Cakeage fee for cafés and restaurants: what's fair, what's legal, and how to avoid the row

Yes, you can charge a cakeage fee. It’s a per-head or per-cake charge for plating, cutting and serving a dessert a guest brings in, and we found no Australian law that caps it. What matters is that you’ve worked it out from real costs and told guests the amount before they arrive, at booking and on your website. Corkage, the same idea for wine, is a separate decision that depends on your state and licence.

Timing matters, too. Birthday lunches, work Christmas parties and end-of-year functions all start landing in the diary now, and that’s when somebody turns up with a three-tier cake and a carton of wine. Settle your policy this month, not when the cake is already on the pass.

Why does cakeage cause so many arguments?

Because it usually appears at the wrong moment. Two recent Australian cases show how it plays out. In August 2026, The Nightly reported that a NSW Central Coast restaurant publicly called out a diner over an unpaid cakeage charge, and the owner stood by the policy while the internet split down the middle. Earlier, a Sydney diner told Yahoo News a $10 per head fee felt “criminal”, and said it had gone up from $5.

Treat those as warnings about communication, not as price benchmarks. In both stories the sting was the surprise. A guest who reads “$4 per person for cutting and serving, waived if everyone orders dessert” at booking can say yes, say no, or bring a cheaper cake. A guest who finds $33 on the bill feels ambushed, and an unhappy guest with a phone is a marketing problem you didn’t budget for.

What does a birthday cake really cost your kitchen?

Owners who’ve worked a Saturday service know the fee isn’t about the cake. It’s about what the cake displaces. Break it into five parts:

1. Labour. Someone stops what they’re doing to take the cake, store it, bring it out, find candles, cut it, plate it and clear it. On a busy night that’s a couple of minutes of a paid person per table, usually more for a large cake.
2. Plates, forks and washing. Every extra plate and fork goes through the dishwasher, and that cycle uses water, power, chemicals and time.
3. Fridge space. A big cake can take a shelf of a cool room that’s already full on a Friday.
4. The lost dessert sale. Eight guests who’d have ordered desserts at a good margin each now eat the cake they brought.
5. Risk and fuss. Cream cakes sitting on the bench, a candle near the curtains, a guest with an allergy to something you can’t vouch for.

The same discipline you use to cost a dish applies here. If you’ve followed our menu costing method, you already know how to build a number up from its parts rather than guessing.

A worked example

Illustrative figures only. A suburban restaurant has a table of 10 bringing their own cake.

• Staff time to receive, store, plate, cut and clear: about 12 minutes of a staff member at a loaded hourly cost of $45, roughly $9.
• Ten extra plates and forks washed: about $0.50 a head in water, power and chemicals, so $5.
• Fridge space: say $3 for a shelf for the evening.
• Lost dessert margin: if you’d normally sell dessert to half the table at $8 gross profit each, that’s $40.

Total: about $57 for the table, or roughly $5.70 a head if you want to recover all of it. Plenty of owners recover only part, perhaps $3 to $4 a head, and waive it if the table orders dessert. The point isn’t the exact figure. It’s that you can defend a number when someone asks, because it came from your own kitchen.

If you want to see how these small add-ons stack up against a full month of Christmas bookings, put the dates into the seasonal trade planner.

How should you set and word the fee?

Pick one structure and keep it simple:

Structure	Best for	Example wording
Per head	Groups of six or more	“Cakeage: $4 per person includes plates, cutting and service.”
Flat per cake	Small tables, simple cakes	“Cakeage: $20 per cake.”
Waived with dessert	Venues that want to protect dessert sales	“Cakeage is waived when every guest orders a dessert.”
Not allowed	Venues with a dessert-led menu, or an allergen-sensitive kitchen	“We can’t accommodate outside cakes.”

Whichever you choose, say what it covers. “Cakeage” on its own sounds like a toll. “Includes plates, cutting and service” sounds like a service.

Some venues choose not to charge and simply say no outside cakes. That’s a legitimate policy too, as long as it’s stated before the booking is confirmed.

Where should you disclose it so nobody feels ambushed?

Disclose it in four places, using the same wording each time:

• Your booking form or booking call script. Make it a standard line, so your team mentions it every time a birthday or celebration is flagged.
• The confirmation email or text. Put the fee in writing, with the dollar amount.
• Your website’s functions or bookings page. Guests often check before they ring.
• A small sign or the menu. Useful for walk-ins who arrive with a cake from the supermarket.

There’s also a legal reason to be open. The ACCC has pursued businesses that show a partial price and reveal unavoidable extras late in the process, a practice it calls drip pricing. Its undertakings from Airbnb and eDreams are a recent example, though they involved online travel bookings rather than restaurants. A cakeage fee is optional, since the guest chooses to bring a cake, so it isn’t the same thing. But disclosing early removes any argument and costs you one sentence. The federal government has also been working on a wider ban on drip pricing, so check the ACCC’s site for the current position rather than relying on the stage it was at when this guide was written.

What about corkage and BYO wine?

Corkage is the fee for opening, serving and washing glasses for alcohol the guest brings. Unlike cakeage, you can’t treat it as a pure pricing decision, because whether guests can bring alcohol at all depends on your state and your licence.

• NSW: The state says a BYO restaurant doesn’t need a liquor licence, though normal council approvals still apply. If you hold a liquor licence, check its conditions with Liquor & Gaming NSW before allowing BYO.
• Victoria: A BYO permit lets a restaurant or café allow BYO if it doesn’t sell liquor itself. The ABLIS listing says a venue that already holds a liquor licence and mainly serves meals doesn’t need an extra permit, and recommends applying at least 11 weeks ahead if you do.
• Queensland: The Queensland Government says customers can generally bring their own with your consent, but also notes some venue types, including cafés, are covered by an offence for bringing alcohol in, and to check with your council or the regulator. On-the-spot fines can apply.

Other states differ again, so confirm with your own regulator before you print “BYO welcome” anywhere. Our guide to liquor licensing for cafés and small bars covers how the licence types fit together.

Once you’re sure BYO is allowed, price corkage the same way you price cakeage: glass washing, staff time to open and pour, and the lost wine margin. A per-bottle fee is the norm. Cap it for large formats if you want to, and say so.

How does this fit into Christmas trading?

December is when these fees get tested. A function of 20 with a cake and six bottles of wine is a real service load on top of your normal menu, and it lands in the same fortnight as your heaviest payroll and supplier bills. If the cash behind that fortnight is tight, our Christmas trading cash flow page is a good starting point. And if the sums show a gap between supplier invoices and December takings, you can see what your venue could access in about a minute without touching your credit file.

A cakeage policy won’t fix cash flow on its own. It’s one of the small margin levers, alongside your public holiday surcharge, your menu prices and your roster, that add up over a busy season.

A one-page cakeage policy you can use this week

1. Decide: allow, allow with a fee, or not at all.
2. Cost it from your own numbers as above.
3. Choose per head or per cake, and set a waiver rule if you want one.
4. Write one sentence of wording that says the amount and what it includes.
5. Put the sentence in your booking script, confirmation message, website and menu.
6. Add one line on allergens: the guest is responsible for information about food they bring.
7. If you want to offer BYO wine, check your state rules and licence first, then do the same for corkage.
8. Brief the team so every host and server gives the same answer.

Ready to look at the numbers behind your busy season?

Small fees like cakeage protect margin, but they don’t fund an espresso machine, a new cool room or a December payroll. If a gap is opening up between what the next few weeks cost and what they’ll bring in, the next step is easy: tell us about your venue.

Enquiring takes about 60 seconds, and there’s no credit check when you ask, so your credit score isn’t touched just for finding out where you stand. We don’t send your details to a pile of lenders, so your phone won’t light up with strangers. A real person who understands hospitality reads your enquiry and calls you about your own situation. All we ask is that you fill the form in accurately, so we can match you to the right option first time.

See if you qualify →