn't refund it.
• Full-cost break-even. The same, plus that day's share of the fixed costs. This tells you whether the day is carrying its weight. It does not tell you whether to close it.

Costed for a 70-seat suburban bistro: 65% gross margin after food, beverage and card costs, $150 a day in other direct opening costs, and $6,500 a week of fixed costs spread evenly across six trading days, so $1,083 a day. Both days run midday to 8pm with five on, which is 40 paid hours.

Notice the gap is the same $939 on both lines, because the only thing that changed between the two days is the wage bill. That gives you three zones for any daypart, and the middle one is where most Sundays actually sit.

• Under $3,605. Sunday is costing you money to be open. Restructure it or close it.
• Between $3,605 and $5,271. Sunday isn't carrying its share of the rent, but it's paying for itself and contributing to the rent the other days would otherwise carry alone. Closing it makes your week worse.
• Over $5,271. Sunday is genuinely profitable and probably deserves more hours, not fewer.

Closing Sunday makes every other day harder

This is the part the penalty-rate arguments skip. Shut Sunday and the $6,500 of weekly fixed costs doesn't shrink, it just gets divided by five trading days instead of six. Tuesday's full-cost break-even jumps from $4,332 to $4,666, an extra $334 a day, or seven more covers, every day, forever. You didn't remove a cost. You moved it onto the days that were already carrying you.

There's a staffing consequence too. A casual who loses their Sunday goes and finds a venue that has one, and you generally lose their Tuesday in the same phone call. That churn has its own price tag, covered in what hospitality's retention gap costs a venue.

The Sunday that pays for itself is usually a shorter one

The realistic move isn't closing, it's re-shaping. Take the same bistro, drop the Level 3 from the Sunday roster and pull the block from eight hours to seven. Four people, 28 paid hours, $1,370.81 in wages. That Sunday breaks even on full cost at 89 covers, one fewer than your five-person Tuesday. Same day, same penalty rates, and it now clears the bar.

• Cut the shoulders, not the peak. The hours either side of service are where a Sunday roster leaks. Watch the two-hour minimum though: a casual must be engaged and paid for at least 2 consecutive hours each time they attend (clause 11.3), so a 90-minute trim isn't available to you.
• Move the classification mix, not just the headcount. Sunday's penalty is a percentage, so it magnifies your dearest people most. A Level 5 hour costs $23.48 more on Sunday than midweek. A Level 1 hour costs $13.22 more.
• Price the day, legally. A Sunday surcharge is allowed, but the menu has to state that a surcharge of X% applies on the specified days, displayed at least as prominently as the most prominent price on the menu. A 10% surcharge on a $5,271 Sunday is about $479, which covers roughly four fifths of the $610 that Sunday costs you over a Tuesday.
• Change what Sunday sells. A set menu, a roast, a bottomless sitting: anything that lifts spend per head moves the break-even faster than trimming hours does, because it works on the top line rather than the bottom.

Run this for your own week

1. Price one week's roster by day. Take each person's actual classification, apply 125% midweek (plus $2.95 an hour after 7pm Monday to Friday), 150% Saturday, 175% Sunday, then add 12% super. Do it per day, not per week, or the answer disappears into an average.
2. Work out your real gross margin. Sales excluding GST, minus food, beverage and card costs, divided by sales. Most bistros land between 60% and 70%. Use your own number, not mine.
3. Add the direct cost of opening the door: the energy, laundry, cleaning and breakages that only happen because you traded. A rough daily figure is fine.
4. Divide. (Labour plus super plus direct costs) divided by gross margin gives your contribution break-even for that day. Add the day's share of fixed costs for the full-cost line.
5. Compare against what the day actually took, four weeks of it. Any daypart sitting under its contribution line gets re-shaped this month. Anything between the two lines stays open and gets watched. Then check your labour cost percentage across the whole week to see whether the shape you've landed on holds up.

Where Shiftly fits

This maths only works if you can see what each hour costs while you're placing it, rather than three weeks later in a payroll report. That's the part a spreadsheet can't do, and it's why free roster templates get expensive.

Shiftly is free workforce management for Australian venues: rostering, plus award-aware timesheets that help you estimate what a Sunday should cost before you commit to it. It's a calculation tool, not payroll, and not legal advice. The other half matters more on a Sunday than any other day, because that's when a call-out hurts most: Shiftly is the roster that fills itself, with an on-demand network of local hospitality workers built into the roster you already run, so a Sunday gap gets offered to nearby staff who see the pay before they accept, instead of costing you the covers that were meant to pay for the day. Get started with Shiftly.

Frequently asked questions

Is it worth opening on a Sunday in Australia?

It depends on one number: whether Sunday's gross profit covers Sunday's wages, super and direct opening costs. For a five-person, 40-hour service in a suburban bistro at 2026-27 award rates, that line sits at about $3,605 in sales, roughly 75 covers at $48 a head. Clear it and Sunday is contributing to your rent even if it isn't your best day. Miss it and Sunday is being subsidised by Tuesday. Don't judge it against the full-cost line, because rent is payable whether you open or not.

How much more does a Sunday cost than a weekday in hospitality?

For a casual under MA000009, exactly 40% more than a weekday daytime hour: 175% of the ordinary rate against 125%. In dollars, a casual Level 2 is $33.85 an hour Monday to Friday and $47.39 on Sunday. On a five-person, 40-hour roster that's $544.77 more in wages, or $610.14 once you add the 12% super guarantee. Permanent staff have a wider gap again, since their Sunday penalty is 150% against a 100% weekday base.

Can I charge a Sunday surcharge to cover penalty rates?

Yes, with a disclosure requirement. The ACCC's position is that a menu carrying a day-specific surcharge must include the words stating that a surcharge of a given percentage applies on the specified days, displayed at least as prominently as the most prominent price on the menu. A surcharge that applies every day is different: it has to be built into the single displayed price instead. A 10% Sunday surcharge typically recovers about four fifths of the extra labour, not all of it.

Do casual staff get the evening loading on a Sunday?

No. The $2.95 an hour evening loading for work between 7pm and midnight applies to Monday to Friday hours under MA000009. Saturday and Sunday carry their own penalty with no evening loading stacked on top, so a Sunday 9pm hour costs the same as a Sunday lunch hour. It's a small point that trips up manual rosters in both directions, and paying the loading as a percentage rather than a flat dollar amount is a common underpayment error. Check the current Fair Work Ombudsman pay guide for MA000009 before you rely on any of this.