Shift-schedule template for cafés
Most cafés don’t need a brand-new schedule every week. They need three or four recurring shifts and a way to assign them to people who can’t work every day. Here’s the template, and the workflow that finishes the week in a single coffee break.
Start with the shifts, not the people
The most common mistake is to begin with “who can work Monday.” Start with what the venue needs covered, regardless of who takes it. A café open 08–20 is typically covered by three shifts: Opening 07:00–15:00. Arrive an hour before the doors open: brew, bake, set out, count the till. Mid shift 10:00–18:00. Covers the lunch rush and relieves the opener for breaks. Closing 15:00–22:00. Overlaps the mid shift for three hours, then stays after closing for dishes, counting and trash. Adjust the times to your venue, but keep the principle: each shift starts before you need staff and ends after the last guest is gone.
Enter availability once
Ask every employee two things and write them down somewhere other than your head: which days can you never work, and how many hours do you want per week? “Never” is the key word. These are the fixed barriers—Tuesday lectures, another job on weekends, daycare pickup—not “I’d rather not.” Fixed barriers rarely change, so you enter them once and plan around them for months. The agreed hours are just as important. Someone promised 30 hours who only gets 12 will ask why, and you’d rather see it before the week is sent out.
Fill the week, then fix it afterward
Now assign: go through the week day by day and give each shift to the person who’s available and has the fewest hours so far. That’s the whole rule. It produces a plan that’s fairly distributed without extra thinking, and it’s easy to explain if someone asks why they got Saturday. After that, move the three or four shifts that still need moving because you know something the system doesn’t. Rota’s planner does the distribution for you with exactly this rule, then lets you drag shifts wherever you want afterward.
Check the weekend before you send out the schedule
The weekend is when plans fall apart, because it’s when most people say they can’t work and when it’s busiest. Check four things before you send it: are Saturday and Sunday covered across all three shifts? Has anyone been given both closing on Friday and opening on Saturday? Is anyone at zero hours this week? And is anyone way over their agreed hours? Closing followed by opening is what causes the most wear and the most sick leave. Avoid it when you can, and speak up when you can’t.
Send the schedule out early enough
The work schedule must be discussed with the employees or their union representatives, and under the Working Environment Act it should normally be available no later than two weeks before it comes into force. A shorter deadline can be agreed, but two weeks is the starting point. In practice this means you plan two weeks ahead, not one. That’s also why shift templates are worth the twenty minutes it takes to set them up: week two is almost finished the moment week one is done.
Frequently asked questions
How many shift templates should I have?
Three to four. If you have more than five, two of them are probably the same shift with a fifteen-minute difference—merge them and the week becomes easier to read.
How do I handle breaks in the schedule?
Add the break as minutes on the shift, not as a separate row. The shift then appears as one block in the schedule, while the timesheet automatically subtracts the unpaid break.
Can I use Excel for this?
Yes, and many people do. What breaks down in Excel is availability and shift swaps: the sheet doesn’t know that Mats can never do Saturdays, so it won’t warn you when you put a shift there.