Why labour is the number that creeps up on you

Ask most small pub operators what worries them and they will mention beer prices, energy bills or the cost of a keg. Labour often slips down the list because it arrives in small, friendly increments: an extra pair of hands on a Saturday, a few more hours for the kitchen porter, one more shift while someone is on holiday. By the time you add it up, you are running at 34% of turnover when you thought you were at 26%.

For most wet-led pubs, a labour cost of 22–28% of net turnover is a reasonable target. Food-led sites might run a little higher because kitchens need steady cover. The figure matters less than the trend: if you know your number each week, you can act on it. If you only look at it at year end, you are reacting rather than managing.

Forecasting demand before you write a single shift

A rota built on habit — the same shifts every week since 2019 — is almost certainly wrong. Demand in a pub moves with the weather, the football, school holidays, paydays, local events and even the bus timetable. Start by pulling the last twelve months of till data and breaking it down by day and by hour. You are looking for the shape of your week, not just the total.

Once you can see that Tuesday is quiet until 7pm but Friday kicks off at 4pm, you can build a rota around it. Practical things to watch include:

• Weather: a sunny Friday can add 20–30% to drinks sales, especially if you have outside space.
• Sport and events: a televised match will shift demand earlier and make it spikier.
• Local rhythms: market days, factory shift changes, university terms, the last Friday before payday.
• Seasonality: December is not a month, it is a different business. Plan it separately.

Write the forecast down. Even a simple spreadsheet with expected covers or drinks sales per shift gives you something to check against the actuals on Monday morning.

Building shifts that match the shape of your week

Split shifts get a bad reputation, and often rightly so — but in a pub with a two-hour lull between lunch and evening trade, they can be the difference between a viable rota and an expensive one. The trick is fairness and predictability. If someone works a split, they should know well in advance, have a proper break, and not be expected to do it five days a week.

Think about skill mix rather than headcount. A shift with one experienced supervisor, one solid all-rounder and one newer member of staff will often outperform three people of similar ability. Overlapping by an hour at handover — before the evening rush and again at close — saves far more in mistakes and slow service than it costs in wages.

Also watch your fixed costs. Someone on a four-hour shift costs you four hours of pay plus employer National Insurance and pension contributions. If that shift is quiet, the hours are dead money. Shorter, sharper shifts on quiet days beat long, comfortable ones.

The fair work bit: contracts, hours and expectations

Staff who feel their hours are unpredictable will leave, and recruitment and training are expensive. Two things help enormously: a written contract that reflects reality, and a rota published at least two weeks ahead. Where you genuinely need flexibility, say so clearly and offer something in return — a guaranteed minimum number of hours, or priority on the shifts people actually want.

Remember the practicalities too. Everyone is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, which for a variable-hours worker is usually calculated from average earnings over the previous twelve weeks. Tips and service charges have their own rules, and if you operate a tronc, the arrangement should be written down and understood by everyone. Getting these basics right protects you as much as it protects your team.

Tools and technology worth the money

You do not need an enterprise system. A modern EPOS will give you hourly sales reports, which is the single most useful dataset a small pub can have. Pair that with a rota app that lets staff set their availability, request swaps and clock in on their phone, and you remove most of the WhatsApp chaos that eats into your evenings.

Three things are worth paying for:

• Integrated timesheets, so actual hours feed straight into payroll rather than being re-keyed.
• Live labour reporting, showing today's wage cost against today's sales while you can still send someone home early.
• Simple stock and sales data, because labour planning is guesswork without knowing what you actually sold.

A decent setup for a single-site pub costs less per month than one wasted shift.

Making it stick: communication and small habits

The best rotas are the ones nobody argues about. That comes from a few small habits: publishing on the same day each week, keeping a visible swaps board, thanking people for covering at short notice, and reviewing the rota against actual sales every Monday for ten minutes.

Involve your team in the numbers. If everyone understands that a quiet Tuesday needs three staff, not five, they will help you protect the margin rather than fight you over hours. Fairness, consistency and a bit of forward planning will keep good people with you far longer than a penny an hour more elsewhere — and that, more than any spreadsheet, is what keeps a small pub profitable.