A government review of the rules covering cafes, bars, restaurants and food trucks has found one operator was so worn down by the process of setting up in New Zealand that it seriously looked at moving to Australia instead.
The Ministry for Regulation released its Hospitality Regulatory Review on 9 September, two months after the final report was completed in July. It makes 24 recommendations covering almost every point at which a hospitality business has to deal with central or local government, and Regulation Minister David Seymour used the food truck story to make the case for change.
“For example, the Review heard from a food truck which considered setting up in Australia because the process in New Zealand was so bureaucratic. On exploring this option with Australian regulators, they were given one contact and a clear pathway to set up the business. In New Zealand, they had to meet with 13 different officials from 8 different central and local government agencies. They said the pathway to set up was incredibly confusing and complex,” Seymour said in the announcement.
The report itself carries a blunter line from a business owner who made a submission. “I have just opened a new hospitality business in the last 6 weeks. It took me almost 7 months to get a license when all requirements had been met within the first month,” the owner told the review.
The sector the review covers is not small. The Ministry puts it at more than 25,000 businesses generating $21.4 billion in revenue, and Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston said it employs “more than 193,000 people across the country”. The review looked at restaurants, bars, clubs such as Returned Services Association and sports clubs, cafes, food stalls at markets, food trucks, catering businesses and hotels. Gambling was left out of scope, as were employment and immigration rules, on the grounds that those could not sensibly be examined for hospitality alone.
The Ministry received 247 written submissions, including from 39 territorial authorities, and met members of 27 District Licensing Committees, 12 councils, 21 hospitality businesses, 13 sector representative groups and two community groups. Engagement ran in Wellington, Auckland, Queenstown, Northland and Central Otago.
What it found was not that the rules are wrong in principle. The review concluded regulation of the sector is “generally effective at achieving its stated objectives” and pointed out why the rules exist at all. In 2024, 59 percent of notifiable foodborne illness outbreaks likely originated in hospitality settings, and the report puts the total cost of alcohol harm in New Zealand at around $9 billion each year, with 20 to 25 percent of alcohol bought here sold through hospitality businesses rather than supermarkets and bottle stores.
The problem the review identified is proportion and duplication rather than the existence of regulation. Businesses supply the same information more than once, often to the same council. Decisions take longer than the published timeframes suggest, and the report notes that knowing how long a decision will take matters for a business’s planning and cash flow. Fees are frequently flat, so a coffee cart can pay much the same as a bar and a small operator much the same as a large one. Fees also fail to cover many councils’ costs, meaning ratepayers quietly subsidise some regulatory work while other work simply does not get done.
The 24 recommendations are split into three tranches. Quick wins, due by mid-2027, include shifting some lower-risk businesses into lighter food safety categories, writing a simpler hospitality-specific template food control plan, and letting venues accept donations towards running a courtesy van without tripping into passenger service rules. Short-term changes, due by the end of 2027, include scrapping annual and bi-annual food registration renewals in favour of a single nationally set application form. The report estimates that one change alone would save hospitality businesses about $1.9 million a year in fees, an average of roughly $150 each.
Other short-term proposals would stretch food safety verification visits to two years for high-performing businesses, and let a food truck be verified once by a single council and have that recognised everywhere else it trades, saving an estimated $250,000 over a decade. The medium to long-term items, pencilled in for 2028 and 2029, are more ambitious. The biggest would scrap the current list of alcohol licence types altogether and replace them with one risk framework setting out what licences exist, what is required to get each one, what they cost and how closely each is monitored.
There is also a piece of housekeeping with a certain charm. The review recommends repealing the Hotel Association of New Zealand Act 1969, on the basis that the statutory body it created no longer exists and its powers have not been used in more than ten years. Expected cost of the repeal, according to the report, is none.
Notably, the review did not give the industry everything it asked for. Brewers argued that alcohol excise tax disadvantages kegged beer sold in pubs compared with cans and bottles sold in supermarkets. The Ministry looked at cutting the rate and declined, finding it would cost the Crown between $30 million and $283 million over ten years while doing little to change what drinkers actually pay or to help venues. Its conclusion was that no change to excise settings is needed.
None of this is government policy yet. Seymour’s own statement is careful on that point, saying “in the coming weeks Ministers will be deciding which recommendations to accept, and the next steps”. Upston said she would develop a Hospitality Action Plan to coordinate work that crosses several portfolios, since food safety, alcohol, transport, building consents and council fees currently sit with different ministers and agencies.
Some of the ground is already shifting. The Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill, which narrows who can object to a licence and gives applicants a right of reply at hearings, was reported back from the Justice Committee on 25 August 2026 and is still before Parliament. With a general election due later this year, whether these 24 recommendations survive into legislation will depend on who is sitting on the government benches when the decisions are made. If you are still weighing that up, our voting tool lets you compare where the parties stand.
Have you tried to open or run a hospitality business here, and does any of this match your experience? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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