Hospitality & Food Service SWMS

Front-of-house food and beverage service across cafés, restaurants, function venues and catering operations exposes workers to a concentrated mix of slip, burn, laceration and psychosocial hazards during every shift. Carrying loaded trays through congested service paths, handling hot crockery and beverage urns, clearing broken glassware, and de-escalating intoxicated or aggressive patrons are routine tasks that have each been linked to compensable injuries in Safe Work Australia hospitality sector data. Under WHS Regulation 2025, the PCBU operating the venue must identify foreseeable risks, eliminate or minimise them so far as is reasonably practicable, and consult workers on the control measures adopted. A documented Safe Work Method Statement is the practical instrument that records this risk assessment, demonstrates worker consultation under s47–s49, and provides the pre-shift briefing tool supervisors use to onboard casual and junior staff. This SWMS is mandatory whenever the work involves the high-risk combinations of wet floors, hot liquids, glassware breakage and lone or late-night trading covered below.

Hazards identified

7 hazards covered, sorted by priority.

Control measures

Hierarchy-of-controls order: elimination → substitution → isolation → engineering → administrative → PPE.

1. 1Elimination — Remove glass stemware from high-traffic outdoor and pool-deck service areas and substitute permanently fixed drink stations to remove tray-carrying through congested paths.
2. 2Elimination — Eliminate lone opening and closing by rostering minimum two-person bracket shifts whenever cash handling or external door unlocking occurs after dark.
3. 3Substitution — Substitute polycarbonate or tempered drinkware for crystal stemware in function and event service to reduce laceration frequency from drop breakage.
4. 4Substitution — Replace open jug pouring of hot milk and water with sealed thermal carafes and push-button urns rated to AS/NZS 3350 for beverage equipment.
5. 5Engineering — Install slip-resistant flooring meeting AS 4586 classification P4 or P5 in all wet service zones, with continuous coved skirting and floor drainage at bar dump sinks.
6. 6Engineering — Provide insulated tray gloves, heat-resistant plate clutches, dedicated glass-only bins with lids, and CCTV with duress alarms linked to a 24-hour monitoring service.
7. 7Administrative — Conduct documented pre-shift briefings using this SWMS, RSA-trained de-escalation scripts, two-hourly floor sweep logs and incident reporting via the venue WHS register.
8. 8Administrative — Enforce maximum tray weights, no-running rules, mandatory enclosed footwear, fatigue limits on split shifts and check-in protocols every 30 minutes for lone closers.
9. 9PPE — Issue slip-resistant enclosed shoes rated SRC to EN ISO 20345, cut-resistant gloves for glass clearing and long-sleeve service uniforms in natural fibre.
10. 10PPE — Provide heat-resistant silicone finger guards, apron protection against hot liquid splash and personal duress pendants for staff working isolated function rooms.

Applicable Codes of Practice

Worked example

At a 180-seat suburban bistro preparing for a Friday dinner service, the duty manager opens the pre-shift briefing at 4:45pm and works through this SWMS with four floor staff and two runners, including a 17-year-old casual on her third shift. The hazard register is read aloud and the team confirms the wet-floor mat at the dishwash return is laid flat, the espresso machine steam wand isolation valve has been checked, and the glass-only bin behind the bar is empty and lined. The manager assigns cut-resistant gloves to the runner responsible for clearing the function room where stemware is in use, and confirms the duress pendant is charged for the staff member rostered to close the upstairs lounge alone after 10pm. During service at 8:20pm a wine glass shatters at table 14; the SWMS broken-glass procedure is followed — patrons stepped back, area cordoned with a wet-floor sign, fragments swept with a dustpan rather than gloved hands, and the incident logged in the WHS register. At 11:15pm an intoxicated patron escalates at the bar; the de-escalation script from the SWMS is used, RSA refusal is given, and the duress alarm is briefly armed until the patron leaves. The closing staff member checks in by phone at 11:45pm and midnight per the lone-worker protocol, and the SWMS sign-on sheet is filed for the two-year retention period.

Related legislation

• WHS Act 2011 (model)
• WHS Regulation 2025
• Code of Practice — Hazardous Manual Tasks

Frequently asked questions