Fast Food Industry Award [MA000003]: Employment types, rostering, and breaks

The Fast Food Industry Award [MA000003] is the rulebook for hiring, rostering, and breaks in the fast-food sector. It’s detailed, and more often than not confusing. But every employer in this industry needs to follow it.

In this guide, we compile the key parts in easy-to-understand terms to help you understand what’s required and what to watch out for.

Fast Food Industry Award employment types

The Fast Food Industry Award has a few ways you can hire people. Each way comes with different rules for entitlements and working hours.

• Full-time employees: Full-timers work an average of 38 hours a week on a permanent contract. They get the full set of entitlements (annual leave, personal leave, penalties, etc.).

• Part-time employees: Part-timers work less than 38 hours a week on a regular, predictable pattern that you both agree on in writing when they start. They get entitlements on a pro rata basis.

• Casual employees: Casuals work on an as-needed basis with no guaranteed hours. They don't get entitlements or a predictable schedule, but they do get a higher hourly rate (casual loading).

• Shiftworkers: These are workers that do shifts across early mornings, nights, weekends, and public holidays. They get the relevant shift penalties for these times, plus the same leave entitlements as full-time or part-time employees (depending on classification).

• On-hire employees: Agency staff also come under the award. Their conditions must match those of your direct employees in similar roles.

• Apprentices and trainees: Their hours follow their training contract. And they receive entitlements based on classification.

Ordinary hours under the Fast Food Industry Award

Ordinary hours refer to the hours each employee type is allowed to work. The Fast Food Award has two universal rules across the board:

• Minimum engagement/shift length: 3 hours

• Maximum ordinary hours per day: 11 hours

Everything else depends on the type of employment.

Full-time employees

• work 38 hours per week

• you can average hours over two, three, or four weeks

Part-time employees

• work less than 38 hours per week

• hours must match their agreed pattern

Casual employees

• can work up to 38 hours per week (or averaged across your roster cycle)

Shiftworkers

• work up to 38 hours per week, averaged over 4 weeks

• can average over up to 12 months if both sides agree

On-hire employees

• follow the ordinary hours of the classification you engage them under (full-time, part-time, or casual)

Apprentices and trainees

• hours follow their training contract (usually full-time or part-time)

• ordinary hours match the rules of their classification

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10 Fast Food Award rostering rules

The Fast Food Industry Award doesn’t give you a long list of rostering rules. It’s much more flexible than most people expect. It does set a few important requirements, though. 

Some rostering expectations you'll see here come from the National Employment Standards (NES). And many of the things fast-food businesses treat as 'rules' are really just best practice, not legal obligations.

Award-enforceable rostering rules

These rules come straight from the Fast Food Industry Award, and you must adhere to them:

1. Rosters must stay regular and predictable (full-time and part-time only)

Part-time and full-time employees must have steady, predictable hours. For part-time employees, this includes a written record of their 'regular pattern of work' (days, start and finish times, and meal break. You must roster them in accordance with this record.

2. Changes to a part-time employee's work pattern must be agreed in writing

Need to tweak a part-time employee's usual pattern for a particular rostered shift? You must both agree and confirm the change in writing before the shift ends. A text message is acceptable.

3. Breaks must follow the award rules

You have to schedule breaks correctly (see the breaks section for full details). For part-time employees, the roster must show the exact timing and duration of their breaks. For full-time and casual employees, breaks don’t need to appear on the roster.

4. You can average ordinary hours across roster cycles

To give you flexibility over both busy and quiet weeks, the Fast Food Industry Award lets you average:

• full-time hours over two, three, or four weeks

• shiftworker hours over a four-week roster (or up to 12 months if both sides agree)

• casual hours over your roster cycle

NES and Fair Work Act rostering rules

These rules aren't part of the Fast Food Industry Award. But they still apply to every fast-food business:

5. Employees can request flexible working arrangements (NES)

Some employees can request flexible working arrangements under the NES. For example, employees who are carers, parents of a school-aged or younger child, living with a disability, 55 or older, or dealing with family or domestic violence (or supporting someone who is).

You must take their request seriously and can only refuse on reasonable business grounds.

6. Right to Disconnect applies to everyone

The Right to Disconnect now applies to all businesses. Under the Fair Work Act, employees have a right to ignore calls, messages, or notifications outside their rostered hours. This is unless refusing would be unreasonable. For example, if the contact is a legal requirement or genuinely urgent. You can’t pressure staff to stay reachable when they’re not on the clock.

7. You must consult staff about major changes to hours

If you introduce a significant change, like a restructure, new opening hours, or big roster shifts affecting groups of employees, the award’s consultation clause says you must:

• let affected staff know

• discuss the impact with them

• listen to and consider their feedback

This is different from normal day-to-day roster changes.

Best-practice rostering (recommended, but not enforceable)

These aren’t legal requirements. But they can make life easier and reduce disputes:

8. Post rosters early

While sharing rosters early isn’t a legal requirement under the Fast Food Award, it definitely makes everyone’s life easier. When people know what shifts they're working ahead of time, they can plan things like childcare, transport, and study without stress.

Early rosters also help cut down on no-shows and last-minute shift swaps. This usually means less fretting for managers and smoother staffing across the week.

9. Communicate changes clearly

Roster changes are just part of fast food industry life. But when you don't communicate those changes clearly, that’s when the problems start. Even though there's no legal requirement for a notice period, telling people clearly (and early) helps avoid missed shifts, misunderstandings, and resentment.

A quick text or app notification can go a long way toward keeping your team on the same page and maintaining trust.

10. Use tools that automate hours, breaks, and pattern changes

Digital rostering tools can save you from the classic fast food industry staffing nightmares. For example, forgetting a meal break, giving a casual employee a shift under three hours, or rostering someone outside their legal maximum hours.

Putting the routine bits, like updating hours, work patterns, and breaks, on autopilot means you don't have to rely on memory, sticky notes, or a collection of spreadsheets to stay compliant.

Fast Food Industry Award breaks and rest periods

Award-wide break rules

The rules below apply to every shift:

• No one can work more than 5 hours in a row without a meal break.

• Meal breaks can't be in the first or last hour of a shift.

• You can't combine rest breaks and meal breaks.

• Rest breaks count as time worked; meal breaks don't.

• Breaks must give the employee ‌meaningful rest.

• Ordinary hours must remain continuous (with only rest and meal breaks allowed inside the shift).

9 practical tips for smoother rosters and better breaks

Fast food award rostering is rarely easy. People call in sick at the last minute, trade ramps up without warning, and there are school hours and uni timetables to work around. A good roster can help keep your store running smoothly. A bad one can lead to stress, missed breaks, and complaints. 

Here are some practical tips to help make things a little easier:

Staff rostering software that reduces costs, risks, and turnover.

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How Fast Food Award rostering goes wrong (and how to fix it)

Alex manages a busy fast-food store. When the holiday chaos hits, everything speeds up. The store sees longer trading hours, massive crowds, and a flood of new part-timers starting all at once. In the panic to keep up, Alex accidentally falls outside the Fast Food Award without realising it.

What went wrong

1. Staff ended up working outside their agreed hours

To keep the store running, Alex kept stretching shifts past what part-timers had initially agreed to in writing. Some staff worked longer than their contracted pattern quite often. This meant they weren’t being rostered in line with clause 10.

2. Rosters changed too often, with little notice

Because demand spiked at unpredictable times, Alex kept shuffling shifts on the fly. But he didn’t consult staff or record the changes properly. This went against the rules of part-time variations.

3. Breaks fell apart during the rush

With long queues and not enough hands on deck, employees took late breaks, short breaks, and sometimes, no breaks. This breached the award’s rules on break timing and frequency.

How Alex fixed it

1. Locked in clear, predictable hours for part-timers

Alex updated every part-timer’s employment contract to clearly state their days, start/finish times, and meal break. This gave everyone stability and made rostering easier to manage under pressure.

2. Set up a simple process for roster changes

Now, before Alex makes any changes, he checks in with the employee and gets written confirmation (even if it's just by SMS). This avoids misunderstandings and helps keep the store compliant.

3. Used digital tools to protect breaks

Alex introduced a scheduling system that can interpret the Fast Food Industry Award. It flags upcoming breaks and alerts managers when someone is about to hit their break window or their five-hour maximum. This helps keep breaks on track even during peak pandemonium.

A smarter way to run fast food rosters, payroll, and everything in between

Running a fast food team gets a lot easier when everything lives in one place. Meet Rippling, your all-in-one workforce management platform that connects HR, Payroll, Time and Attendance, Scheduling, and IT.

When someone changes their hours, swaps roles, moves stores, or updates their availability, Rippling keeps everything in sync. Their roster, timesheets, and pay rates all update together, without you adjusting things in multiple different places.

Rippling’s scheduling tool is built specifically to handle the rules in the Fast Food Industry Award (amongst others). It applies the correct minimum shift length, flags when someone goes over 11 ordinary hours, checks break timing, and makes sure part-timers stay inside their agreed pattern of work.

It also links rosters directly to payroll, so the hours you approve are the hours that get paid. And with penalties, allowances, and loadings applied correctly behind the scenes. The bottom line: fewer slip-ups, fewer 'is this compliant?' moments, and much less time drowning in daily admin.

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