''It's more than we were expecting them to move,'' KFC employee David Cannon said.
However, there was still ''a long way to go''.
The agreement between Unite Union and Restaurant Brands New Zealand, which will be implemented in July, would guarantee all employees a minimum number of weekly rostered hours.
Unite national director Mike Treen said the exact number of hours guaranteed under the agreement would vary from person to person, but would equal 80% of the average number of hours worked over the previous 12 weeks.
Union spokesman Ben Peterson said present Restaurant Brands contracts - covering employees at KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and Carl's Jr outlets - did not guarantee any weekly hours, A copy of the new collective agreement provided to the Otago Daily Times by Mr Treen further states ''additional shifts that become available shall initially be offered to existing employees'' before the employer is allowed to ''recruit additional employees to cover such shifts''.
In an email, Restaurant Brands NZ chief executive Russel Creedy denied previous contracts had been zero-hour agreements.
''All of our waged employees [are] employed on permanent part-time contracts,'' he said.
Restaurant Brands was pleased with the new collective agreement, which was a ''a win-win for all employees, the union and the company'', Mr Creedy said.
Last month, Mr Peterson said zero-hour contracts came into widespread use in New Zealand - particularly in the fast-food industry - following the 2008 global financial crisis.
Census data provided to the Otago Daily Times by Statistics New Zealand shows that while the number of people working in food and beverage services in Dunedin decreased slightly between 2006 and 2013, the number of people working less than 14 hours a week increased 11.4%.
Critics of zero-hour contracts say they cause financial insecurity for employees and cause employees to be desperate for extra hours and constantly on-call in the hopes of getting more work.
Mr Peterson said Unite was still negotiating with Burger King, McDonald's and Wendy's, all of which used contracts that did not guarantee weekly rostered hours.
A McDonald's spokesman said ''part of [the] ongoing discussion [with Unite] includes security of hours''.
Burger King spokesman James Woodbridge declined to comment on zero-hour contracts because of the ongoing negotiations, but said they were ''progressing well''.
''Restaurant Brands has simply been the first company Unite chose to meet with this week to wrap up their negotiation,'' he said.
''We're next.''
Wendy's NZ chief executive Danielle Lendich did not comment on the negotiations, saying only that ''Wendy's does not use zero-hour contracts''.
Mr Treen said none of the three companies ''have made serious offers as yet, and they may require a bit of pressure ... we'll be starting action next week against them''.
University of Otago Faculty of Law Prof Paul Roth said last month zero-hour contracts were not defined in legislation, but they were commonly understood to be contracts where employees were expected to work weekly rostered shifts and did not have any guaranteed weekly hours, .
From a legal perspective, in permanent contracts, ''the employer is required to put some indication of hours of work'' , he said.
''A zero-hour contract is basically a permanent casual relationship, which is unheard of and legally is not supposed to exist.''
