Free weekly staff rota template for pubs, restaurants and cafés

Below is a weekly staff rota template you can copy straight into Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers, or print and pin up in the back office. It's built for hospitality: it shows where someone is working, copes with split shifts, and totals hours and cost so you see the week's wage bill before it happens.

There are three parts: a cover planner (what the week needs), the rota itself, and a pre-publish checklist.

Part 1: the weekly cover planner

Fill this in first. It forces you to decide how many people each session needs before you start putting names in boxes. Change the sessions to match your opening hours.

In each cell, write the number of people you need by area, for example 2B 1K 1F (two bar, one kitchen, one floor). In the events row, note anything that changes the day: a match, a booked party, a delivery, a quiet bank holiday Monday.

Part 2: the weekly staff rota template

Week commencing: ________ Published on: ________ Manager on duty key: (M)

Area codes: B = Bar, K = Kitchen, F = Floor, KP = Kitchen porter, C = Counter/coffee, H = Host. Add your own.

Cell format: start-finish plus area, for example 17-23 B. For a split shift: 11-15 K / 18-22 K. Write OFF for days off and HOL for booked holiday so nobody assumes you forgot them.

A filled-in example: a 40-cover gastropub

Here's how the top of the template might look for a food-led pub open 11am to 11pm, with a rugby international on Saturday. Rates are illustrative.

Hours here are shift length. If breaks are unpaid, take them off before you work out cost. Sam is on 46 hours, so keep an eye on his average against the 48-hour limit (see the checklist below).

A few things to notice. Saturday shows the match cover: Tom starts at 1pm, not 5pm. Priya's split days show both blocks. Tom's Sunday says HOL, not blank. And the totals only count hours worked, not the gaps in split shifts.

How to fill in the template, step by step

1. Fill the cover planner. Look at the last four weeks of sales by session from your till, then write how many people each session needs by area. Add events.
2. Mark the fixed points. Holidays (HOL), regular days off (OFF), and anyone who can only work certain hours. Collect availability by a set deadline, say Wednesday for the week after next.
3. Place your managers and key holders first. Every open and close needs someone responsible with keys and the alarm code. Mark them (M).
4. Place the kitchen next. Kitchen hours are less flexible and harder to cover at short notice.
5. Fill bar, floor and counter around the cover planner. Match the number in each session. Spread Friday and Saturday closes fairly so it isn't always the same people.
6. Total the hours and cost. Hours per person, hours per day, cost per day. Compare the week's cost with your expected sales. Our guide to labour cost percentage shows how.
7. Run the checklist below, then publish and send it to everyone at once.

Pre-publish checklist

Before you print or send it, check:

• Every session in the cover planner is met, area by area.
• A manager or key holder is on every open and close.
• Nobody is on a day they marked unavailable or on holiday.
• Anyone working more than 6 hours has a 20-minute break planned in the middle of the shift, not at the start or end.
• Adults have 11 hours' rest between finishing one day and starting the next (a 1am finish means no start before 12 noon).
• Everyone gets 24 hours off in each 7 days, or 48 hours in each 14.
• Nobody is heading over an average of 48 hours a week, unless they've signed a written opt-out.
• Under-18s: no more than 8 hours a day or 40 a week, a 30-minute break if they work over 4.5 hours, and 12 hours' rest between days.
• Day notes added for events, deliveries and anything unusual.
• Hours and cost totalled, and the week makes sense against expected sales.

Those rest figures come from GOV.UK. Our full guide to working time rules in hospitality explains the exceptions, night work and young workers in more detail. Acas notes that employers need to keep records showing they meet the 48-hour and night work limits for two years, so keep old rotas rather than overwriting them.

Tips for making a paper or spreadsheet rota work

• Use the same layout every week. Staff learn where to look.
• Copy last week, then change it. Most weeks are 80% the same. Start from the last published rota, not a blank sheet.
• Lock the published version. Save it as "Rota w/c 3 Nov FINAL" and only change it by issuing an updated version with the date on it. Two versions in circulation causes most "I didn't know I was on" arguments.
• Give a deadline for swaps. Swaps agreed with a manager by a set time, written on the rota, not agreed between staff on WhatsApp.
• Keep the old ones. They're your record of who worked when.

Where templates start to struggle

A template is fine for a small, stable team. It gets harder when availability changes every week, when you're juggling split shifts and several areas, or when you have to send the rota to twenty phones and then chase who has seen the latest version. That's usually the point when the Sunday-night rota starts taking two hours.

Or let ShiftComplete run it for you

ShiftComplete does everything this template does, without the copying and chasing:

• Staff set their own availability (available, partial or off, plus a note) on their phones, weeks ahead.
• You add events like "Saturday match, +2 on the bar" and weight the people you want on.
• It builds a draft rota in seconds, fair across the team, which you adjust by dragging shifts.
• Up to four time blocks per person per day, each tagged with an area you define, and day notes on the rota.
• Labour cost shown as you build; holidays recorded so you don't rota someone who's off.
• Publish once, and the rota appears on every staff member's phone under My rota, and can be emailed.

It runs in the browser with nothing to install, costs £1.49 per staff member per month with no contract, and the first 60 days are free with no card. Set-up takes about five minutes. If you run a pub, see our rota app for pubs page, or read the step-by-step guide on how to write a pub rota.