A café staff rota app built for small teams

In a café, the rota is usually written by the owner, often at the counter, often on a Thursday night when everyone has already asked "am I on Saturday?". The team is small, so every gap hurts. If one person doesn't show for the 7:30 open, the owner is pulling shots, taking orders and wiping tables all at once.

You don't need enterprise software for that. You need something quick, cheap and clear that your team will actually use.

What makes café rotas tricky

• Early opens and short days. A 7am open with a 4pm close means short shifts, often under six hours, that still need covering properly.
• Weather and season. A sunny Saturday in May is a different café from a wet Tuesday in January.
• Students and Saturday staff. Availability changes with timetables, exams and holidays.
• Under-18s. Plenty of cafés give young people their first job, which comes with extra rules on hours and breaks.
• The owner as the safety net. If the rota is wrong, you are the one who covers it.

What a café rota app should do

Keep it simple. Your team tells you when they can work. You say which days need more hands. The app gives you a sensible draft, you tweak it, and it lands on everyone's phone. It should also remember who's on holiday and show you what the week costs before you commit to it.

How ShiftComplete works for a café

ShiftComplete runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or computer. There's nothing to install for you or your staff, which suits a team where people come and go.

Availability from the team. Each person marks days as available, partial or off from their own phone, weeks ahead, with a note: "partial Saturday, can do till 1pm", "off w/c 12th, exams".

Events for busier days. Add the farmers' market Saturday, the school holidays, the Sunday you're doing a pop-up brunch. Each event can ask for extra cover (+1 on the counter from 10am), and day notes let you leave reminders on the rota ("Milk delivery late, check the order").

A fair draft in seconds. Weight the people you want on (your most experienced barista for the Saturday rush), and ShiftComplete builds a draft rota fair across the team. Drag shifts around until it looks right.

Areas that match your café. Create your own staff areas, like Counter, Coffee, Kitchen and Floor, so each shift shows where someone is working. If someone does the morning on coffee and the afternoon in the kitchen, that's two blocks with two areas. You can have up to four blocks per person per day.

Holidays recorded. You won't put someone on a Saturday they've booked off.

Labour cost while you build. In a small café, one extra four-hour shift can be the difference between a good week and a flat one. You see labour cost as you build, before you publish.

Publish to phones. The published rota appears on everyone's phone under My rota, and you can email it too.

Rota rules for young staff in cafés

If you employ under-18s, build these rules into the rota before you publish, not after:

School-age children can't work during school hours, before 7am or after 7pm. In school holidays, 14-year-olds can work up to 25 hours a week and 15 to 16-year-olds up to 35, with no more than 2 hours on a Sunday. Many local councils require an employment permit and have their own bylaws, so check with yours before a school-age child starts. These figures are from GOV.UK and Acas; our guide to working time rules in hospitality covers the adult rules too.

The practical upshot: a 15-year-old can't do your 7am to 3pm Saturday shift. They could do 9am to 1pm, take an hour's break, then do 2pm to 6pm, which is 8 hours of work, inside the limit and finishing before 7pm.

Example: a six-person café

A high-street café open 7:30am to 4pm, seven days a week. The owner, a full-time barista, a part-time cook, and three part-timers: a university student, a parent who can only do school hours, and a 16-year-old who's left school and works Saturdays and Sundays.

1. Everyone sets their availability. The parent marks weekdays as partial with a note: "9:15 to 2:45 only".
2. The owner adds the monthly market on Saturday (+1 on the counter, 9am to 2pm).
3. ShiftComplete builds the draft. The owner checks the 16-year-old's Saturday is under 8 hours with a 30-minute break, moves the student to the market shift, and publishes.
4. The rota is on everyone's phone. Total cost: £8.94 a month for six people.

More than a rota

The same app handles fridge and display-chiller temperature logs (with out-of-range readings flagged), a searchable allergen matrix covering the 14 UK allergens for every cake, sandwich and drink, opening and closing checklists, and quick incident logs. It helps you keep the records an EHO asks to see without a folder behind the counter. Use as much or as little as you like.

Pricing

£1.49 per staff member per month, all features included, no per-site fee, no contract. Remove staff at any time, which suits seasonal teams. A six-person café pays £8.94 a month; a ten-person café pays £14.90.

Start free for 60 days with no card. Set-up takes about five minutes, and you can book a free 15-minute set-up call.

From another hospitality owner

"The rota stopped being a Sunday-night argument the week we switched over. The chef stopped being the only person who knows what's in the kitchen. And the EHO turn up to a screen, not a box file." Graeme Kirkham, Owner, The Lounge Oswestry & Knock & Snitch

Read the Kirkham Hospitality story.

Who it's for

Independent cafés, coffee shops, tearooms, bakery-cafés and café-bars with somewhere between three and thirty staff, where the owner or manager writes the rota and wants it done in minutes. If you'd rather start on paper, grab our free staff rota template.