The short version
When your labor cost runs high, the first instinct is to blame the staff or cut hours randomly. But most schedule problems start before anyone clocks in. The issue isn't the people you hired. It's the schedule you built without tying it to sales volume, daypart flow, or actual task requirements.
The real problem: schedules built on feelings, not numbers
Here's what happens in most restaurants:
- Monday is "slow" so you schedule light, then get slammed by a walkup rush.
- Friday night gets the same staffing as Saturday even though Friday does 30% less volume.
- Everyone works the same 5-hour shift because that's "how we've always done it."
- Your best cook is scheduled during the slowest daypart because they need hours.
None of this is built on data. It's built on vibes, habit, and whoever complained loudest about needing more shifts.
The result? You're either overstaffed during dead time or understaffed when it actually matters. Either way, your labor cost bleeds and service suffers.
What a schedule should actually do
A working schedule solves three problems at once:
1. Match labor to sales volume
Every daypart has a different sales curve. Your schedule should reflect that. If lunch does $1,200 and dinner does $3,800, you can't staff them the same way and expect to hit your labor target.
2. Cover the actual tasks that need doing
This isn't just about warm bodies on the clock. Someone has to prep, someone has to work the line, someone has to run expo, someone has to handle takeout. If your schedule doesn't assign roles by task, you end up with three people standing around and one person drowning.
3. Keep labor cost predictable
Your target is probably 28–32% of sales for most full-service concepts. Fast casual might run 24–28%. Food trucks can hit 18–22% if the owners are working the window. Whatever your number is, the schedule has to be designed to hit it consistently, not accidentally.
Where most schedules go sideways
There are five common mistakes that wreck schedules before the first shift even starts:
1. Scheduling by availability instead of need
You ask everyone when they can work, then try to Tetris those blocks into something that covers the week. The problem? You end up scheduling people when they're available, not when you actually need them.
Tuesday lunch needs one expo and two line cooks. Instead, you've got three servers and one cook because that's who was free. Now you're paying for coverage you don't need while the one cook you do have is in the weeds.
2. Ignoring prep vs service labor split
Prep labor is fixed. It doesn't scale with covers. Whether you do 50 or 150 covers tonight, someone still has to chop vegetables, portion proteins, and make sauces for four hours this morning.
Service labor is variable. More covers = more labor. But if you don't separate prep hours from service hours in your schedule, you can't see where the money's actually going. You just know labor is high and you don't know why.
3. Using the same shift lengths for everyone
The "everyone works 5-hour shifts" rule feels fair, but it kills efficiency. Some positions need 8 hours. Some need 3. Your opener might need to be there from 9am to 3pm to handle prep and lunch. Your closer might only need to come in at 7pm for the dinner push and breakdown.
When you force everyone into the same box, you either overstaff the slow parts or understaff the rush. There's no upside.
4. No buffer for the unexpected
Somebody calls out. A private party books last-minute. The lunch rush runs 45 minutes longer than usual. If your schedule is built at 100% capacity with zero slack, any deviation wrecks the whole thing.
You need a small float built in. Not enough to blow your labor budget, but enough so one callout doesn't require you to pull a double or leave the kitchen short-handed.
5. Zero tracking of actual vs scheduled hours
You make a schedule. People clock in early. They stay late. Breaks get skipped. Overtime sneaks in. By the end of the week, your "28% labor cost" schedule actually ran at 34% because nobody tracked the variance.
If you're not comparing scheduled hours to actual clocked hours every single week, you're flying blind.
How to build a schedule that actually works
Here's the step-by-step process to fix it:
Step 1: Break sales into dayparts
Pull your POS data for the last 4–6 weeks. Break it into dayparts: breakfast, lunch, mid-afternoon, dinner, late-night. Calculate average sales per daypart, per day of the week.
Example for a Tuesday:
- Breakfast: $420
- Lunch: $1,180
- Mid-afternoon: $240
- Dinner: $2,650
- Late-night: $310
Now you know where the volume actually is. This is your foundation.
Step 2: Set your labor budget per daypart
If your overall target is 30% labor cost, apply it to each daypart. Not every daypart will hit exactly 30%, but the average across the week should land there.
Tuesday dinner does $2,650. At 30% labor, you have $795 to spend on wages for that shift.
If your average hourly rate is $16/hour, that gives you roughly 50 labor hours to allocate across that dinner service.
Step 3: Assign roles and hours by task
Don't just throw bodies at the schedule. Break it down by what actually needs to get done:
- Prep cook: 4 hours in the morning (fixed labor)
- Line cook 1: 6 hours (4pm–10pm)
- Line cook 2: 5 hours (5pm–10pm, comes in for the rush)
- Expo: 5 hours (4:30pm–9:30pm)
- Server 1: 6 hours
- Server 2: 4 hours (dinner push only)
- Dishwasher: 6 hours
Total: 36 hours scheduled. At $16/hour average, that's $576 in labor cost for a $2,650 dinner. That's 21.7% labor for the dinner daypart.
Add in your fixed prep labor from the morning and mid-shift tasks, and you'll see where the total day lands relative to your 30% target.
Step 4: Build in stagger shifts, not block shifts
Instead of everyone arriving at 4pm and leaving at 9pm, stagger the shifts based on when you actually need the coverage:
- Prep cook: 9am–1pm
- First line cook: 3pm–9pm (handles prep carryover + service)
- Second line cook: 5pm–10pm (pure dinner rush coverage)
- Expo: 4:30pm–9:30pm (arrives just before service, stays through breakdown)
- Server 1: 4pm–10pm
- Server 2: 6pm–10pm (rush only)
- Dishwasher: 4pm–10pm
This way, you're not paying for dead time before the rush or keeping people clocked in after the tickets stop.
Step 5: Track variance every week
Compare scheduled hours to actual clocked hours. If people are consistently clocking in 15 minutes early or staying 30 minutes late, that's leakage. Fix it by adjusting clock-in rules, tightening manager oversight, or shifting responsibilities.
Run this as a simple report every Monday:
Scheduled hours: 220 Actual hours: 238 Variance: +18 hours (8.2% overage)
If you see this pattern, dig into where the extra hours came from. Was it overtime? Early arrivals? Poor shift transitions? Then adjust next week's schedule to close the gap.
Quick 3-day schedule audit
You don't need a full rebuild to start. Just run a focused audit over three days:
Day 1: Pull your sales by daypart
Export your POS data for the last 30 days. Break it into dayparts and calculate averages by day of the week. Focus on your three busiest days and your three slowest days.
Day 2: Map your current schedule to those dayparts
Take this week's schedule and calculate total labor hours and cost per daypart. Compare it to sales. Are you spending 35% of sales on labor during a dead Tuesday lunch? Are you only spending 22% during your Friday dinner rush because you're understaffed?
Day 3: Rebuild one daypart as a test
Pick one daypart that's clearly broken. Maybe it's Wednesday dinner where you're always scrambling, or Saturday lunch where you have three people standing around.
Rebuild just that one shift using the steps above: set the labor budget, assign roles by task, stagger the arrival times. Run it for one week and compare the results.
Where the RPS tools plug in
Scheduling is easier when you have the math already built. That's where the RPS stack helps:
- Labor Planner calculator: Lets you rough in schedules by daypart, see labor cost in real time, and test different staffing scenarios before you commit.
- Prime Cost Calculator: Ties your labor cost to food cost so you can see the full picture. If food cost is tight but labor is bleeding, Prime Cost will show you exactly where the margin went.
- PrimeShift Labor Audit: If you'd rather hand the whole thing off, PrimeShift does a full 7-day labor study, rebuilds your schedule, and gives you a hiring plan. $300 flat, one location, done in a week.
Simple next step for this week
Don't try to fix the whole schedule at once. Start with one shift that's consistently a problem.
- Pull sales data for that daypart over the last month.
- Calculate your labor budget at your target percentage.
- Rebuild the shift with staggered arrivals and clear role assignments.
Run it for one week. Track actual hours vs scheduled hours. If it works, roll the same process out to the next problem daypart. One shift at a time, you'll tighten the whole week.