RESTAURANT PLANNING TOOLS
Restaurant staffing and rota cost planner
Compare the cost of lunch, dinner or another defined shift plan before making a rota decision. Use the same day or week for every staffing row and for the sales figure. Enter costs that apply to your own operation.
The starting figures are fictional examples. Replace them with your own consistent inputs. Calculations stay in this page: no account, upload or automatic saving. USD and GBP are labels only; changing the label does not convert amounts. Export downloads the scenario to your device.
How the staffing planner works
Each row is one daypart and role with the same hours and entered rate for every person in that row. Split people into separate rows when their hours or rates differ. Shift hours are the total duration per person before subtracting the entered unpaid break. Use hours as decimals: 7 hours 30 minutes is 7.5 hours. Breaks are entered in minutes per person.
Paid person-hours = people × (shift hours − unpaid break minutes ÷ 60). Entered wage cost = paid person-hours × entered hourly cash rate. The additional employer-cost allowance is applied to that wage cost, with each row rounded to currency cents. The totals add those rounded row costs. If a percentage allowance is unsuitable for your actual cost structure, leave it at zero and prepare a separate, documented allocation rather than treating it as a statutory formula.
Staff cost percentage = modelled staff cost ÷ entered net sales × 100. Sales per paid labor hour = net sales ÷ paid person-hours. Neither ratio has a universal correct target. A busy service, a quiet preparation period and a training shift can have very different purposes. At zero sales, the percentage is undefined; at zero paid hours, sales per labor hour is undefined.
A fictional service plan
Two kitchen staff on six-hour shifts with a 30-minute unpaid break each produce 11 paid person-hours. At an entered rate of 19 per hour, that row costs 209 before the extra allowance. Three front-of-house staff working five paid hours at 17 add 255. The combined wage cost is 464; the fictional 15% employer allowance adds 69.60, giving 533.60. Against 3,600 of net sales, this is about 14.82%, with 26 paid person-hours in the plan. These are invented teaching assumptions, not recommended wages or staffing levels.
What this does not decide
The tool does not determine whether a break may legally be unpaid, whether an employee is entitled to overtime, what wage floor applies or whether a tip credit is permitted. It does not automatically calculate payroll taxes, pension contributions, holiday accrual, benefits or a salary allocation. Include costs through your verified inputs where the model is suitable and check the actual payroll rules separately.
A rota with lower cost is not automatically an adequate rota. Review station coverage, skills, accessibility, breaks, safe working, employee availability and demand by hour. This planner does not detect overlapping shifts or publish a schedule to employees. Use role labels rather than personal employee details if you export the scenario.
Sources and further reading
The sources below explain the underlying planning tasks. This page's specific formulas, comparison thresholds and fictional scenario are stated above so you can assess whether they fit your own situation. It is independent of the listed providers.