TEMPLATE
A simple weekly restaurant staff schedule template
One week, one page: who is working, when, and in which role. Below is a filled-in example you can copy the layout of into Excel, Google Sheets or a printed sheet — followed by how to fill it in, what a restaurant schedule needs that an office rota doesn’t, and where a template starts to get in the way.
NAME
ROLE
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
SUN
HOURS
Anna D.
Floor
Closed
11:00–16:00
11:00–16:00
—
17:00–23:00
17:00–23:00
11:00–16:00
27h
Bram V.
Bar
Closed
—
17:00–23:00
17:00–23:00
18:00–01:00+1
18:00–01:00+1
—
26h
Chloé M.
Kitchen
Closed
10:00–16:00
10:00–16:00
10:00–16:00
—
—
10:00–16:00
24h
Dries P.
Kitchen
Closed
—
—
16:00–23:00
16:00–00:00+1
16:00–00:00+1
16:00–22:00
29h
Elif K.
Floor
Closed
—
—
17:00–23:00
17:00–00:00+1
17:00–00:00+1
—
20h
Finn J.
Bar
Closed
17:00–23:00
—
—
18:00–01:00+1
18:00–01:00+1
12:00–18:00
26h
Example week for a restaurant closed on Mondays. Names and shifts are illustrative. “+1” marks a shift that ends the following morning.
What each column is for
Name
Who is working. Add a surname initial as soon as two people share a first name — a rota with two Annas on it is a rota nobody trusts.
Role
What they are covering: floor, bar, kitchen. This is the constraint that decides who can go where, so it belongs next to the name rather than in someone’s head.
One column per day
The shift, written as a start and an end time. A dash means not working. Write “Closed” on a day the restaurant doesn’t open, so a blank never has two meanings.
Hours
Planned hours for the week. Adding them up is the step people skip, and it is the one that catches somebody on 46 hours before the week starts rather than after it ends.
How to fill it in
01
Start with the week, not the people
Write down the shifts each service actually needs — lunch, dinner, close — and how many people each one takes. A schedule built around who is free tends to under-staff Saturday.
02
Ask who can work, before you plan
Get availability for that specific week first. Every minute spent here saves three later, and a schedule built on guesses gets rebuilt.
03
Put the role next to the name
It is the constraint that decides who can fill what. Someone who covers two roles gets the one they are mainly on, with the exception noted in the cell.
04
Fill the shifts you already know
Regular patterns first. They rarely change, and they shrink the part of the week you actually have to think about.
05
Fill the rest against availability
Leave a cell blank rather than guessing. An empty cell is information — it tells you what still needs an answer.
06
Add up the hours and read the week back
Check for anyone unusually light or heavy, a service with nobody on close, and one person scheduled two shifts that run into each other.
07
Share one version, and date it
The most common failure of a spreadsheet rota isn’t a bad schedule. It’s two people working from different copies of a good one.
What a restaurant schedule needs that an office rota doesn’t
Roles, not just people
A bar that needs covering is a different fact from a person being free. Two available waiters do not fix a missing chef.
Services, not office hours
Lunch, dinner and close are different shapes of work, and the week is not flat — Friday and Saturday evening need more of everyone.
Availability that moves weekly
Students, flexi-job and part-time staff rarely repeat a week. Last week’s answers are not this week’s answers.
Someone to open and someone to close
These are jobs, not just times. A week can be fully staffed on paper and still have nobody who can lock up on Sunday.
Shifts that cross midnight
An evening shift that ends at 01:00 is normal in hospitality and breaks most generic rota templates.
Room for the change you know is coming
Something will move after you publish. A schedule that is painful to edit is a schedule that quietly goes out of date.
How to write an overnight shift
Decide this once, before you start. A shift that begins at 18:00 and ends at 01:00 belongs to the evening it started on, not the morning it ended. Write it as 18:00–01:00 +1 and put it in the column for the night the person actually came in. File it under the next morning instead and you will double-count Saturday and lose Friday night — the mistake is easy to make and hard to spot afterwards.
When a template is enough — and when it isn’t
For a small team on a steady week, a spreadsheet is genuinely fine. If six people work roughly the same shifts and availability barely moves, the template above may be all you ever need — use it, and don’t buy software to solve a problem you don’t have.
It gets harder when:
availability changes from one week to the next
you have students, flexi-job or part-time staff whose weeks don’t repeat
people cover more than one role
shifts have to sit open while you wait for answers
the schedule changes after you have already sent it
you are copying availability out of WhatsApp into cells
Any one of those is survivable. Three or four at once is where the week stops being planned and starts being reassembled.
THE SAME WORKFLOW, WITHOUT THE COPYING
What the same week looks like in Toonio
Every step above still happens. The difference is where the information lives, and how much of it you re-type.
Ask everyone by message, then copy the answers into cells
Your team submits availability for that week, and it is on screen while you plan
Type a shift into a cell
Build a shift with a role and a location — and leave it open until you know who is on it
Screenshot the sheet and post it in the group
Publish the week; everyone sees their own shifts, times, role and location
Edit, screenshot again, resend, hope people saw it
Change a shift and the team sees it straight away, marked as updated in their own view
Add up the hours by hand
Planned hours are already totalled, and clocked time sits next to them after the shift
Common questions
What should a restaurant staff schedule include?
At minimum: who is working, which role they are covering, the start and end time of each shift, and the total planned hours for the week. Add the days the restaurant is closed so an empty cell never has two meanings, and mark shifts that run past midnight so a Friday night is not counted as Saturday.
How do I make a weekly restaurant schedule?
Can I use this template in Excel or Google Sheets?
How do I schedule someone who works more than one role?
How should I write an overnight shift?
When should I use scheduling software instead of a spreadsheet?
Ready to stop rebuilding the week by hand?
Keep the template as long as it works. When it stops, the same week fits in Toonio.
