For restaurants & bars

Free restaurant staff schedule maker — no signup, no spreadsheet formulas

No signup, nothing for your team to install. Drop your servers, hosts, line cooks and bartenders into a spreadsheet-style Mon–Sun grid and ShiftCraft adds up everyone’s hours and shows the cover on each service, so no dinner rush goes short. Print a clean sheet or save a PDF in about two minutes — free.

No login. Nothing to install. Free · your team stays on this device · next week starts from last week.

Sample week — small restaurant

Mon–Sun
Staff MonTueWedThuFri SatSunHrs
Maria — Head chef8·891010·53
Tom — Line cook·77899646
Aïsha — Server·55678637
Jordan — Host··4566526
Sam — Bartender···578525
Coverage 12 35 55 4187

Your real rota updates these totals live as you type. Start a blank week →

A rota built around your services, not a static template

Most “restaurant schedule templates” are a blank Excel grid you still have to do the maths on. ShiftCraft is a working weekly shift schedule maker: type the hours each person works and it totals their week, flags how many people are on each day, and lets you print a clean sheet for the pass. It is built for the way restaurant weeks actually run — quiet Mondays, building toward a heavy Friday and Saturday dinner service.

Because everything saves in your own browser, there is no account to set up and nothing to install. Open it on the office laptop, build the week, print it for the kitchen and email a CSV to anyone who needs it.

The shifts a restaurant rota has to cover

Every venue is different, but most small restaurants juggle the same handful of shift shapes across front- and back-of-house. Map your people onto these before you start typing hours.

Kitchen prep

7:00 – 15:00

Chef and a cook in early to receive deliveries, prep stock and mise en place before doors open.

Lunch service

11:30 – 15:30

A lighter front-of-house — one or two servers and a host — through the midday covers.

Split / turnaround

break 15:30 – 17:00

Staff who work lunch and dinner take an unpaid break between services; log the combined hours.

Dinner service

17:00 – 23:00

Your heaviest shift — full kitchen, more servers, a bartender and a host on the door.

Make your restaurant schedule in five steps

  1. Add every server, host, line cook, chef and bartender available next week as their own row.
  2. Block Friday and Saturday dinner first — cover your busiest services before filling quiet weekday lunches.
  3. Type each person’s daily hours; for a split shift, enter the combined total like 7.5.
  4. Read the coverage row so every service has enough cooks on the line and servers on the floor.
  5. Print the week for the kitchen or export a CSV — then check total hours against your sales forecast.
Labour-cost tip: the footer shows total scheduled hours for the whole week. Multiply by your blended hourly rate and compare it to forecast sales before you publish — it is the fastest way to catch an over-staffed Tuesday.

What a good restaurant rota gets right

  • No short services. Weekend dinners carry the week — staff them first and to the right depth.
  • Fair distribution. Spread the prized Friday/Saturday shifts so the same people aren’t always closing.
  • Realistic weekly hours. Watch each person’s total so full-timers land near contracted hours and part-timers stay under their cap.
  • One source of truth. Print the same sheet that’s on the pass and pinned in the office — no two versions floating around.

Catch the labour cost before it bites

Labour is usually the second-biggest line after food cost, and the rota is where you either control it or lose it. Think in covers and sittings, not just bodies: a Saturday running two dinner sittings needs a deeper line — a chef on the pass, a commis prepping, an expo calling the tickets — while a slow Tuesday can run on a skeleton brigade. Before you publish, read each station against the forecast: are you carrying a third server on a night that rarely breaks forty covers? ShiftCraft’s weekly hours total turns that hunch into a number. Multiply the week’s scheduled hours by your blended hourly rate, set it beside projected sales, and you have a labour-cost percentage you can defend to an owner before a single shift is worked.

Restaurant scheduling FAQ

Is the restaurant schedule maker really free?

Yes — completely free, with no account, trial or card. Your rota is saved in your own browser rather than on a server, so it stays private to you.

Can it handle split shifts?

Yes. Enter the total hours a person works that day. For a split lunch-and-dinner shift, type the combined hours (for example 7.5) and the weekly total adds them up automatically.

Does it separate front-of-house and back-of-house?

Each person is their own row, so you can group servers, hosts and bartenders together and keep chefs and line cooks in their own block. The coverage row counts everyone scheduled on each day.

Can I check labour hours before publishing?

Yes. The footer totals scheduled hours for the week, so you can weigh labour against your sales forecast before the rota goes up.

Build this week’s restaurant rota now

Free, no sign-up, saved on your device. Add your team and the hours total themselves.

Open the rota maker →