The newly formed Australian Restaurant & Cafe Association (ARCA), which aims to advocate on behalf of the roughly 50,000 restaurants and cafes that make up the Australian hospitality industry, held its inaugural board meeting in North Sydney on Friday morning.
Attendees included owners and representatives from some of Australia’s leading restaurants and hospitality groups, including Neil Perry’s Margaret Group, Lucas Restaurants (Chin Chin, Society, Hawker Hall, Kisumé, Grill Americano), Swillhouse (Restaurant Hubert, Le Foote, Alberto’s Lounge, the Caterpillar Club), House Made Hospitality (Hinchcliff House, Martinez), Merivale, Renascence Group (Farmer’s Daughters, Morena, Victoria), Van Haandel Group (Stokehouse), Luke Mangan, The Lake House Daylesford, The Delia Group (Maha), the Big Easy Group (Bottega Bandito, Anchovy Bandit), and the Grounds of Alexandria.
“It’s really about getting together as a group and putting forward our industry’s voice to Canberra,” said Neil Perry, ARCA’s chair, at a press conference following the meeting. “It’s about making sure that, as a $64 billion industry, second only to retail in employment, that’s part of the fabric and culture of Australia, we can sit down at various levels of government and make things simpler and easier, so that everyone can thrive.”
Against the backdrop of Australia’s continuing cost-of-living crisis and stubborn inflation, ARCA outlined three key areas of focus – industrial relations, taxation, and migration – which, if reformed, it claims would help arrest the nationwide rate of restaurant and cafe closures and alleviate the financial burden and margin erosion for hospitality businesses still operating.
The government’s migration strategy’s Core Skills Occupations List (CSOL) is currently in its consultation stage. Employers have been asked to submit engagement and feedback about market conditions, including labour shortages, skill shortages and, ultimately, appropriate migration pathways. Today is the final day for CSOL submissions to Jobs and Skills Australia, and migration was a core topic of discussion at this morning’s meeting.
“We’d love to make sure that we can try and solve some of these skill shortages, and that in itself gets young Australians to train with people who are more highly skilled that we can bring into the country,” Perry said.
Simplifying the national restaurant award was another priority on the agenda.
“The restaurant award is 99 pages and it’s very complex – and it only gets more and more complex the more years go by since the original Fair Work Act,” said ARCA CEO Wes Lambert. “We will be looking at the changes our members want to make and meeting with relevant departments to discuss the restaurant award, and hopefully [that will] lead to changes to make it easier for restaurants and cafes to pay [staff] the correct amount.”
ARCA’s final area of concern right now is tax reform.
“I still can’t get [payroll tax], I still can’t get my head around [why it exists],” Perry said. “You get taxed for employing people, it’s crazy. And every time there’s been a GST or some sort of tax reform, payroll tax has been one that’s supposed to disappear, but it never does. So that’s something that we’re going to be taking to Canberra.”
Until 2022, Lambert was CEO of the similar industry body, Restaurant & Catering Australia (RCA), formed in 1922. He represented many ARCA members throughout the Covid-19 pandemic – members who are now presumably hoping for a better seat at the table, in an organisation of their own devising.
ARCA’s formation comes at a time of historic hardship for the industry, with a recent report predicting that one in 13 hospitality businesses could close within the next 12 months.
“The restaurant and cafe segment of the accommodation food service industry is at an unprecedented challenging time – 2024 has certainly been one of the hardest years for hospitality,” said Lambert.
“We know everyone is doing it tough, and there are many things that need to happen – diners need to dine. We need diners and consumers out there going to their favourite restaurants and continuing to dine out and, from a government point of view, we need changes to legislation policies that favour restaurants and cafes.”
For Perry, the priority for ARCA isn’t about weathering this storm as much as it is preventing or mitigating the next one.
“The reality of what this organisation hopes to do is to have a seat in these various things that affect us, to make sure that the government, when they’re legislating, understands what they’re doing to a $64 billion industry,” he said.
“It’s not about what might fix something right at the moment, it’s about what structural changes would help the industry be sustainable for a long period of time – we’re talking about now, what is the future?”
