Case study: how Knock & Snitch in Oswestry runs a late-night bar rota

Knock & Snitch is a late-night cocktail bar in Oswestry, Shropshire, that likes to call itself the town's best-kept secret. It's a different animal from its sister venue, The Lounge, round the corner: cocktail-led, open late at the weekend, with live acoustic sets, comedy and quiz nights and the odd private hire on top.

That means a rota built around a handful of busy nights and a calendar of one-off events, not a steady seven-day week. Get one Saturday wrong and there's nobody spare to call in.

Before ShiftComplete

Knock & Snitch is owned by Graeme Kirkham, who also runs The Lounge. Before ShiftComplete, both bars' rotas lived in spreadsheets and the staff WhatsApp group, with swaps sorted by message and voice note. Many of the team work at both venues, so the same names appeared on two separate rotas, and it was easy for someone to be down for both bars on the same night.

Opening and closing checks were a clipboard job. Whether the bar had been closed down properly at 2am came down to whoever was last out remembering.

What Knock & Snitch uses ShiftComplete for

Knock & Snitch started on ShiftComplete in April 2026, alongside The Lounge. These are the figures from its account up to late October 2026.

On a typical trading day over the last month, the team ticked off around 29 checks. Each tick is named and timestamped, so there's a record of who opened up and who closed down, even when the close is at 2am.

How the rota works for a late-night bar

The busy nights at Knock & Snitch are set by the weekend and the events calendar. Staff put their availability in from their phone, the manager builds the rota around the nights the bar is open and any events booked in, then publishes it to everyone at once. Between May and October 2026, shifts typically went on the rota about two weeks before the night.

A late close still counts as that day's trading, so the closing checks done in the early hours sit with the right night rather than spilling into the next day.

One team, two bars

Fourteen of the 35 people across Graeme's two venues work at both. In ShiftComplete they have one login and see every shift, at either bar, in one place. When a manager rotas someone at Knock & Snitch on a Saturday, it's clear they're not free for The Lounge that night, which ends the double-booking that came with two separate spreadsheets.

You can read how the sports bar uses it in The Lounge case study.

In Graeme's words

"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

To be clear about the connection: Graeme is also one of the founders of ShiftComplete. The app began as the tool he wanted for running his own venues. The figures above come straight from Knock & Snitch's account.

What other late-night and cocktail bars can take from it

• Rota the nights you trade. If you only open a few nights a week, build the rota around those nights and your events, not a default Monday-to-Sunday grid.
• Ask for availability early for event nights. Comedy, quiz and private-hire nights are booked weeks out, so get availability in before you build that week.
• Make the close a checklist, not a memory. A named closing checklist at 2am means the next opener knows exactly what was done.
• If staff work at more than one venue, keep them on one system. Two rotas in two spreadsheets is how people get double-booked.

For more on running a bar rota, see rota app for bars, the bar staff rota template and the printable opening and closing checklist.