How a two-venue food business can build its weekly roster

Written by Roster Flow. Published 5 September 2026.

When a food business opens a second venue, the roster usually grows the easy way: a second spreadsheet tab, a second group chat and a few people who appear on both. It works until someone is rostered at both venues at the same time, or Friday’s catering order arrives after the roster has gone out.

This article builds one week’s roster for an invented business with two venues, a bakery cafe and a catering kitchen across town, following a weekly routine step by step. The wider setup for more than one site, including what awards say about travel between locations, is in the multi-location staff rostering guide.

The example business

The business runs a bakery cafe, called the shop here, open from 6:30 to 15:00 Tuesday to Sunday. Its catering kitchen, a 15 minute drive away, makes weekday lunch orders for offices and delivers them. One business employs everyone at both venues, and seven people are on the roster.

Before building anything, the owner checked which award covers each role using the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Find my award tool, and checked again for Priya and Ana, whose work differs between the two venues. Do the same for your own team rather than assuming the answer for one venue holds for the other, and take current rates from the award’s pay rates page.

Step 1: Set one weekly rhythm for both venues

The two venues plan on different clocks. The shop’s week repeats, while the kitchen’s depends on orders that arrive during the week. A fixed weekly rhythm lets both fit into one routine.

Pick the day and time that suit your own ordering, and keep to it. A roster that comes out at the same time every week is one people learn to check.

Step 2: Start each venue from its own demand

Work out each venue’s needs separately before any names go in, because they come from different places.

• The shop starts from a base pattern. Its trading hours, the morning bake, the breakfast rush and the close are much the same each week, so the week begins as a repeat of the last one, adjusted for leave and anything unusual. How to set up recurring shifts and roster patterns covers the method.
• The kitchen starts from the order sheet. Each order becomes prep, packing and a delivery run, so the kitchen’s week changes with its orders.

Laid out by day, the big days are obvious: Wednesday and Friday need a second person in the kitchen, and the small Thursday order does not. Ben’s delivery shifts are 3 hours rather than the 90 minutes a run takes on the road, because a very short shift can fall below the minimum engagement in the award that covers a casual. The glossary explains minimum engagement, and your award sets the length.

Step 3: Place the people who work at both venues first

Shared staff are where two-venue rosters go wrong, so place them before anyone else, and look at each shared person’s whole week across both venues rather than at two separate rosters.

• One person, one place at a time. Check every shared person for overlapping shifts before you fill the rest. How to prevent double-booking employees sets out the checks.
• Allow for the travel. If someone moves between venues in a day, put the trip in the roster rather than expecting them at the second venue the minute they leave the first. Check how your award treats travel between workplaces, which the multi-location guide linked above sets out.
• Add up the week. Someone on 20 hours at one venue and 18 at the other is on 38 hours for the week. Check each total against their availability, any hours agreed with them and your award.
• Keep days reasonable. Safe Work Australia’s guidance on managing fatigue risks includes limiting the length of shifts, allowing at least 12 hours for workers to recover between shifts, and keeping shift patterns as regular as possible while avoiding last minute changes.

In the example, Priya works one shift from 6:00 to 14:30 on Tuesday and Thursday, with 8 paid hours after an unpaid meal break placed where the award requires. They bake at the shop until 11:00, drive the 15 minutes to the kitchen and make pastry for the next day’s orders. The owner counts the drive as part of the shift and puts it against the kitchen. Ana works in the kitchen on Wednesday and Friday and on the shop counter on Saturday, and is never at both venues on the same day. How to plan break times on a busy shift covers where the breaks go.

Step 4: Fill each venue and name the openers and closers

With the shared staff placed, fill the rest of each venue from the people who work only there. Then check that every open and every close has a named person who holds the keys, knows the alarm and can run the shift. A second venue doubles the opens and closes in a week, and each one needs its own person. A skills matrix shows who can cover which role at which venue.

Step 5: Cost each venue on its own

Tag every hour to the venue where it is worked, including the hours of shared staff, and cost each venue separately. One total for the business can hide a venue that is running over. How to track labour cost across multiple venues covers the reports.

Priya’s 20 shop hours are 5 hours on each of Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, and their 6 kitchen hours are the 3 hours on Tuesday and Thursday, drive included. Ana’s 12 kitchen hours are the two 6 hour shifts, and Ben’s 15 are five delivery shifts of 3 hours. Across the business, 106 and 71 make 177 hours.

The shop forecasts $15,900 of sales next week, which is $150 of sales for each of its 106 hours. The kitchen is measured against its orders instead: 71 hours for 224 covers. Compare each figure with the same venue’s good weeks, not with the other venue, and check the week’s wages in the roster cost calculator before publishing.

Step 6: Publish together, and handle changes the same way

Publish both venues at the set time, so everyone sees their whole week at once, including the people who work at both. After that:

• A late order becomes an extra shift at the kitchen, offered to the people trained and available for it. How to fill open shifts covers offering it fairly.
• A shift that moves between venues is a change to the roster. Tell the person directly and keep a record of it.
• A cancelled order is not a reason to cut shifts on the spot. Before changing or cancelling a published shift, check your award and the Fair Work Ombudsman’s page on rosters.

Roster Flow helps a business with more than one venue keep the week straight: 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. See how multi-venue rostering works.

A two-venue weekly roster checklist

• The award for each role at each venue checked with Find my award
• A fixed weekly rhythm: order cut-off, draft, costing and publishing time
• The shop built from its base pattern and the kitchen from the order sheet
• Shared staff placed first, with no overlapping shifts
• Travel between venues inside the roster, not squeezed out of it
• Each person’s hours added up across both venues
• A named opener and closer at each venue every day
• Every hour tagged to the venue where it is worked, and each venue costed on its own
• Both venues published together at the set time
• Late orders offered as extra shifts, and the award checked before any published shift changes

Sources

• Fair Work Ombudsman: find my award
• Fair Work Ombudsman: rosters
• Safe Work Australia: managing fatigue risks

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