Pub manager responsibilities: what the job actually involves, day by day

Ask ten pub managers what their job is and you'll get ten answers, most of them involving a stuck keg at 6pm on a Friday. Strip it back and a pub manager has three jobs: keep the building safe and legal, keep the team working well, and make the numbers add up. Everything on the to-do list hangs off one of those.

This guide breaks the role into daily, weekly and monthly duties you can actually plan around, covers the licensing basics every manager should know, and finishes with a checklist you can copy.

The three parts of the job

A tenant or lessee running their own pub carries all three personally. A manager in a managed house usually has an area manager watching the numbers, but the safe-and-legal part still lands on whoever is running the building that night.

Licensing basics every pub manager should know

This is the bit where getting it wrong can cost the pub its licence, so it's worth knowing the basics properly. The rules below are for England and Wales under the Licensing Act 2003. Scotland and Northern Ireland run different systems.

The premises licence

Any business that sells alcohol on a permanent basis needs a premises licence from the council. It's granted to the licence holder (often the owner, brewery or pub company), and it comes with conditions that are specific to your pub: opening hours, door staff, CCTV, last entry and so on. Read your own licence. Many managers have never seen the conditions they're responsible for.

The law also says the licence holder must make sure the licence (or a certified copy) and a list of the mandatory conditions are kept at the pub, held by the licence holder or a member of staff nominated in writing. The summary of the licence must be displayed prominently where customers can see it.

The DPS and personal licences

Every pub selling alcohol must have a designated premises supervisor (DPS): the person with day-to-day responsibility for running the business, and the main contact for the council and police. GOV.UK sets out the key points:

• The DPS must hold a personal licence and be nominated by the premises licence holder.
• Each premises can have only one DPS, who must be contactable at all times. One person can be DPS for more than one business.
• To get a personal licence you must be 18 or over and, in almost all cases, hold an accredited licensing qualification first. The council will want to know about relevant criminal convictions.
• Staff don't need their own personal licence to serve. Anyone without one must be authorised to sell alcohol by a personal licence holder. Putting those authorisations in writing, with the date each person was trained, is good practice.

In Scotland, the equivalent role is the premises manager, who must also hold a personal licence, and a person can only be the premises manager for one licensed premises. Scotland also has its own staff training requirements, covered in our guide to hospitality staff training records.

The mandatory conditions

Every premises licence in England and Wales that allows alcohol sales carries mandatory conditions. GOV.UK lists them as:

• a ban on irresponsible promotions
• free tap water available to customers
• an age verification policy that staff follow
• smaller measures available to customers
• no sales of alcohol below the cost of duty plus VAT

Your measures must also be the legal quantities: draught beer and cider in thirds, halves, two-thirds and multiples of a half pint; gin, rum, vodka and whisky in 25ml or 35ml and multiples (not both in the same pub); still wine by the glass in 125ml, 175ml and multiples.

Daily pub manager duties

Most days follow the same shape. The trick is to make the routine checks quick and recorded, so your attention is free for the bits that need judgement.

Before opening

• Walk the building: fire exits clear, toilets clean and stocked, no overnight damage.
• Cellar check: temperature, gas cylinders secure, no leaks, kegs and casks ready for the day.
• Kitchen opening checks: fridges and freezers working and at temperature (chilled food must be kept at 8°C or below by law in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the FSA advises setting fridges to 5°C or below), probes clean, delivery checked in.
• Float counted and tills ready.
• Read the day's bookings, events and day notes. Brief the team.

During service

• Run the floor: be visible, step in where the queue is building, back up staff on refusals.
• Keep an eye on the rota against the actual trade. Send someone home early, or call someone in, before the wage bill or service suffers.
• Deal with complaints, accidents and incidents as they happen, and write them down while the details are fresh.
• Make sure allergen questions go to someone who can answer them properly.

At close

• Clear the building, check toilets and outside areas.
• Cash up, record the takings, bank or safe the cash.
• Closing checks: kitchen cleaned down and signed off, fridges checked, equipment off, cellar secure, doors and windows locked, alarm set.
• Leave a handover note for whoever opens.

Our pub opening and closing checklist has the full lists split by area.

Weekly pub manager duties

• Write and publish the rota for the week after next, around bookings, events and holidays. See how to write a pub rota.
• Check last week's wages against sales. Most managers track labour cost as a percentage of net sales. Our labour cost percentage guide shows how.
• Order stock from suppliers and the brewery, based on sales rather than gut feel.
• Clean the beer lines on the schedule your supplier or brewery recommends. Our cellar management checklist covers the routine.
• Review the week's records: temperature logs, cleaning sign-offs, incidents, maintenance jobs still open.
• Spot-check the cash: unexplained voids, refunds or no-sales.
• Have a short team catch-up, even ten minutes before a shift.

Monthly pub manager duties

• Full stock-take, wet and dry, and a look at the variance. Our pub stock-take guide walks through it.
• GP review: check gross profit on drinks and food against target, and reprice where costs have moved. See how to calculate GP on drinks.
• P&L or trading review with the owner or area manager.
• Training: who's new, who needs refreshing, who's ready for more responsibility.
• Compliance review: risk assessments up to date, fire checks done, food safety pack still matches the menu, licence conditions being met.
• Maintenance: chase anything that's been open too long.
• Holiday planning: look at who has holiday left and who's booked what, so summer and Christmas don't catch you out.

A week in the life: a 120-cover community pub

Picture a pub on the edge of a market town in Shropshire. Wet-led during the week, food-led at weekends, with a darts team, a quiz on Wednesdays and a beer garden that triples trade on a sunny Saturday. The manager is the DPS and runs a team of 16.

• Monday: quiet day. Weekly order placed, last week's wages checked against sales (31%, up from 28%, because two staff stayed on after a cancelled function). Line clean done before opening.
• Tuesday: rota for the week after next. Two students are off for exams, there's a 40th birthday on Saturday, and the weather looks good. She adds an extra person to the garden bar for Saturday afternoon.
• Wednesday: quiz night. She works the bar herself and uses the quiet first hour to train a new starter on the age verification policy and logs it.
• Thursday: EHO turns up unannounced. The records are on the tablet behind the bar: fridge temperatures, cleaning sign-offs, allergen matrix. It takes forty minutes.
• Friday and Saturday: on the floor. A customer trips on the garden step; she records it in the incident log with a photo and books a maintenance job to fix the edge.
• Sunday: closes at 10pm and heads home. Monday's opener has a handover note.

None of that is unusual. What makes it manageable is that the routine stuff is quick and recorded, so the manager isn't relying on memory.

Common mistakes new pub managers make

1. Never reading the premises licence. The conditions are yours to meet, whether you wrote them or not.
2. Doing every close. You burn out, and the team never learns to close without you. Train a deputy.
3. Leaving the rota to Sunday night. Collect availability early and publish at least a week or two ahead.
4. Records that only exist on a good week. An inspector wants to see a pattern, not a week of perfect sheets before a visit.
5. Not counting stock. If you don't stock-take, you can't tell theft, waste and bad pricing apart.
6. Running everything through WhatsApp. Rotas and announcements get lost in the scroll.

Where ShiftComplete helps

ShiftComplete is an operations and rota app built for UK pubs. It runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or computer.

• Rotas: staff set availability from their phones, you add events (quiz night, the 40th), and it builds a fair draft rota you can adjust and publish to everyone's phone. Labour cost shows while you build.
• Clocking in and out (a setting you switch on): staff clock in on their phone or the shared tablet, and you download hours as a spreadsheet for payroll.
• Daily checks: opening, closing and cellar checklists that change by weekday, with each tick named and timestamped.
• Temperature logs, incidents and maintenance, risk assessments and a 14-allergen matrix, all in one place, helping you keep the records an EHO asks to see.
• Team announcements so updates don't get lost in the group chat.

It costs £1.49 per staff member per month with every feature included, and it's free for 60 days with no card needed. Graeme Kirkham, who owns The Lounge in Oswestry and Knock & Snitch, put it like this:

"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

Pub manager duties checklist

Copy this and adapt it to your pub.

Daily

• Building walk-round and fire exits clear
• Cellar temperature, gas and stock checked
• Fridge and freezer temperatures recorded
• Opening checks signed off
• Team briefed on bookings, events and day notes
• Incidents and complaints recorded
• Cash up and banking done
• Closing checks signed off, building secure

Weekly

• Rota published for the week after next
• Wages checked against sales
• Stock ordered
• Beer lines cleaned on schedule
• Records reviewed and gaps chased
• Voids, refunds and no-sales spot-checked

Monthly

• Full stock-take and variance reviewed
• GP on wet and food checked against target
• P&L or trading review
• Training records updated
• Risk assessments, fire checks and licence conditions reviewed
• Holiday balances checked