What the government's hospitality review means for your local café, bar or restaurant

A government review has found that New Zealand's hospitality businesses — restaurants, bars, cafés, hotels, food trucks and more — are paying too many fees and dealing with licensing processes that are slow and hard to understand.

The review, done by the Ministry for Regulation, puts forward 24 ideas for the government to consider. It describes a sector bogged down by old and overlapping rules.

Some of the main ideas include moving certain businesses into a lower-risk category, scrapping yearly or twice-yearly licence renewals, creating one national application form, and appointing someone to oversee the alcohol licensing system. The review also suggests looking at building consent rules for temporary marquees, which event operators have complained about for years.

On alcohol licensing, the review says the current licence types should be replaced with a single system based on risk. That means businesses would be checked based on how risky their operations are, rather than every business facing the same level of checking. The review also says a law from 1969 — the Hotel Association of New Zealand Act — should be scrapped because it no longer works.

Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston said the sector is worth $21.4 billion and employs more than 193,000 people. She said she will put together a Hospitality Action Plan to coordinate the government's work on the sector. The government's announcement was published on the Beehive website on 3 September.

Regulation Minister David Seymour said the sector was hit hard by Covid and that red tape and "dumb rules" made it hard to recover. He said ministers would decide which of the review's ideas to accept in the coming weeks, but did not say which ones or give a specific date.

Around the same time, the Restaurant Association of New Zealand and Hospitality New Zealand released their own report, called "Serving Success," on 4 September. That report sets out what the industry itself thinks should change, separate from the government's review.

The Ministry for Regulation first announced the review in October 2025, saying it wanted to cut unnecessary red tape and modernise the rules. The review looked at businesses of all sizes, from a single food truck operator to large hotels, and every point where they deal with government or councils.

The changes proposed are big. Replacing alcohol licence types with a single risk-based system would need a law change. So would scrapping the 1969 Hotel Association Act. A single national application form would need every council to work together, because right now each council runs its own licensing under the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012. The proposed alcohol system steward would be a brand new role.

The idea of sorting businesses by risk level is already used in the food safety system, where food businesses are classed by how much risk they pose. Applying the same thinking to hospitality licensing would mean some businesses get checked less often or less strictly, instead of everyone being treated the same.

Getting rid of yearly or twice-yearly licence renewals would save businesses money and paperwork. But the review does not say exactly what would replace those renewals as a way to check that businesses are still following the rules.

Upston's Hospitality Action Plan is meant to be the way the government brings together its response to the review and other hospitality work. No timeline has been given for it.

The industry's own "Serving Success" report gives a separate set of recommendations from the people running these businesses. Both reports coming out in the same week suggests the government and the industry agree that change is needed, even though the reports were written separately.

For people running these businesses, it comes down to practical things. A café owner paying multiple council fees, a hotel dealing with an old law, or a marquee operator stuck in building consent rules — all face costs and delays the review says are unnecessary. Whether those costs come down depends on which of the 24 ideas the government accepts, and what laws change as a result.

Seymour saying decisions are weeks away, not months, suggests the government wants to move quickly on at least some of the review's ideas. But what those ideas look like once they go through the Cabinet process and into law is a separate question — and one the sector will be watching closely.