How Much Does a Café Receptionist Cost in Queensland?

If you have ever thought about hiring someone specifically to answer the phone and handle bookings at your café, you have probably done a rough calculation in your head. Maybe you have even looked it up. This article gives you the actual numbers, including the costs that don't show up in a wage calculator.

The base wage

Under the Hospitality Industry Award, a casual food and beverage attendant in Queensland currently earns around $24 to $28 per hour depending on their grade and experience. That's the starting point before anything else is added.

Now add the 25% casual loading. This is what casual workers receive instead of paid leave entitlements. It's not optional and it's not negotiable. It's part of the award.

So your starting point, before you've factored in anything else, is roughly $30 to $35 per hour for a casual hospitality worker in Queensland.

The hours add up fast

Here's where most owners underestimate it.

To have someone reliably covering the phone during your busiest windows, you're looking at a minimum of 4 to 5 hours a day. The morning rush from 7am to 11am is when most bookings come in. Then again around 4pm to 6pm when people are planning their weekend. Add lunch service on top of that.

That's a conservative 25 hours a week. At $30.50 per hour, you're at around $762 a week. Just over $3,300 a month.

Even if you scale it back significantly and have someone available for just two hours a day, five days a week, you're still looking at around $305 a week. About $1,320 a month. And that's before anything goes wrong.

The costs nobody mentions

A wage is just the start. Here's what actually hits the bank account.

Sick days. When your phone person calls in sick on a Saturday morning, you have two options. You find someone to cover at overtime rates, or you go without. Either way it costs you.

No-shows. They happen. Hospitality has one of the highest no-show rates of any industry. Every time someone doesn't turn up, you either pay someone else to step in or you let calls go unanswered.

Training time. Teaching someone how you want calls handled, what questions to expect, how your booking system works. That's hours of your time and theirs. And if they leave after three months, you start from scratch.

Superannuation. From the 2025 financial year, the super guarantee sits at 11.5% on top of wages for eligible workers. Worth factoring in from the start.

What most café owners actually do

Most cafés don't hire a dedicated phone person. Instead, someone on the floor answers calls between tables. The barista returns missed voicemails when there's a quiet moment. The manager checks bookings on their break.

It works, until it doesn't.

A missed call during Saturday brunch is a missed booking. A call that goes to voicemail at 9pm on a Thursday, when someone is trying to book for Friday night, often ends up going to your competitor instead. The hidden cost of that is real, even if it's hard to put an exact number on it.

So what are the options?

There are three realistic choices.

The first is to hire someone part-time specifically for phones and bookings. Budget a minimum of $1,200 to $1,800 per month for meaningful coverage, and more if you want proper availability across the full week.

The second is to keep doing what you're doing, accepting that some calls will be missed and some bookings will slip through the cracks.

The third is to use an AI phone assistant. A service like Parla answers every call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in a natural voice that's personalised for your venue. It handles FAQs, takes bookings, sends SMS confirmations to customers, and logs every call. Starting from $147 a month.

The honest comparison

	Casual worker	Parla
Monthly cost	$1,200 to $1,800+	From $147
Hours covered	Shifts only	24/7, 365 days
Sick days	Your problem	None
Booking confirmations	Manual	Automatic SMS
Setup	Weeks of training	Done for you

The maths isn't complicated. The question most owners ask is whether the technology actually sounds natural enough to trust with their customers. That's a completely fair question. The best way to answer it is to call a venue that's already using it.