How-To Series: An Exercise in Futility, aka, Restaurant Scheduling

I have been writing food service schedules off and on for more than 20 years. I’ve written one for a Whole Foods Prepared Foods Dept. with I want to say 85 people that took me a full 8 hour workday one day a week to write…and for a crew as small as…just me.

Writing the schedule is, for lack of a better word, relentless. Time doesn’t stop and either does the ever present need to post when everyone is working next week, and the week after that, and oh shit did I remember so and so’s day off? And its Martin Luther King Day…oh crap 3 day weekend and I only have the regular amount of servers on.

Every goddamn week. Until you quit or train someone else to take over this beast.

So let’s build one and see what goes into this shit.

First, your mise; get all this together before you start cooking.

1.       Current schedule, with info on whomever called out, didn’t show, was late, shift trades, etc. As the person writing the schedule you need to know this stuff. In some places the more you call out, give up shifts, show up late, the fewer shifts you get until you show you actually want to work there.

2.       Availability…you need to have everyone’s actual availability…what they can work. I like to get what they can AND what they WANT and if I can give them what they want I do it. I try to make it a point to give people the schedule that works best for them as long as it still works for the needs of the business.

3.       Time off requests…whatever system you have needs to be fair and accessible by everyone and usually goes first come first served for time off. Make sure you have these with you when you start. You really don’t want to finish the puzzle and find those extra pieces lying around.

4.       Upcoming events…anything happening that might impact the business. Big show at a local venue, big reservations, holiday weekend, etc.

5.       Previous years red book/journal if you are fortunate enough to have one. There can be gold in them thar books…

Steps…this is assuming you are using Excel or some other computer based system. If you are still drawing these out with a sharpie on a yellow pad, I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but not using a computer to write my schedule ain’t one. If you are using 7 shifts or some other scheduling app half of this will be done for you, just skip to the next step:

Time to 86 you, old friend..

1.       Bring up your most recent schedule. This is now your template for the new schedule.

2.       Copy this schedule to a new page and change the dates to the upcoming week. Don’t just overwrite it, you need this for reference. In excel, just add another tab at the bottom and keep them in files by month. In a scheduling app this will all be done for you

3.       Remove any vacation or time off left over from previous week. (Important that you do this first so you don’t forget that it’s not part of the new week’s requests off). If someone who was on vacation was on a set schedule before, restore those hours/days on the schedule.

4.       Block off any vacation or time off requests that you are honoring on upcoming week.

5.       Now fill in the gaps, knowing how many shifts of each position you need on for each night. Sometimes parts of these things write themselves. Our bar staff is on a regular set schedule that only changes if someone is sick or takes some time off. Easy. Certain nights you might need 2-3 servers, some nights you might need 6. Know your business. (This is also why people who write the schedule should work in the building and see and interact with the staff they are scheduling for)

6.       Recheck for set schedules, make sure they are all as they should be (only reason they should change is if someone had time off, but still check)

7.       CHECK your horizontal rows…look at each individual’s week and see if they have enough or too many shifts, none of their shifts conflict with their availability, good mix of shifts, and appropriate workload for that particular employee (is your new guy closing solo on a Saturday night? Etc.), look for clopens…this is also where knowing your employee helps, I’ve known people that prefer to clopen so they can set themselves up for the next day.

8.       CHECK your vertical columns…look at each DAY and make sure you have appropriate coverage…bartender, host, server, cooks, dish…whatever positions are on this thing make sure you have someone working every position as needed, or you prepare the people that aren’t working that they won’t have a dishwasher or host that night and why.

9.       Check your labor percentage…again, this is all assuming you aren’t using a legal pad to write this thing. If you are in an excel spreadsheet and are just a little savvy you can get the wages in there and calculate a percentage based on the sales you expect to have for that week. If you work at a corporate place they have you using something like Sling or Seven Shifts that will give you that number automatically. Either way someone, somewhere at some time will tell you you are using too much labor and need to make some cuts. They could literally hand you a bonus check for having great profitability one day, and the next tell you you are spending too much money on hosts and to cut the high school kids hours who is exactly $120 against your $6k budget and I guess you’ll have to stay an extra few hours since you don’t have a host now. Point is, I need therapy for some of this stuff. That, and try to stay under labor, but fight for every penny your team needs. If it’s a Mom and Pop and they legit are hurting…you do what you have to do, I get it. But if there is a “home office” somewhere you go to war for your troops. You never, ever want to schedule below your fixed labor, no matter how much the ops guy tells you too.

10.   Fixed vs variable labor…just so you know the terms…Fixed labor is the bare minimum amount of people needed to run a shift or business. If you need one bartender, one server, and one guy in the kitchen to open your doors, that’s your fixed labor and you can’t schedule a day to open without that minimum number of people scheduled. Variable labor is everything beyond that…as your business expectations grow and you need more people on, all of that is variable depending on the sales…the more sales, the more labor you can employ/spend money on. Now, one of the backbones of capitalism is being able to squeeze more sales dollars out of less labor dollars and keep the difference, and if you have an “Operations Manager” or some other capitalist stooge looking over your shoulder, they will try to tell you that you have too many people scheduled sometimes, when you know better because they work in an office and you work with your team on the floor. Fight for your team, always.

11.   Troubleshooting…if you are using excel, and you are having trouble getting a number that looks right, make sure all your formulas are correct, if you have wage information in there it hasn’t been altered, etc.

12.   Review!! Look at it, then look at it again. Then save it, close it, go get something to drink, and come back and look at it again. Then, when you are confident you have it perfect, someone will come in and ask if they can still put in a request for next week.

13.   After you honor that last minute request repeat steps 6-9 and then post it…and expect to immediately see shifts get traded or someone to ask if they can leave early, or late, or something. It’s always something. Now sit down and do the next week, right now, so you can have a week or so before you have to think of it again and you can pull a Doakes on everyone when it goes up a week early and you cut off all those last minute time off requests….like a boss.