How to roster delivery drivers and in-store staff together

Written by Roster Flow. Published 12 September 2026.

A pizza shop, a Thai takeaway or a burger bar that delivers has two kinds of work running at once: the counter and kitchen, and the road. Each depends on the other. A driver with nothing to deliver costs wages, and a finished order with no driver to take it goes cold and gets refunded.

This article is about delivery drivers employed by the business. For receiving supplier deliveries instead, see how to roster around deliveries and supplier windows. For kitchen and floor teams in a restaurant, rostering kitchen and front-of-house employees covers the same balancing act without the road.

Forecast orders by hour, split by channel

Start with the till or ordering system. For each hour of each trading day over the last 4 to 8 weeks, count two numbers: counter and pick-up orders, and delivery orders. Average the same day across the weeks, leaving out anything unusual, such as a public holiday or a local event.

The two lines do not have to move together: in the worked example below, pick-up orders peak an hour before delivery orders. Your own figures decide the pattern. Forecasting staffing from weekly sales shows how to spread a week’s sales across its hours, and the same method works for order counts.

Work out how many drivers each hour needs

Driver numbers come from how long a run takes and how many orders go on each run, not from the number of orders alone.

1. Time a typical runFrom leaving the shop to walking back in, including parking and finding the door. Use real runs from a busy night, not a quiet afternoon.
2. Set how many orders can share a runTwo orders going the same way can share a run if the food still arrives hot. Decide the limit and stick to it.
3. Work out runs per driver per hourDivide 60 minutes by the run time. A 20 minute run is 3 runs an hour.
4. Divide the orders by what one driver can carryUse the formula below, round up, then check it against the kitchen.

Drivers needed = delivery orders in the hour ÷ (runs per hour × orders per run)

With 14 delivery orders in an hour, 20 minute runs and up to 2 orders a run, one driver carries 3 × 2 = 6 orders an hour, so the hour needs 14 ÷ 6 = 2.33, rounded up to 3 drivers. Then check the kitchen can cook 14 delivery orders plus the counter orders in that hour. If it cannot, a third driver only waits for longer.

Stagger drivers to the delivery peak

• Start drivers as delivery orders build, not when the doors open. The counter team usually needs to start earlier.
• Finish drivers after the last order. The kitchen may stop taking orders at 21:00, but the last orders still have to reach the door.
• Keep one driver on for the whole service where the orders allow, so early and late orders are covered without calling someone in.
• Check the minimum shift before you roster a short peak, as the section on minimum shifts below explains.

The staff coverage calculator compares people needed with people rostered by half hour, which makes a thin patch at the delivery peak easy to see before the night.

Use the time between runs

A driver standing at the pass waiting for food is paid time with nothing to show for it. A driver folding boxes, packing drinks onto orders or checking an order against its docket before it leaves is useful. Decide in advance what drivers do between runs, and choose work they can drop the moment an order is ready.

• Folding boxes and restocking bags before the rush
• Packing drinks, sauces and cutlery onto delivery orders
• Checking each order against its docket before it goes out
• Clearing and wiping down the counter and pick-up area late in the night

Check the award classification before you plan this. Under the Fast Food Industry Award, the description of Fast Food Employee Level 1 lists the preparation, the receipt of orders, cooking, sale, serving or delivery of meals, snacks and beverages together (clause 12.4(a)(i)). Under the Restaurant Industry Award, the descriptions of food and beverage attendant grades 2 and 3 include delivery duties alongside other front-of-house work (clauses A.2.2 and A.2.3). Other awards describe drivers differently, so confirm which award covers you with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Find my award tool.

Minimum shifts and breaks

The delivery peak is often short, which makes short driver shifts tempting. Check the minimum engagement first.

Under the Fast Food award, a casual driver brought in for a 90 minute peak still has a minimum daily engagement of 3 consecutive hours, so start them earlier or plan useful work for the rest of the shift. Breaks need a place on the roster too. Under the same award, a shift of 4 hours or more but less than 5 carries one 10 minute paid rest break, and a shift of 5 hours or more but less than 9 adds an unpaid meal break of 30 to 60 minutes (clause 14.1). An employer cannot require an employee to take a rest or meal break within the first or last hour of work, or to work more than 5 hours without a meal break (clause 14.5). Current rates are on the Fast Food Award pay rates page.

Vehicles, licences and who the driver works for

Three questions sit outside the roster itself. Settle each one before a driver’s first shift, not after the first problem.

• Whose vehicle? The Fair Work Ombudsman’s page on allowances, penalty rates and other payments says employees may be entitled to an allowance where they use their own vehicle for work, and that the specific allowances depend on the award or agreement that applies. Check yours, or use the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Pay and Conditions Tool, rather than guessing.
• Employee or contractor? The Fair Work Ombudsman says it can’t decide whether someone is a contractor or an employee, and that it depends on a number of factors. Its independent contractors page explains the tests and suggests legal advice if you need confirmation. This article assumes drivers are employees; if you are unsure, get that answer first.
• Safe driving. Safe Work Australia’s duties of a PCBU page explains that a business has a primary duty of care to ensure the health and safety of workers while they are at work. For what that means for staff who drive, ask your state or territory work health and safety regulator. On the roster side, avoid packing so many runs into an hour that drivers feel pushed to hurry.
• Licences. Check that each driver holds a current licence for the vehicle before their first run, and note when to check again.

A worked example: a Friday at a pizza shop

This is an example, not a real business. A pizza shop covered by the Fast Food Industry Award opens from 16:30 to 21:30 on Fridays for pick-up and delivery, and stops taking orders at 21:00. Its runs take 20 minutes, with up to 2 orders a run, so each driver carries up to 6 orders an hour. These are its average Friday orders over six weeks.

The first draft had four casual drivers from 17:00 to 21:30, which is 4 × 4.5 = 18 driver hours. The owner rebuilds it around the forecast, keeping every casual shift to at least 3 consecutive hours (clause 11.3).

Check it against the forecast. From 17:00 to 18:00 one driver is on. From 18:00 two are on, and three from 18:30. From 19:00 to 20:00, the delivery peak, all three are on. From 20:00 to 21:00 there are three drivers for a need of two, which is the price of the 3 hour minimum, so the spare driver clears and restocks. The roster uses 4.5 + 3 + 3 = 10.5 driver hours, 7.5 fewer than the first draft.

Driver 1’s 4.5 hour shift carries one 10 minute paid rest break (clause 14.1). It cannot be in the first or last hour of work (clause 14.5(a)), so it sits at about 20:15, between runs, while three drivers are on. The kitchen side changes too: pick-up orders peak from 18:00 to 19:00 and delivery orders an hour later, so the counter person moves to packing delivery orders from 19:00 instead of the shop rostering a separate packer.

Running the night

• Name one person in charge of dispatch each night, who decides which orders share a run and when a driver goes.
• Put drivers on the same roster as everyone else, with start and finish times, breaks and who they report to, so the whole team can see who is on the road.
• Plan for a driver calling in sick. Decide beforehand whether to shrink the delivery area, pause delivery for a period or call someone in. What to do when an employee calls in sick covers the call itself.
• Review after a month. Compare the forecast with the orders and the run times with reality, and adjust the driver shifts. Reviewing last month’s rosters turns that into a routine.

Roster Flow puts drivers and store staff on the same week: availability and leave from staff phones, the roster published to everybody at once, clock ins that become timesheets, and approved hours sent to Xero, MYOB or a CSV file.

A checklist for drivers and store staff

• Orders are counted by hour and by channel for the last 4 to 8 weeks
• Driver numbers come from run times and orders per run, rounded up
• The kitchen can cook for the drivers rostered at each hour
• Driver shifts start as delivery orders build and finish after the last order
• Every shift meets the minimum engagement and break rules in your award
• Drivers have useful work between runs within their classification
• Vehicle allowances, employee status and licences are settled before the first run
• One person runs dispatch each night

Sources

• Fair Work Commission: Fast Food Industry Award 2020 [MA000003]
• Fair Work Commission: Restaurant Industry Award 2020 [MA000119]
• Fair Work Commission: Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 [MA000009]
• Fair Work Ombudsman: allowances, penalty rates and other payments
• Fair Work Ombudsman: independent contractors
• Safe Work Australia: duties of a PCBU
• Fair Work Ombudsman: find my award

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