How to Manage Labour During a Rush (Without Blowing Your Wage Budget)

Quick answer: You manage labour during a rush by deciding it before the rush starts. Forecast your revenue for every day of the week. Give your managers a wage percentage target against that forecast. Build a costed roster that hits the target and have it signed off. Then manage wages against budget every single day, not when payroll lands. For restaurants, cafes, bars and pubs, getting rostering to match customer demand is where most wage savings come from.

We recently sat down with two people who love helping the industry as much as we do: Ryan Hartley, CEO of Safe Food Pro, and James O'Connell of The Hospitality Company, who has spent 25 years advising, coaching and training food and beverage businesses across New Zealand and Australia. The topic was one that comes up in almost every conversation I have with group owners: how do you stay in control of labour when the venue gets slammed?

Over the years I've lost count of the Monday mornings I've seen this go wrong. Saturday was huge, the team ran their legs off, everyone felt great about it, and then the wage report showed we'd made no more money than a quiet week. James summed up why in his opening line: the win on a busy day starts well before the rush hits.

Here's what we covered, written up so you can take it straight into your next managers' meeting.

Five key takeaways

1. Rostering is only one part of wage management. Wage management covers how you plan, manage and report on labour. Most venues start with the roster when they should start with the forecast.
2. "32% of what?" A wage percentage means nothing to a manager until you give them a revenue forecast to work it against.
3. Forecasting is the superpower. James's best clients forecast weekly revenue to within 5% of what actually happens. In his experience, clients who get good at forecasting improve their wage percentage by at least 3%.
4. Manage wages daily, even though you pay them weekly. It's hard to have a good week with five bad days.
5. Use one simple rule. If sales are under budget, spend less than the rostered dollars. If sales are over budget, keep the wage percentage under the rostered percentage.

What is wage management in hospitality?

Wage management is the systems and culture you use to plan, manage and report on labour in a food and beverage business. It's much more than writing a roster. The roster is one step inside it, and the most important relationship in making it work is the one between the owner and the manager.

James framed it this way because labour has become the biggest cost line for most of his clients. If you split a venue's costs into cost of goods, wages and overheads, he says wages are now the largest of the three. That makes it the cost you most need to master.

He also reminded everyone why hospitality is harder than it looks. We take raw ingredients, turn them into a product and serve it live, to order, all at the same time. When you buy shoes at Foot Locker, nobody is making them out the back while you wait. That's retail. Hospitality has much less room for error, and as James put it, you can't run a six-out-of-ten business and expect to make money.

The good news, and the point I made on the day, is that there's a proven path through this. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You need a clear way of doing wage management in your business, managers who understand it, and the right mix of support and accountability.

Why should you forecast revenue before you build a roster?

You should forecast revenue first because a wage target is a percentage of something, and without a forecast there's nothing to take the percentage of. If an owner tells a manager they've got 32% for next week's roster, the obvious question is: 32% of what?

Here's how it should work. Say you forecast $40,000 in revenue for next week. You break that down by day (and by block, morning and afternoon, if that's how your trade runs). At a 32% wage target, the manager now has a $12,800 wage budget for the week, broken down day by day. They build the roster to that number, not to what they feel they need.

James used a nice everyday comparison. If he gives his son $40 to go to the movies, his son doesn't get to spend $50. We budget like this in our own lives all the time. Rostering should be no different.

Of course, you've still got minimum hours, salaried staff and employment contracts to honour. Those still count. But they sit inside the budget, not outside it.

When there's no forecast, the same story plays out across most venues. The owner and manager have a loose chat about hitting 35% next week. The manager builds a roster based on what they think they need. Payroll comes in on Monday at 39%, and everyone scrambles for reasons. James quoted Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth, here: the most important word in business is clarity. A missing forecast is exactly the kind of unclear expectation that sours the relationship between owner and manager. It's how you end up with an owner who thinks the manager can't roster, and a manager who thinks the owner is never happy.

Read more on how to do this here: How to calculate your restaurant's labour cost percentage.

How accurate does a hospitality revenue forecast need to be?

Aim to get your weekly revenue forecast within 5% of actual sales. James says his best clients consistently forecast weekly turnover to within 5% of what actually comes in. He's also quick to point out they were terrible at it when they started. Accuracy comes from tracking what drives your trade, week after week.

The factors James recommends building your forecast around:

• Seasonality: your busy and quiet months
• Weather
• Forward bookings, reservations and functions
• Daily demand cycles you already know exist
• Upcoming marketing campaigns
• Local events in your town or suburb

That last one gets missed more than you'd think. James told a story about a cafe client who had a flat-out weekend she hadn't rostered for, because a big annual crochet event was in town. It wasn't a one-off. It happens every year. If you know what's coming to town, you can forecast for it.

Another of James's clients, an Auckland business, has learned that when more than 10 bookings of eight or more people are in the reservation systems for the week, it can predict that week's turnover. You won't find that kind of pattern in a textbook. It comes from watching your own data.

Forecasting also doesn't need to sit with the owner alone. Your managers are on the floor every day and often know more about upcoming functions and demand than you do. Make it a senior leadership team exercise.

How do you set a wage percentage target for each week?

Set an annual wage target first, then a different target for each month that averages out to it, then a weekly target based on that week's revenue forecast. The owner and manager should agree the weekly percentage before anyone starts on the roster.

For example, if your annual wage target is 35%, you shouldn't expect to hit 35% every month. Seasonality means a quiet winter month might sit at 38% and a peak month at 27%. What matters is that the monthly targets average out to 35% across the year. Then each week, you set the wage percentage against the forecast for that week.

The percentage also needs to mean something to your managers. For you as an owner, a lower wage percentage means more profit. For a manager, it's just a number unless you give them context. Setting the target gives them clarity on what the job is. If they're struggling to build a roster that gets there, that's your cue to coach them. Once they can do it week after week, you've also got a fair way to hold them to it.

For benchmarks by venue type, see What's a good labour cost percentage?

Should owners sign off the roster before it's published?

Yes. James's view is that no costed roster should be published without the owner or a senior manager signing it off. Wages are now the biggest cost in most venues. Building the roster might take a manager half an hour, but checking it takes the owner about 40 seconds.

A costed roster puts a dollar figure and a wage percentage against every shift as you build it. James remembers when Loaded first brought this in. Before that, rosters were just start and finish times. Nobody saw the cost until payroll on the following Monday, which is when everyone panicked about the wage percentage.

With a costed roster, the check is simple. You gave the manager 35%. You open the roster and look at the total. If it says 37%, you go back and ask them to find 2%.

That oversight matters more than it sounds. In my experience, cost creeps in over time, and rosters are a classic place for it. Without a target and someone asking questions, the person doing the roster will always find a reason to add another shift. The roster grows to fill whatever space they have in their head for what's needed. A target is what makes those conversations possible.

James's way of putting it: run wage management the way you drive a car. You glance in the rear vision mirror now and then, but most of your attention is on the windscreen.

How should shift managers manage wages during a rush?

Shift managers should manage wages against budget every day, starting each shift knowing that day's wage budget. Most venues review wages the way they pay them, weekly or fortnightly. By then it's too late. As I said on the day, it's pretty hard to have a good week with five bad days.

This was our "magic rule" across our group, and it's built into Loaded today:

• If sales are under budget, wages should come in below the rostered dollar figure.
• If sales are over budget, the wage percentage should come in below the rostered percentage.

Here's a real day from one venue, the kind I'd look at every morning when I was running operations across 12 venue managers and 12 head chefs:

Sales came in $700 under budget, and wages still went $40 over. To hold the planned 36%, wages would have needed to come in around $1,950, about $290 less than they did.

On a quiet day, the shift manager's job is to find those savings well. Talk to the team. Someone who wants to get to a uni assignment might love an early finish. Your quiet days across a year are what make or break your annual wage percentage.

The rush is the other side of the rule. When sales are well above budget (the crochet championships are in full swing), the percentage should be easy to beat. But sometimes the shift manager just keeps everybody on and runs around flat out. You do all that extra work, all that extra stress, and make no extra money.

The rule works because it's fair. Sales aren't fully in a manager's control, but wages are. Under this rule, a manager can still have a great week on a poor sales week, which is why we tied part of our managers' weekly incentive to it.

It's also a real help for new managers. Stepping up from team member to managing your mates is hard. A roster with a clear budget gives them a black and white reason to send someone home early. It's not personal, it's the job.

How do you report on wages every day?

Report on wages daily, the same way you do your cash-up. Every food and beverage business James has coached does a daily cash-up, and none of them would dream of doing it weekly instead. If the till was $100 out, you'd go looking for it.

Apply the same thinking to wages. If you hit your forecast revenue and the team spent $200 more than rostered, that's the same as $200 missing from the cash-up. James says that when owners start treating wage reporting as seriously as cash-up reporting, the difference shows quickly.

The last piece is making sure your daily numbers match what actually goes out of the bank. They often don't. The cleaner who's been with you for 25 years never clocks in. Salaried managers' costs aren't showing up in daily reports. A staff member who works across two venues isn't counted at either site. Add those up and payroll looks quite different from the wage percentage you reported all week.

In my experience, if you get these four things right, you'll be ahead of 80 to 90% of venues:

1. Map your roster to customer demand.
2. Compare actual wages to forecast every day.
3. Help shift managers understand how to improve next week.
4. Reconcile your daily wage reporting to payroll.

Read more: Real-time labour vs revenue: why month-end is too late.

How do you know if your roster matches customer demand?

Compare your sales and your labour spend by the half hour, across several weeks. If labour sits well above sales in the quiet periods, you're over-rostered. If sales spike well above labour at the same time every week, you're under-rostered and your customer experience will suffer.

I've always wanted enough team members on to look after customers when they're there, and not too many when they're not. Too few staff in a rush is bad for customers and for the team. But too many staff on a quiet shift is also bad for the team. Morale drops when people are standing around.

When venues first start looking at this, the labour line is almost always way above the sales line. That's because of how most rosters get built. We start with one person, add a second, a third, a fourth, maybe dip for a split shift, then keep adding. We don't build to the shape of customer demand. If I saw a gap at 12pm on Friday two or three weeks running, that would be my conversation with the manager when signing off the next roster.

How much can better wage management save?

James says that over 25 years, clients who've become excellent at forecasting have improved their overall wage percentage by at least 3%. Because labour is a direct cost, that 3% drops straight to the bottom line. A venue at 7% net operating profit moves to 10%.

To put that in dollars: on a venue turning over $40,000 a week, 3% of revenue is $1,200 a week, or about $62,400 a year. Across a group of four similar venues, that's close to $250,000.

The irony James pointed out is that if you want to cut wages over the next 12 months, the first thing to work on isn't wages. It's your forecasting.

How does wage management work across multiple venues?

Across multiple venues, wage management only works if the clarity starts at the top. If the owner and operations manager aren't clear on forecasts, targets and sign-off, venue managers can't be clear with their supervisors. Ryan asked this on the day. James's answer was the old saying: the fish rots from the head down.

Venue managers are often squeezed between the owner and the team. How well they handle that depends heavily on how well they're led. As a group grows, the owner can cover less of the detail personally. Systems become a requirement for success, not an outcome of it. Your operations managers need the same forecasts, targets and daily reporting at group level that your venue managers use on site.

Each week, review wages as a senior leadership team. Each month, the owner should check the P&L against the monthly targets set at the start of the year. James's line on this: you should already know what your P&L will say before you see it, because you've been watching the business all along.

Read more: How to control labour costs across multiple venues.

What tools help manage labour in a busy venue?

The tools that help most give you a costed roster built against a revenue forecast, and daily actual-versus-budget reporting. They also show sales and labour by half hour, and reconcile to payroll. Ryan's point on the day was simple: the more you rely on systems rather than guesswork and people running around, the better visibility you get from the top down. You also get faster at everything, and your customers get a better experience.

That's what we built Loaded to do. You set your sales forecast, managers build costed rosters against the wage target, and everyone can see actual wages against budget every day. Your sales vs labour chart shows whether you're rostered for the rush. James put it well: it's never been easier to see what's happening in your business.

On the compliance side, Safe Food Pro is rolling out more group features, including visibility across sites, training, competency tracking and group management. That means the same top-down visibility on food safety that you want on wages.

Frequently asked questions

How do you manage labour during a rush in a restaurant or cafe?

Plan it before the rush. Forecast revenue for each day, set a wage percentage target against it, build a costed roster that hits the target and have it signed off. On the day, shift managers should track wages against budget and keep the wage percentage under the rostered percentage when sales run above budget.

What is a costed roster?

A costed roster shows the dollar cost and wage percentage of every shift as it's built, so managers and owners can see the cost of labour before the week starts rather than when payroll arrives. It lets an owner check a roster against the agreed wage target in under a minute.

How accurate should a restaurant revenue forecast be?

The best operators forecast weekly revenue to within 5% of actual sales, according to hospitality advisor James O'Connell. They get there by tracking seasonality, weather, bookings and functions, daily demand cycles, marketing campaigns and local events week after week.

Should wage percentage targets be the same every month?

No. Set an annual wage percentage target, then set monthly targets that vary with seasonality but average out to the annual figure. For example, a 35% annual target might mean 38% in a quiet month and 27% in a peak month. Weekly targets then come from that week's revenue forecast.

What should a shift manager do if sales are under budget?

Bring wages in below the rostered dollar figure. On a day forecast at $6,100 with $2,200 rostered, sales of $5,400 and wages of $2,240 push the wage percentage from 36% to about 41%. To hold 36%, wages would need to be around $1,950, which usually means offering early finishes.

How often should you review wages in hospitality?

Shift managers should check wages against budget every day, the senior leadership team should review wages weekly, and the owner should check the monthly P&L against the targets set for the year. Waiting until weekly payroll is too late to change the result.

Meet the panel

• Ryan Hartley, CEO of Safe Food Pro. Ryan joined Safe Food Pro as its first salesperson more than eight years ago and became CEO in January 2026.
• James O'Connell, The Hospitality Company. James has been an advisor, coach and trainer to food and beverage businesses across New Zealand and Australia for 25 years, from multi-site groups to single cafes and bars.
• Rich McLeod, CEO and co-founder of Loaded. Rich helped build a group of 12 pubs, bars and gourmet burger outlets across Dunedin, Christchurch, Queenstown and Auckland before starting Loaded.

Watch the full webinar: Mastering the Rush, Safe Food Pro webinar replay

Keep reading: How to reduce labour costs without cutting service · Restaurant labour cost management: the multi-venue operator's guide · How to track prime cost across multiple venues