A Gig App for Restaurant Workers Is Facing Questions About Missing Retirement Pay

A hospitality gig-work app operating across Australia and the United States is facing questions after a worker said he was never paid superannuation — money that employers in Australia are required to set aside for workers' retirement — for shifts booked through the platform across 15 different companies.

The app is called Supp. It was launched in Melbourne in 2017 by Kate and Cameron Reid, who also own Lune Croisanterie. Supp calls itself a "jobs marketplace" where restaurants, cafes, and event venues post available shifts, and workers pick them up at an hourly rate. The Reids still hold a financial stake in the company but no longer sit on its board. Supp says it is used by about 15,000 venues and 200,000 workers across Australia and the US, including in New York and Los Angeles. The app is advertised on the Apple App Store as the "#1 hospitality jobs app" and on Google Play as a tool used by thousands of workers and businesses in the restaurant, cafe, and events sectors.

Here is how Supp makes money: it adds a 12% fee on top of the shift rate and gives workers payment records and end-of-year summaries. Importantly, Supp requires workers to have their own Australian Business Number (ABN) and treats them as independent contractors — self-employed workers — rather than casual employees of the businesses that hire them.

That classification is now under pressure. A worker named Daniel McBurnie, who was hired as a contractor for 15 different companies through Supp, looked into whether he was owed superannuation for shifts he got through the platform starting in 2021. McBurnie said he was never paid superannuation for any of his Supp shifts. He also said the app had no way for businesses to collect, or for him to provide, the information needed to make those payments. He worked across 15 separate hospitality businesses during this period.

The legal background matters here. Under Australian workplace law (the Fair Work Act), sham contracting — telling a worker they are a contractor when they are legally an employee — is illegal and can cost large businesses up to $546,000 in penalties. On a separate front, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) says that contractors who are paid mainly for their physical labour are still entitled to superannuation. These two rules both point directly at Supp's model: if workers labeled as contractors are actually in an employment relationship, then both the label and the missing superannuation could be legally challenged.

Supp's chief executive, Jordan Murray, has rejected and denied any suggestions of misrepresentation of the working relationship arranged through the platform.

The broader context is that Australia has been tightening rules around gig work — short-term, app-based jobs like food delivery or ride-sharing. The difference between being a contractor and being an employee affects what you owe in taxes, whether you get superannuation, and what workplace protections apply. Platforms that build their business around contractor status can face challenges on all of these fronts at once. The ATO's rule means that even if the contractor label holds, the superannuation obligation may still apply. McBurnie's experience, if it reflects what other workers have gone through, suggests a system-wide gap rather than a one-off mistake.

There is also a structural question. McBurnie said the platform had no mechanism for sharing superannuation information between workers and hiring businesses. That raises a broader question: can a platform that handles the entire payment process for a shift credibly say it has no role in making sure entitlements tied to that payment are met? Supp collects its 12% fee, issues payment records, and produces annual summaries, which means it is directly involved in the payment chain. The missing superannuation mechanism raises the question of who should be responsible for making sure it gets paid — the platform, the businesses, or the workers themselves.

Murray's denial sets up the likely contest. The three pressure points are Australia's sham-contracting law, the ATO's superannuation rules for contractors paid for their labour, and the account of a worker who went through 15 companies without receiving superannuation. How regulators, the platform, and the businesses that depend on it handle these pressures will shape not just Supp's future but the wider rules for hospitality gig work in Australia.