Taxpayers handed Grill’d almost $30 million to subsidise its trainee program, dubbed “hamburger university”, even as its profit surged 700 per cent above the last full year before the pandemic.

The handouts helped boost the national burger chain’s pre-tax profit to $15.8 million in 2020-21, the same year chief executive Simon Crowe lobbied the government to expand access because his profits were being “decimated”.