Labour is your second biggest expense after food. In most independent restaurants, it runs 25-35% of revenue. The problem isn't that labour is expensive — it's that most restaurants staff based on availability rather than demand.

The result: you're overstaffed on quiet nights (paying people to stand around) and understaffed on busy nights (burning out your team and losing covers). Both cost you money.

The labour cost trap

Here's how it typically plays out:

Your Saturday dinner is your biggest service. You schedule your full team because you know it'll be busy. But "busy" could mean 70 covers or 120 covers depending on the week. You staff for 120 because you'd rather be safe. On the nights you only do 70, your labour cost for that service is 38% instead of 28%. That 10% gap on a $4,000 revenue night is $400 in profit you didn't make.

Multiply that by two or three over-staffed services per week, and you're looking at $40,000-60,000 in annual labour waste. Not because your team is overpaid — because you're scheduling them for the wrong nights.

Match staffing to predicted covers

The fix is straightforward in principle: predict your covers, then staff accordingly. In practice, it requires two things most restaurants don't have:

A reliable covers forecast
A clear understanding of how many covers each position can handle per shift

Know your ratios

Every kitchen has a natural throughput per position. A strong grill cook might handle 60 covers. A prep cook can prep for 80-100. Your expo can manage the pass for about 90 covers before things start backing up.

Document these numbers for your kitchen. Ask your team — they usually know their limits better than you think. Once you have them, you can work backwards from your predicted covers to build your staffing plan:

Predicted covers: 85
Grill: 1 cook (handles up to 90)
Sauté: 1 cook (handles up to 70 — at 85 covers they'll need help plating)
Prep: 1 cook (prepped for 90)
Expo: 1 (comfortable up to 90)
Dish: 1 (standard for this volume)
FOH: 3 servers + 1 host (22 covers per server)

That's 8 staff. If you'd scheduled "the full team" of 11 because it's Saturday, those 3 extra people at $18/hour for 6 hours = $324 you didn't need to spend.

The cut time strategy

Smart restaurants don't just schedule start times — they schedule cut times. This is the time a staff member can be released early if covers come in below forecast.

Here's how it works:

Schedule your full team for the predicted covers
Assign cut times — the positions that can leave first if it's slower than expected
At each cut time, assess — are you on pace? If covers are tracking below forecast by 7:30, your second prep cook goes home
Track the savings — over a month, early cuts typically save 8-12% on labour

The key is having a forecast you trust. If you're guessing covers, you can't confidently cut anyone because you're always worried about a late rush. If you know your predicted covers are based on real data — historical patterns, weather, local events — you can make that call with confidence.

Position-based scheduling vs body-count scheduling

Most restaurants schedule by body count: "I need 6 in the kitchen Saturday night." Better restaurants schedule by position: "I need grill, sauté, garde manger, prep, expo, and dish — and here's the specific person best suited for each position based on tonight's expected volume."

Position-based scheduling means:

Your strongest grill cook works your biggest nights
Your trainee gets scheduled on your quieter nights where they can learn without drowning
Your most expensive staff (highest hourly rate) work the nights where the revenue justifies their cost
Nobody is scheduled for a position that doesn't need to exist tonight

The Monday test

Here's a quick diagnostic: look at your labour cost percentage for last Monday and last Saturday. If Monday's labour cost is above 35%, you're over-staffing quiet nights. If Saturday's is above 30%, you might be over-staffing busy nights too — or your revenue isn't high enough for the team size you're running.

The goal isn't to run a skeleton crew. Understaffing is worse than overstaffing — it kills service quality, burns out your team, and drives away customers. The goal is to match your staffing to your demand as precisely as possible, every single night.

How Mise approaches this

When you generate a forecast in Mise, the service brief includes a position plan — not just "you need 8 people" but specifically which positions, how many at each station, suggested cut times, and the labour cost as a percentage of predicted revenue.

It calculates this based on your actual staff profiles (their positions, experience levels, hourly rates, and max covers per shift) and your predicted covers for that specific service. The result is a staffing plan that's optimised for tonight, not a generic template.

But even without software, the principle holds: predict your covers, know your position ratios, schedule by position not by headcount, and always have a cut plan. Your P&L will thank you.