Restaurant scheduling
- Average hours per person per week
- 42
- Shifts each person works in a cycle
- 7
- Hours each person works in a cycle
- 84
Every figure here comes from the figures you enter and the method stated beside it: your crews, your shift length, your days on and off, your people per shift and your own hourly rate. Where a guide names a published figure it names the source and the date it was read. This site publishes no legal opinion on hours, rest or pay: what your state requires of your schedule is your employment lawyer's answer, and the federal and state rules cited on each guide are the starting point, not the ruling.
Restaurant scheduling is the same weekly problem as any shift business and two things make it harder: the week is not the same twice, and the labour cost of the schedule you publish is decided before a single guest walks in. A manager builds the rota around forecast covers, availability and who is legally able to close and open, publishes it, and then spends the week absorbing call-outs and swap requests. Rotazo keeps the published schedule as the record, every version of it, and adds up what it costs before you post it.
Open the Rotating schedule generator Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
Build the week from covers, not from last week
Forecast covers by day part decide how many people you need on the floor and on the line. Copying last week forwards is quick and is how a restaurant ends up overstaffed on a wet Tuesday and short on a sunny Friday. Start from the forecast, then apply availability and the openers and closers you are allowed to roster.
Cost the schedule before you publish it
Hours by role at the rate for that role, totalled, against the sales you expect. That single percentage is the number the owner asks about at the end of the month, and it is knowable on the Thursday you write the schedule rather than three weeks later when payroll has run.
Publish it once and keep every version
The published schedule is the record: what was asked of whom, when it changed, who swapped with whom and who approved it. A schedule that lives in a group chat has no version, which is exactly the problem the week a shift is disputed or a no-show has to be evidenced.
Everything this section does
What a shift manager asks before running the Restaurant scheduling
How far ahead should a restaurant schedule be published?
As far as your staff need to plan and your forecast can support, which in practice is one to two weeks. Several jurisdictions now require predictive scheduling notice for hospitality employers, with penalties for late changes, so check what applies where you trade before you settle on a cycle.
What is a reasonable labour cost percentage for a restaurant?
It varies enormously by format: a quick-service counter and a full-service kitchen are different businesses. The useful number is your own over the last twelve weeks, by day part, which tells you which shifts are carrying the overstaffing rather than whether you are near somebody else's benchmark.
How should swaps be handled?
Through the schedule rather than around it. A swap agreed in a group chat and never recorded is a schedule that no longer matches reality, which matters the day somebody does not turn up. Record who asked, who accepted and who approved it, against the published version.
Rotazo Pro
Keeping the schedule everyone actually saw
Upgrading turns the worksheet into the record. The pattern becomes a schedule with names on it; every publish is a dated version; a swap or a call-out is recorded against the shift with who covered it; every person's hours add up on their own page. Export is always available, so the schedule history is yours whether or not you stay.
- Download the schedule as a file to send to the crew
- Your schedule and shift sheets without our name on them
- Save a pattern and open it again next cycle
- Your business name and logo on every printed schedule
- Take every schedule and shift sheet out at once
- Send the published schedule or a shift change to the crew from inside the record
$7per month, whole team
Start Rotazo Pro PricingRotazo Pro is $6.50 per month for your whole team, billed monthly, and renews each month at that price until you cancel. The price and the renewal terms are shown again before checkout.