Restaurant rostering guide: building a better weekly roster

Written by Roster Flow. Published 21 June 2026.

Most restaurant rosters are last week’s roster with a few names changed. That works until the bookings move, a chef leaves or the wage bill creeps up and nobody can say why. Building the week from what you expect to serve, one service at a time, takes longer the first time and much less once the pattern is set. The general steps for any business are in the complete guide to staff rostering. This guide covers what is particular to restaurants.

What makes restaurant rostering different

Three things set a restaurant apart from most small businesses. The work comes in services rather than a steady day, so the busiest two hours can need several times the people of the hour before. The kitchen and the floor run on different clocks: the kitchen starts hours before the first guest arrives and finishes with the clean down, while the floor builds up as the room fills. And much of the team is casual or part-time, which brings its own rules about availability, minimum shifts and notice.

• Services, not days. Roster lunch and dinner as separate blocks, each with its own start, peak and finish.
• Two teams. Kitchen and front of house have different roles, lead times and skills, and cannot always cover for each other.
• A mixed team. Full-time chefs, part-time floor staff with agreed availability, and casuals who pick up the busy nights.

Start from covers, not from last week

Covers are the number of guests you expect to serve, and they are the best single guide to how many people each service needs. Before you roster, write down for each service in the week:

• Bookings already taken, and how many walk ins that service usually gets
• Functions, set menus and large tables, which change the kitchen’s workload more than the head count suggests
• Deliveries and prep days, which need kitchen hours before service
• Public holidays, school holidays and local events that change the trade

Then decide how many guests each role can look after in your venue. There is no single right number: a dining room with courses served at the table needs more floor staff per guest than a bistro where people order at the counter. Work it out from a few good and bad services you remember, write it down and adjust it as you learn. Then the staff coverage calculator sets the number of people you need in each half hour against the shifts on your roster, so the gaps stand out.

Roster kitchen and floor as separate teams

Build the kitchen roster and the front of house roster separately, then check they meet at the pass. The table shows the usual roles and what decides their hours around a dinner service.

Staggered starts and finishes are what keep a restaurant roster lean. Rather than everyone starting at 5:30, bring one server in to set the room, add the rest as the bookings build, and send the first person home once the room starts to empty. The same goes for the kitchen: the cook who preps does not always need to be the cook who closes.

Build the week in order

1. Mark the servicesList every service the venue is open for, with opening and closing times and the covers you expect.
2. Place the fixed shiftsPut in full-time employees, then part-time employees on their agreed hours and inside their agreed availability.
3. Cover the peaksAdd casuals to the busiest services, checking each person’s availability before you place them.
4. Check the rulesCheck minimum shifts, breaks, the time between shifts and days off against the award, as set out below.
5. Check the costTotal the hours and estimate the wage cost, with weekend and public holiday hours counted separately.
6. Publish and post itSend the roster to the team and post it where everyone can see it, with the date it was published.

The award rules that shape a restaurant roster

Many restaurants and cafes are covered by the Restaurant Industry Award 2020. Pubs and hotels usually fall under the Hospitality Industry (General) Award, takeaway outlets under the Fast Food Industry Award and licensed clubs under the Registered and Licensed Clubs Award, so confirm yours with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Find my award tool. The rules below are from the Restaurant Industry Award as consolidated to 1 July 2026. An enterprise agreement, if your business has one, may set different terms.

If you plan to change someone’s regular roster, clause 33 also requires you to consult them: explain the change and when it starts, invite their views, including the effect on family or caring responsibilities, and consider what they say. Pay rates are on the Restaurant Industry Award pay rates page.

Breaks during service

Breaks are easy to forget when the room is full, which is why they belong on the roster rather than being left to the night. Under the award’s break table, an employee who works 5 hours or more and up to 10 hours is entitled to an unpaid meal break of at least 30 minutes, taken after the first hour of work and within the first 6 hours. If that meal break is rostered later than 5 hours after starting, the employee also gets a 20 minute paid meal break within the first 5 hours. A shift of more than 10 hours adds two 20 minute paid rest breaks.

Roster the meal break at a time that works around service, usually before the doors open or after the peak. Clause 16.3 asks employers to make all reasonable efforts to spread rest breaks evenly across a shift. If an unpaid meal break is not allowed at its rostered time, clause 16.5 requires an extra 50% of the ordinary hourly rate from when the break was due until it is taken or the shift ends. The break calculator works out paid hours once unpaid breaks come off.

Split shifts

A split shift, such as a cook working lunch, going home and coming back for dinner, covers two services without paying for the quiet afternoon. The award allows it with two limits worth knowing. The spread, from the first start to the last finish, can be no more than 12 hours, so 10:00 to 22:00 is the most a split shift can cover. And a full-time or part-time employee who works a broken day is paid a split shift allowance for each separate work period of 2 hours or more, under clause 21.3.

Split shifts suit people who live close by and want the hours, and wear on people who do not. Ask before you build them into someone’s regular pattern, and use the split shift roster template to lay them out.

A worked example: Saturday at a 70 seat bistro

A bistro seats 70 and is open for lunch from 12:00 to 15:00 and dinner from 17:30 to 22:00. This Saturday it has 55 lunch bookings and 90 dinner bookings, and expects about 20 walk ins at each service, so lunch peaks at around 40 guests seated at once and dinner fills the room. The owner works to a rule of thumb built from past services: one server for every 20 guests seated at the peak, and one cook for every 35.

That comes to 60 paid hours for about 185 guests. Lunch has two cooks and two servers for a peak of around 40. Dinner has four servers on the floor from 18:30 for a full room of 70, with two cooks and a kitchen hand behind them. Every casual shift is longer than 2 hours, every part-time shift is at least 3, and the three people on 7 hours or more have a meal break rostered after their first hour. If the head chef works on Sunday, the earliest ordinary start is 8:30, 10 hours after Saturday’s 22:30 finish. The restaurant roster template is a place to start laying out a week like this.

Keep an eye on wage cost

The roster is where most of a restaurant’s wage bill is decided. Watch wage cost as a share of sales for each service, not just for the week, because a quiet Tuesday lunch with a full team can undo a strong Saturday. The labour cost percentage calculator shows the share, and the roster cost calculator estimates the week before you publish it.

The base hourly rate is not the whole cost. Weekend and public holiday hours attract penalty rates under the award, casuals are paid a 25% loading, and allowances such as the split shift allowance add up across a week. The weekend and public holiday hours calculator separates those hours, and the public holidays page lists those days for each state.

Changes, sick calls and swaps

A restaurant roster changes every week. A few rules stop the changes undoing the checks you made. Approve a swap only when the person taking the shift is available and can work that station. Cover a sick call first from people already close to the shift, and check that the cover does not break the 10 hour gap or push a part-time employee outside their availability. Make every change on the roster itself, so the latest version is the one people see. For full-time and part-time employees, a change needs their agreement or 7 days’ notice.

Casuals often want extra hours at short notice and part-time employees often do not. Keep a record of who has said they can pick up shifts, and check part-time availability before offering anything outside it.

From the roster to the pay run

The hours that matter for pay are the hours actually worked, not the hours rostered, and restaurants drift from the roster more than most businesses. A busy night keeps the kitchen late and a quiet one sends a server home early. Record start and finish times and breaks as they happen, compare them with the roster before payroll, and approve the differences rather than finding them later.

Roster Flow handles that part of the 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. See how it works for restaurants and across hospitality.

A checklist for every restaurant roster

• Each service is rostered from expected covers, not copied from last week
• Kitchen and floor start and finish in stages around the peak
• Part-time employees are inside their agreed availability and hours
• Casual shifts are at least 2 hours and part-time shifts at least 3
• Meal breaks are rostered for shifts of 5 hours or more
• There are at least 10 hours between shifts for employees other than casuals
• Split shifts stay within a 12 hour spread
• Weekend and public holiday hours are costed separately
• The roster is posted where everyone can see it, with the date it was published

Sources

• Fair Work Commission: Restaurant Industry Award 2020 [MA000119]
• Fair Work Ombudsman: find my award
• Fair Work Ombudsman: hours of work

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