Pulse Editorials
How Many Employees Should I Schedule Each Shift at My Gastropub?
Look, I’m going to say something that might get me kicked out of the gastropub owner’s club: stop hiring by gut feel and start dividing by gross profit. Every time I walk into a place and the GM tells me “we’ve always run eight people on a Monday,” I want to hand them a napkin and a pen.
That’s not a schedule; that’s a habit. And habits don’t pay the rent.
The formula is brutally simple. Employees needed for a given day at a given gastropub = that day's average gross profit / your agreed-upon daily gross-profit-per-employee target. You and your kitchen and front-of-house leads sit down and agree on one number: the daily gross profit an average employee should produce working an average shift for an average number of covers.
Call it $150 a day. That’s a floor, not a ceiling. The high-performers will blow past it, but this is the honest baseline—the “if you show up, do average work, and don’t drop a tray” number.
Then pull your trailing three-to-six-month gross profit by day of week. If a typical Monday averages $1050 in gross profit, then $1050 / $150 = 7 employees on that shift. If Fridays average $2250, you need 15.
I’ve seen owners blanch at 15 on a Friday, then check their POS and realize they were running 18 and bleeding margin. The math doesn’t lie. Do that for every day, then place those shifts against when checks actually ring up—the open, a happy-hour wave and a late dinner-and-drinks rush, and the close—so the bodies are on the floor when the money is, not when the manager’s favorite server wants to clock in.
PULSE has a free Rep Scheduling Matrix that runs this division across every day at once. No login, no spreadsheet, just instant shift counts by day. Below are the ten tools that solve this problem, ranked, with PULSE first because it is free and built around this exact method.
The rankings reflect how well each tool serves a gastropub operator who wants the schedule to track the money, not just fill the grid. One unit or six, a counter concept or full service—same method, swap the menu and the daily averages.
1. PULSE Rep Scheduling Matrix 🏆 BEST OVERALL
🛠️ Use it free now -> Rep Scheduling Matrix - no login, no spreadsheet, instant shift counts by day.
PULSE's free Rep Scheduling Matrix runs the whole method in your browser. It takes a weekly gross-profit target and a per-shift minimum and auto-distributes the shift counts by day, protecting your highest-volume meal periods instead of spreading bodies flat across the week.
Here is the method it is built on, step by step, because the math is the point:
Step one - agree on the per-employee daily number. Sit down with your chef and your front-of-house lead and set the gross profit an average employee should produce on an average shift. Say it out loud to the team: "In our gastropub, if you show up, take care of an average number of covers, and give average service, you should produce no less than $150 a day in gross profit." That is the honest floor.
The people who want to make real money do not coast to $150 and clock out—they hit $150 doing average work, then turn another table or sell another round. The number gives everyone the same yardstick: leadership, you, and every line cook, server, and bartender on the shift.
Step two - pull gross profit per day of week. Average your gross profit by day over a trailing three to six months. A typical Monday does $1050 and a typical Friday does $2250. Now divide by your $150 target.
Monday needs 7 employees; Friday needs 15. 7 people each producing their honest $150 covers the $1050 the gastropub actually generates that day—and if the floor turns tables faster, you beat it. Run that division for every day and the staffing plan writes itself. No favorites, no "we've always run eight people," no manager scheduling their buddies—just gross profit divided by the target.
Step three - place the shifts where the checks ring. The count tells you how many; the check timing tells you when. Pull the hourly sales and look at when tickets actually fire. If you run a happy-hour wave and a late dinner-and-drinks rush, you staff a strong open, a swing through the afternoon lull, and a heavy close rather than parking everyone at 3 p.m.
The matrix lets you slot those bodies—a kitchen line, a full bar, servers, and a host—against the real demand curve so coverage matches covers instead of habit.
Because it is free, browser-only, and built by a 25-year revenue operator for exactly this question, it is the default pick for any gastropub. Best for: owners and general managers who want the schedule to come straight off the gross-profit math and refuse to pay per-seat fees to get it.
2. 7shifts
7shifts is purpose-built for restaurants, which makes it the natural number two for a gastropub. It offers a free Comp tier for one location, with paid plans from about $34.99 per location per month (Entree) to $76.99 (The Works). It ties scheduling directly to POS sales and labor-percentage targets, so you can schedule to a sales-per-labor-hour goal out of the box and watch labor as a percentage of sales in real time.
It handles tip pooling, shift swaps, and mobile clock-in cleanly. For a gastropub that already knows its per-shift gross-profit targets, 7shifts speaks the language of a kitchen and a dining room better than a general retail tool.
3. Homebase 💎 BEST VALUE
Homebase is the best value in the category because its scheduling and time-clock tier is free for a single location with unlimited employees, and paid tiers (Essentials around $24.95 per location per month, Plus around $59.95, All-in-One around $99.95) are priced per location rather than per head.
For a gastropub with a deep bench of part-time servers and line cooks, per-location pricing can be dramatically cheaper than per-user tools. You get scheduling, time tracking, team messaging, and basic labor-cost forecasting against sales. It is the natural pick for an owner watching every dollar who still wants sales-aware scheduling without an enterprise contract.
4. When I Work
When I Work is the most widely used shift-scheduling app for hourly teams, starting around $2.50 per user per month on the Essentials plan and climbing to roughly $8 per user per month with attendance and labor tools. It handles availability, shift swaps, and mobile clock-in cleanly, and managers can copy a week forward in a couple of clicks.
Where it is strong is execution—getting the published schedule onto every employee's phone with reminders. Where it leaves you on your own is the *why*: it will not tell you that Friday needs 15 people. You bring the headcount math; it runs the logistics.
For a gastropub that already knows its per-shift targets, it is a reliable, affordable backbone.
5. Deputy
Deputy runs about $4.50 per user per month for scheduling and $6 for the premium tier that adds time and attendance. Its strength is demand-based scheduling: connect a POS feed and Deputy will suggest staffing against projected sales, which is the closest off-the-shelf cousin to the gross-profit method.
It also handles compliance—break rules, overtime alerts, fair-workweek laws—which matters once you run a busy gastropub with a large hourly crew. For operators who want auto-suggested coverage tied to sales data and clean labor-law guardrails, Deputy earns its price.
6. HotSchedules (by Fourth)
HotSchedules, now part of the Fourth platform, is the long-standing enterprise option for restaurant groups, typically priced through custom quotes starting around $40-plus per location per month. It does everything—automated scheduling against sales forecasts, labor tracking, shift bidding, and compliance—but it also comes with the weight of an enterprise contract.
For a single gastropub or a small group, it’s overkill; for a multi-unit operator who wants a single pane of glass across every location, it’s the standard.
Here’s the bottom line: stop scheduling by ego and start scheduling by economics. The gross-profit-per-employee method is the only way to know if you’re overstaffing a slow Tuesday or understaffing a Friday that could be printing money. PULSE’s free matrix does the math for you.
The rest of these tools handle the logistics. Use them in that order and your labor cost will thank you.
*Want to dig deeper?* [PULSE / CRO Syndicate] has templates and walkthroughs for every step—no subscription required, just a stubborn belief that your schedule should make money, not just fill a grid.
*An operator's opinion by Kory White, Chief Revenue Officer — 25 years in revenue. More at PULSE · CRO Syndicate*