Scheduling
The rota is never finished. Here is how to make it hold.
Most restaurant schedules are made late on a Sunday, sent as a photo to a group chat and changed three times before Friday. That is not a planning problem so much as a paperwork one: the plan lives in a spreadsheet, and every change to it lives in someone’s private messages.
Where it usually goes wrong
A cook writes that he is sick. You scroll back through the group chat looking for the person who said they wanted extra hours. That was two weeks and four hundred messages ago.
The plan itself is rarely the problem. What hurts is everything around it:
- It comes out too late. People with kids, a second job or exams cannot organise their week around a rota they see on Saturday.
- Changes happen one-to-one. The printout in the kitchen says one thing, three phones say another, and nobody is sure which is current.
- Gaps show up on the day. You find out Saturday dinner is one waiter short when Saturday dinner starts.
- The same two people always say yes. Until they quit.
A weekly routine that works in a real restaurant
- Start from last week, not from a blank sheet.Most weeks have the same shape: lunch, dinner, bar, the same roles. Keep that shape as a template and only change what is different this week.
- Put absences in first.Holidays, days off and known appointments go into the plan before any shift does. Everything else is built around them, not squeezed in afterwards.
- Plan the minimum per role, then see where you are short.If Friday dinner needs two cooks, four on the floor and one at the bar, write that down once. The useful question is not “who works Friday” but “where am I below what I need”.
- Publish on a fixed day, as early as you can.Two weeks ahead is a good target. One week is the least your team will thank you for. Same weekday every time, so nobody has to ask.
- After publishing, every change goes to the person it affects.Not to the whole group. A message that says “your Saturday moved to 17:00” gets read. The fortieth message in a group chat does not.
Late call-outs: decide the answer before the phone rings
You cannot prevent sick days. You can decide in a calm moment what happens when one comes: who you ask first for each role, whether a swap needs your OK, and who is allowed to stay longer. Write that down once and tell the team. A rule people know beats ten frantic phone calls at four in the afternoon.
It also helps to let people ask for open shifts instead of you chasing them. If Saturday still needs one bartender, the bartenders should be able to see that and put their hand up.
The legal part, briefly
The rules depend on your country: rest time between two shifts, the longest allowed day, how much notice on-call staff must get. Across the EU, eleven hours of rest within every 24 is the baseline, and many countries add their own rules on top. Nobody can keep all of that in their head on a Sunday night, so your planning tool should warn you when a shift breaks a rule.
A schedule says who should work. Most countries also want a record of who actually did, and when. That is a separate job. Time trackingWhere IBMK fits in
We built IBMK for our own restaurants first, so the schedule is shaped around exactly these problems.
- Templates per locationLunch, dinner, bar, each with how many cooks, waiters and bartenders it needs. You see “2 / 3” on the board before you publish, not on the night.
- Drafts until you publishPlan in peace. When you publish, everyone gets their shifts on their phone, and any later change reaches the affected person straight away.
- Staff ask for open shiftsSlots that still need people are visible to the team. Someone asks, you approve or decline with one tap.
- Absences in the same planHoliday and sick days sit next to the shifts, so you never schedule someone who is away.
What it does not do: it will not plan the week for you, and colleagues cannot swap shifts between themselves yet. They ask you, you move the shift.
Questions we hear a lot
How far ahead should a restaurant publish the schedule?
Two weeks is a comfortable target, one week is the minimum most teams accept. Whatever you choose, publish on the same weekday every time.
Is the printed schedule enough as a record of working hours?
No. A schedule shows what was planned. In most EU countries you also need a record of when people actually started, finished and took breaks.
How should we handle shift swaps?
With one rule: a swap counts once a manager has confirmed it and the plan shows it. Private deals that never reach the plan are how two people turn up for the same shift, or nobody does.
Want to see it with your own team?
Write to us. A person answers, usually the same day, and we set up your locations and roles together.