Operations

5 rostering mistakes costing you $50k a year.

By Johnny · 9 Jun 2026 · 7 min read

Labour is the cost you control most directly and the one most venues control worst. Not because operators are lazy. Because the roster gets built on a Sunday, in a rush, from last week's roster, by feel. Here are the five habits that quietly bleed money, and the fix for each.

01. The same roster template every week

Costs: $20k to $83k a year

This is the big one. You build a roster that works, and then you copy it. Every week. Forever. The problem is that no two weeks are the same. A long weekend, a public holiday, a quiet school-holiday Tuesday, a big event up the road. Your demand moves. Your roster does not. So you carry the same five bodies on a Tuesday that needs three, and you scramble on a Friday that needed seven.

The fix

Roster to next week's expected demand, not last week's roster. Look at the same week last year, the same day last month, and anything you know is coming. Build from the forecast, not the habit.

02. Not tracking labour by daypart

Costs: $26k to $52k a year

Most venues know their labour percentage for the week. Almost none know it for lunch versus dinner, or for the 3pm to 5pm dead patch. That is where the waste hides. A venue can run a healthy 28% across the week and still be hemorrhaging money between two and five, when the floor is fully staffed and the room is empty.

The fix

Break labour down by daypart. Look at wage cost against revenue in two or three hour blocks. The dead zones jump out immediately. That is where you trim, not across the board.

03. Openers and closers padded out

Costs: around $21k a year

The open and the close are where time leaks. The opener clocks on at 8 for a 9 start because that is what they have always done. The closer is still there at midnight wiping down a room that emptied at 10. It is a person on the floor for an hour with nothing on the floor to do, every shift, every day.

The fix

Match the start and finish to the actual work, not the routine. Stagger arrivals so the team builds with the room. Send people home when the work is done, not when the clock says.

04. Not using split shifts properly

Costs: $81k to $153k a year for a 7-day venue

This is the biggest number on the list, and the most misunderstood. If you trade lunch and dinner with a quiet gap between, paying full-time bodies to stand through that gap is enormously expensive over a year. A well-built split shift, where someone works the lunch peak, breaks, and comes back for dinner, can cut the dead-time cost dramatically. Done badly it burns out your team. Done well it is the single biggest labour lever a two-service venue has.

The fix

Where the gap is real and the award allows it, build genuine split shifts for the peaks, fairly and with the team's buy-in. Do not staff straight through a two-hour lull just because it is simpler to roster.

05. Ignoring penalty rates in the roster build

Costs: $15k to $31k a year

Sundays and public holidays cost more per hour. Everyone knows this. Almost nobody rosters with it in front of them. So a Sunday gets the same body count as a Saturday, at a much higher rate, and the margin on what is often your softest trading day disappears. The cost of an hour is not flat, but most rosters treat it as if it is.

The fix

Roster the penalty-rate days tighter. Put your most productive people on, keep the count lean, and make sure the revenue justifies the higher hourly cost before you add another name.

What the best operators do differently

None of this is about working your team harder or cutting hours blindly. It is about rostering with your eyes open. The operators who get labour right share three habits.

They roster from data, not habit. The forecast drives the roster, not last week's copy-paste.
They check labour daily, not weekly. A heavy shift caught on the day can be fixed on the day. Caught at week's end, it is already paid for.
They think in dollars, not hours. An hour on a Sunday and an hour on a Tuesday are not the same hour. The good ones price every shift.

If you want to see what your labour is truly costing, on-costs and all, the Labour Cost Calculator breaks it down by wages, super, WorkCover, and payroll tax. Most operators undercount by 10 points or more, which is why these mistakes hurt more than they look.

Your labour, checked every morning before you roster.

Briefed reads your roster and POS overnight and tells you where labour ran heavy, which daypart leaked, and what to change tonight. $299/month. 30 days free.

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