我知道公司现在可能比较困难，但我还是应该去争取加薪吗？

Know your worth. Be factual and a little forthcoming, but not arrogant and threatening. Remember, it's a negotiation, so both sides need to be willing to give something from their starting points in the conversation.

As business owners, they need to be prepared to pay what's reasonable for good people to stay. Sometimes that means they take a hit to the pocket personally in the slender months so you'll stick around during the busy months and be crucial in making them a fuck tonne of money.

Honestly mate, you’re overthinking this. They seem like they are prepared to have a frank conversation about what’s possible and I’d let that run its course before anything else.

Now the last thing you want to do is start in with any “I’ll walk away if I don’t get a raise” stuff during that meeting, as it can be very tough to walk that kind of talk back, but once they’ve given you their best offer - you need to have a think about what else is out there and if it makes sense for you to stay put.

Your loyalty and diligence is commendable but it is only worth what they are willing (or able) to pay.

Hope it all works out for you. Good luck.

Normally 12-24 months in a role is grounds to ask for a raise - aside from the expected CPI increase every 12 months.

However, in exceptional circumstances or given the expansion of your duties/role outside of what you were originally hired for then yes, an increase is fair. I would make a list of your duties during your first two weeks and now your last two weeks - pick some of those extra duties that have slipped into your role and very politely ask that your pay reflect a portion of this extra responsibility.

Given you’ve only been there seven months you might find a better solution is to ask them to set some goals for you to have completed by your 12 month review, decisions around pay can be made upon this review.

Just because you are earning below the national average doesn't mean you are worth paying average or more, you have said that you are paid around the standard rate for the work, which is determined by the job market or floors set in associated awards or EBAs.

Comparing your income to the national average is not a good way to evaluate your rate of pay anyway, you need to compare it to what others are earning in comparable roles at comparable companies. This is easy to find online from salary surveys, just looking at Seek now it's saying 75-80k for sous chef. If you are under that then that's the kind of evidence you should be taking to your meeting. If you think you are better than average then you need to justify what value you are bringing that makes you more valuable than the average.

Your employer will know what the averages are, if it is a big company they usually have access to services that provide them with all this info.

In my experience businesses will always prioritise bottom-line over loyalty, employees should do the same. We go to work to trade our time for as much remuneration as we can, people who are loyal to an employer are usually taken advantage of.

I'm a software engineer and I usually ask for pay rises after 12 months. I make a case, if the rise I'm looking for is forthcoming great, if not I immediately start searching for a new job. When I get a higher offer I take it and don't consider any counter offer from my current employer even if it is higher because staying never works out in the long run.