Autoscheduling and The Art of Running a Shift
General managers are the Swiss Army Knives of restaurants, capable of forecasting demand, juggling inventory, building schedules, training staff, and managing the floor — often all at once. But what if operators could get more value from their managers’ time?
Auto-scheduling can take one huge weekly job off their plate by automatically building schedules and assigning staff to rotas with a single click. Managers still need to review those schedules and have the opportunity to introduce their own experience, judgement and local knowledge, but it no longer takes them hours to build. They need only to review the schedule, approve it, and then get back to doing what they do best; developing and managing their teams.
The Art of Scheduling
Effective scheduling has always been something of an art. It’s about balancing the needs of the business with those of employees, understanding the dynamics of a team and knowing how to put the right people in the right place at the right time. No two shifts or team members are quite the same, and getting that balance right takes experience, judgement and a deep understanding of how a restaurant operates.
Hours Don’t Equal Value
But getting that balance right takes time, and more time spent scheduling doesn’t necessarily mean a better schedule. The average GM spends a significant number of hours a week on scheduling, and our research shows that 20% of the hours they do schedule manually deliver no value. Multiply that by the number of venues in an estate, and operators pay for a sizeable amount of management time that goes straight into admin and doesn’t generate the value it should.
And it’s little wonder it’s a laborious and inefficient process. Scheduling requires a lot of mental dexterity; managers have to juggle competing requirements — contracted hours, the right mix of experienced staff and trainees on each shift, staff availability. They also need to consider commercial requirements. How busy will the venue be? When will demand peak, and how long will it last? How much preparation is needed before customers arrive? Managers must translate all of this into a shift schedule that stays on budget, remains compliant, and provides enough cover to deliver good service. It’s a complex balancing act, and one that increasingly requires bringing science to the art of scheduling.
The science lies in accurately forecasting demand patterns, understanding labour requirements and matching the right skills to the right shifts. Good schedules don’t just account for the value of expected sales, they forecast at an item level what a venue will sell. One high ticket item might generate the same revenue as ten smaller items, but the smaller ones take considerably more labour to serve. That understanding then needs to be translated into rules that ensure whatever demand is forecast, the restaurant consistently schedules the right amount of labour to meet it – without over- or under-scheduling.This is the science of scheduling: determining those rules using forecasting and labour models to establish an objective, data-driven starting point, rather than relying on individual assumptions or standard templates.
Burger King changes its scheduling habits
At Burger King, managers had relied on historic shift patterns that didn’t reflect demand or individual restaurants’ staffing needs. Working with Fourth, the business introduced our Auto-Scheduling.
The result was a complete overhaul of shift patterns, allowing Burger King to deploy hours more effectively while meeting demand during peak periods. The fast food giant achieved a 1% labour cost saving and a 7–10% improvement in labour deployment accuracy, helping it maintain a cost-neutral labour model despite the 2024 minimum wage increases.
Where Does Human Judgement Add Most Value?
AI can take much of the analytical work out of scheduling, using demand forecasts, labour models and staffing requirements to build accurate schedules and assign employees automatically. But even the most accurate forecasts and sophisticated labour models can’t account for every nuance of running a restaurant.
This leaves managers free to focus on decisions where their experience and understanding of the restaurant matter most.
Managers know their teams: which colleagues work well together, who needs more support, whether a new starter is ready for a busy shift. Two people might have the same availability and experience on paper, but their manager will know how each would cope with a particular service, or who would be best placed to help a trainee. They also know what’s happening on their doorstep, whether that’s a local festival bringing extra visitors to the area, roadworks making the restaurant harder to access, or a neighbouring restaurant closing and sending more customers their way.
There is an art to scheduling that is uniquely human. That’s why both operators and managers have traditionally been reluctant to automate the process, but bringing science to scheduling doesn’t mean removing people. Local knowledge and experience will still inform the final rota, managers can make adjustments to the forecast, shift, and staff assignment based on their judgement, they just don’t have to spend hours building it themselves. But rather than building schedules from scratch, managers can use auto-scheduling to refine a data-driven starting point that already accounts for the business’s requirements.
The Impact of Intelligent Scheduling
The benefits of bringing the art and science of scheduling together extend beyond the time saved building rotas. More accurate scheduling helps restaurants align labour with demand, reducing the risk of overstaffing during quieter periods or leaving teams short-handed when trade picks up.
Across a restaurant estate, even small improvements in labour deployment can translate into significant savings. And with less time spent on scheduling administration, managers have more capacity to focus on their teams, service standards and the day-to-day running of their restaurants.Our guide to Auto-Scheduling explains how this works in more detail.
Are rising labour and food costs eating into your restaurant’s margins?
Food and people are two of the biggest costs for restaurants. How do you reduce them without compromising service and quality? Join Fourth’s upcoming webinar to explore how businesses can improve labour and food cost control while protecting sales.
Giving Managers More Time for Hospitality
Hospitality is, ultimately, a people business. Good service depends on well-trained, motivated teams and managers who have the time to support them. By bringing science to the art of scheduling, operators can save managers hours on their laptops, freeing them up while ensuring the schedules themselves are optimised to meet demand.
Scheduling will always benefit from human judgement, but managers don’t need to be analysts anymore. To discover how Fourth’s Intelligent Scheduling solution can help your business make better use of labour and management time, contact our team today.
