How to plan a fair Christmas rota for a pub, restaurant or café

December is the month a hospitality team remembers. Get the Christmas rota right and people work hard, cover each other and come back in January. Get it wrong (the same three people on every big day, holiday granted to whoever asked first, a rota published on the 20th) and you lose good staff in the new year.

The fix is mostly timing and fairness. Start in October, write down the rules before anyone asks, and share the big days out by a system people can see.

The Christmas 2026 dates to plan around

Here are the days that change your trade and your staffing. Bank holiday dates are from GOV.UK.

The Saturday Boxing Day catches people out. If your contracts or policy say "time and a half on Boxing Day", decide now whether that means Saturday the 26th, the bank holiday on Monday the 28th, or both, and tell the team.

Step 1: Set the holiday rules in October

Before anyone books a flight home, put your December holiday policy in writing:

• Blackout dates. Many pubs and restaurants block holiday from, say, the first Friday in December to New Year's Day. GOV.UK confirms employers can restrict when leave is taken at busy periods. Keep the window as short as you honestly can.
• Notice. If you're refusing a request, GOV.UK says you must give notice at least as long as the leave requested, plus one day (11 days' notice to refuse 10 days off). If you want to tell staff to take leave on particular days, for example if you close between Christmas and New Year, the notice is at least twice the length of the leave.
• You can't refuse leave altogether. Offer January instead, and mean it.
• Exceptions. Say how you'll handle a wedding abroad or a family emergency, so it doesn't look like favouritism when you allow one.

Put the policy in a team announcement and on the noticeboard, and refer back to it every time someone asks. Since 6 April 2026, employers in Great Britain must keep holiday records for at least six years (Acas), so record every request and decision, not just the ones you approve.

Step 2: Collect December availability early

Set a deadline in early November for December availability: available, partial (with times) or unavailable, plus a note. Ask everyone the same way.

Ask two extra questions:

1. Which big day would you most like off? Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. Most people care about one or two, not all five.
2. Can you do extra hours in December? Students home from university and part-timers often want more shifts. Find out before you hire temps.

Step 3: Share out the big days with a visible system

"First come, first served" rewards whoever is quickest on WhatsApp. Pick a rule and publish it before anyone applies.

Rotation. Whoever had Christmas Day off last year works it this year, and vice versa. Simple and easy to check, but only if you kept last year's rota.

Points. Give each big day a value and ask everyone to cover a set number of points:

A full-timer might need 5 points across the period, a part-timer 3. Someone who desperately wants Christmas Day off can take New Year's Eve and Boxing Day instead. It feels fair because people choose.

Managers too. Nothing kills goodwill faster than the GM always having Christmas Day off. Put managers into the same system.

Step 4: Plan cover for each day, not just headcount

Christmas trade looks different from a normal week, and each day needs its own plan.

• Christmas parties (late November to 23 December). Booked groups mean you know covers in advance. Staff to the bookings, and have one person on the floor who knows the set menu and every pre-order.
• Christmas Eve. Often a wet-led session in pubs, with an early-evening rush and a late peak. Plan door, glass collection and a strong close.
• Christmas Day. If you're serving lunch, it's a fixed-time, fully booked service: plan the kitchen first, then enough floor staff to serve every table at once. Plan the close for mid-afternoon if you can, so people get some of the day with family.
• Boxing Day and the 28th. Walk-in trade can be huge in pubs (walks, football, family outings). Look at last year's takings for the same days.
• The dead days. 29 and 30 December can be quiet in towns and busy in tourist spots. Use your own sales data rather than a guess.

A rota for a 60-cover gastropub's Christmas Day might look like this:

Everyone working over six hours gets a planned 20-minute break, written on the rota so it actually happens.

Step 5: Check rest, breaks and hours in the busiest weeks

December is when the working time rules get broken without anyone noticing, because everyone's tired and picking up extras. These GOV.UK rules apply in Great Britain all year round, Christmas included:

Watch especially for:

• Christmas Eve close into Christmas Day open. A 1am finish on the 24th means an adult shouldn't start before noon on the 25th. If your chef closes on Christmas Eve, someone else opens.
• Back-to-back doubles. Five 12-hour days running into New Year's Eve leave no proper weekly rest.
• Young workers on late nights. 16 and 17-year-olds usually can't work between 10pm and 6am and can never work between midnight and 4am. Hotel and catering work is one of the exceptions where later work can be allowed if no adult is available, with the same amount of rest given back. Don't plan your Christmas Eve close around it. See our guide to young workers in pubs and bars.

Acas says breaks should be planned in advance and not taken at the very start or end of the day. On a 14-hour Christmas Eve, plan a proper meal break, not 20 minutes at 11pm. Full detail is in our working time rules guide.

Step 6: Pay, premiums and seasonal temps

There's no legal right to extra pay for working Christmas Day, Boxing Day or any other bank holiday, and no legal right to have them off. It comes down to the contract and your policy. Our guide to bank holiday pay in hospitality covers the options.

What the law does require:

• Minimum wage for every hour worked. From April 2026 that's £12.71 an hour at 21 and over, £10.85 for 18 to 20-year-olds and £8.00 for under-18s and apprentices. GOV.UK's December 2025 "check your pay" campaign specifically reminds employers that seasonal staff and students get the same rates, and that unpaid time spent opening and closing can take pay below the minimum.
• Holiday for temps. Seasonal staff build up paid holiday too. See holiday pay for hospitality staff.
• Right to work checks before a temp's first shift. No exceptions for a three-week contract. See our right to work checks guide.

If you offer a premium, keep it simple and write it down: "Time and a half for hours worked on 25 December and the Boxing Day bank holiday", or "a paid day off in lieu taken by the end of February".

Step 7: Publish early and lock it

Publish the December rota by mid-November if you can, and the Christmas week rota at least three weeks ahead. Then:

• One version only, on everyone's phone, dated.
• Swaps through a manager, recorded on the rota.
• A named on-call person for each big day, agreed in advance and thanked properly.

Common Christmas rota mistakes

1. Holiday granted in September before the rules exist. Now you can't take it back without upsetting people.
2. The same loyal people on every big day. They're the ones who leave in January.
3. Forgetting Boxing Day moves. Premiums paid on the wrong day cause arguments in payroll week.
4. Clopens over Christmas Eve. Closing at 1am and opening at 9am breaks the 11-hour rest rule for adults.
5. Under-18s on the New Year's Eve close. They can't work midnight to 4am.
6. Temps who start without a right to work check. It needs doing before day one.

Christmas rota checklist

• December holiday policy and blackout dates published in October
• Boxing Day (Sat 26 Dec) vs bank holiday (Mon 28 Dec) premium rule decided
• Availability deadline set for early November
• Big days shared by rotation or points, managers included
• Cover planned per day using last year's takings and bookings
• Breaks written on the rota for every shift over 6 hours (4.5 for under-18s)
• 11 hours' rest checked between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
• Under-18s off before midnight every night
• Temps' right to work checked before first shift
• Rota published at least three weeks ahead; one version only

Planning Christmas in ShiftComplete

ShiftComplete handles the parts of this that usually live in a notebook. Staff set their December availability from their phones weeks ahead (available, partial or off, with a note such as "Christmas Day off please, will do NYE"). Holiday requests come in from their phones for you to approve, and approved holidays are recorded so nobody gets rota'd on a day they're off.

Add events like "Christmas party, 40 covers, +2 floor" or "Boxing Day walk-ins, +1 bar", weight the people you want on, and it builds a draft rota in seconds, fair across the team. Split shifts get up to four time blocks a day, each tagged with an area like Bar, Kitchen or Floor, and day notes show "Christmas Day: two sittings, 12:00 and 14:30". Labour cost shows while you build, so you can see what that time-and-a-half Christmas Day costs before you publish. Then it's on everyone's phone under My rota, and can be emailed to them.

If you switch on clocking in and out, you'll see hours worked against the rota and can download hours per person as a spreadsheet for payroll in January. It's £1.49 per staff member per month, free for 60 days, and no card is needed to start.