How to roster a pub for a busy Friday night

A good Friday night roster isn't a list of names against a list of shifts. It's a plan for how the night actually unfolds: who's on when the doors open and it's quiet, who's on when the bar is four deep at 9pm, and who's still there to close up and cash out. Get that shape right and the rest of the roster falls into place. Get it wrong and you spend Friday night running around plugging gaps instead of running the venue.

Here's the structure I'd start from, whichever app or spreadsheet you use to build it. If you want a spreadsheet that's already laid out this way, our free hospitality roster template is set up by section, adds up hours past midnight, and flags any night a section has nobody on.

Start with what the night actually looks like

Before you place a single shift, look at what Friday night has looked like recently. Pull up last Friday's roster and actual hours worked, not just what was planned. If you take bookings, check what's on the book for tonight, including any large groups or a function that changes the shape of the evening. If there's a big local event, a public holiday long weekend, or the football's on, factor that in too.

This is the step people skip when they're rushed, and it's the one that matters most. A roster built from a template with no reference to the actual night is a guess dressed up as a plan.

Roster by section, not by name

A pub isn't one room. It's the public bar, the bistro, the gaming room, maybe a bottle shop and a function space, each with its own rhythm on a Friday. The bistro might need a second chef on from 6pm for the dinner rush while the public bar barely needs a third person until 8. Treat each section as its own mini-roster with its own start times, rather than one long list of staff and hoping the coverage works itself out.

This is the whole reason we built Kaslu Work around sections instead of a flat staff list. Bar, bistro, kitchen, gaming and functions each get their own row, so a gap in the gaming room at 10pm shows up while you're building the roster, not when a guest is standing at an empty counter.

Staff the peaks, not the whole night evenly

The easiest mistake on a Friday roster is treating the whole shift as one block and spreading the same headcount across it. Friday night has a shape: a slow start, a build-up from about 6, a peak somewhere between 8 and 11, and a wind-down. Your roster should have that shape too.

Stagger your start times so people arrive as the night actually picks up, rather than everyone clocking on at 5 and standing around for the first hour. Build in overlap around the peak, so the person closing the till at 9 isn't also the only one who can run a coffee machine when it's slammed. And roster your closers deliberately: cashing out, stock, and a clean venue at close take longer than people expect, and a roster that ends everyone's shift at the same minute the doors lock usually means someone stays back unrostered.

Leave room for casuals and short shifts to make sense

Most pub rosters lean heavily on casual staff, and Friday is often where you add an extra body for just the peak: someone on from 7 to 11 to cover the rush, rather than a full evening shift. That's a reasonable way to roster a peak, but the Hospitality Industry (General) Award sets a minimum period a casual must be engaged and paid for each time they're called in, and the Restaurant Industry Award has its own equivalent rule that isn't necessarily the same number. Before you roster someone for a short top-up shift, check the current minimum engagement clause for the award your venue sits under, because it affects how short a shift can actually be. The Fair Work Ombudsman publishes both awards in full, with the current clauses, at awards.fairwork.gov.au. This is general information, not legal advice, so check the exact figure that applies to your venue with Fair Work or your own adviser before you roster very short shifts.

Build breaks into the roster, not around it

Breaks aren't something to sort out on the night. Both hospitality awards set out rest and meal breaks based on how long a shift runs, and the lengths and timing aren't identical between the two awards. If you roster someone for a long Friday shift without planning where their break sits, you either end up short-staffed at a bad moment when they take it, or the break gets skipped altogether, which creates a problem for the timesheet later. Decide the break time when you build the roster, ideally somewhere it won't fall in the middle of the peak, and tell the staff member when it is rather than leaving it to be worked out on the floor. Again, the exact break entitlements sit in the award text at awards.fairwork.gov.au, and this isn't legal advice, so check the current clause for your award if you're not sure.

Publish it, then check it once more

Once the roster's built, read back through it as if you were the duty manager on the night, not the person who wrote it. Does every section have cover through to close? Is anyone rostered against a day they've marked unavailable? Is there a gap between one person's shift ending and the next starting in the same spot? Small mistakes like these are far easier to catch on a screen on Tuesday than at 8pm on Friday when the venue's full.

If your venue is part of a bigger group, the same shape applies at every one of them, even though the peak times and sections might look different at each site. We built multi-venue rostering in Kaslu Work so a head office can see all of that at once, without every venue being forced into the same template.

Kaslu Work is in early access, opening to Australian hospitality groups a few at a time. If building a roster like this one every week sounds familiar, the waitlist is on the home page.