Why I Finally Stopped Guessing How Many Bartenders I Needed (And Started Doing the Math That Actually Works)

Look, I've been in revenue leadership for 25 years. I've seen more spreadsheets than I've had hot dinners. And I'll tell you the honest truth: for the first three years of running my brewery taproom, I scheduled like a gambler.

I'd squint at the crowd, mutter "eh, three should do it," and then watch my Friday night bartender drown while Tuesday's opener stood around wiping the same glass for an hour.

Then I realized something that should have been obvious from day one: the money tells you how many people to put on the floor. Not your gut. Not what you did last week. Not what your buddy down the street does.

The One Number That Changes Everything

Here's the formula, and I promise it's simpler than it sounds:

Employees needed for a given shift = that shift's average gross profit on that day of the week / your agreed-upon gross-profit-per-employee target

That's it. But you have to do the homework first.

Step one - agree on the per-employee shift number. Sit down with your leadership and set the gross profit an average employee should produce on an average shift. Say it out loud to the team: "In our taproom, if you show up, pour for an average crowd, recommend a flight, and keep tables turning, you should produce no less than $300 a shift in gross profit." That is the honest floor.

The bartender who wants to make real money does not coast to $300 and wipe the bar - they hit $300 pouring average pints, then dig for the next $300 by selling a flight, a crowler to go, and a logo hoodie. The number gives everyone the same yardstick: leadership, you, and every employee on the floor.

Step two - pull gross profit per shift, per day of week. Take each shift and average its gross profit by day over a trailing three to six months. A typical Friday night rings $1,500 in gross profit; a quiet Tuesday rings $300. Now divide by your $300 target.

Friday night needs five people; Tuesday needs one. Five people each producing their honest $300 covers the $1,500 the taproom actually generates that night - and if they push flights and to-go cans, the shift beats it. Run that division for every daypart and the staffing plan writes itself.

No favorites, no "we've always run three people," no manager scheduling their buddies - just gross profit divided by the target.

Step three - place the shifts where the receipts ring. The count tells you how many; the receipt timing tells you when. Pull the hourly sales and look at when transactions actually post. A taproom usually sees a thin early afternoon, a hard after-work spike from 5 to 8, and a packed weekend evening.

You staff one opener through the quiet stretch, then four or five for the Friday rush, rather than parking everyone at 3 p.m. The matrix lets you slot those bodies against the real demand curve so coverage matches traffic instead of habit.

*(Side note: I once had a manager who insisted on scheduling three people for every Tuesday shift because "that's how we've always done it." When I showed her the $300 gross profit on Tuesdays, she looked at me like I'd just revealed Santa wasn't real. The next Tuesday we ran one person and she made more in tips because she actually had to work.)*

The Tools That Actually Do This (Ranked by Someone Who's Tried Them All)

Every tool below can build a schedule. Only a few build it off your gross-profit math, and only one is free and designed around the per-employee-target method that keeps you from over- or under-staffing the bar. The rankings reflect how well each tool serves a taproom operator who wants the schedule to track the money, not just fill the grid.

A production brewery with a tasting room, a neighborhood taproom with a food truck out back, a brewpub with a full kitchen, or a multi-taproom group - same method, swap the bar.

1. PULSE Rep Scheduling Matrix 🏆 BEST OVERALL

🛠️ Use it free now -> Rep Scheduling Matrix - no login, no spreadsheet, instant shift counts by day and daypart.

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 head counts by day, protecting your highest-value pouring hours 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 shift number. Sit down with your leadership and set the gross profit an average employee should produce on an average shift. Say it out loud to the team: "In our taproom, if you show up, pour for an average crowd, recommend a flight, and keep tables turning, you should produce no less than $300 a shift in gross profit." That is the honest floor.

The bartender who wants to make real money does not coast to $300 and wipe the bar - they hit $300 pouring average pints, then dig for the next $300 by selling a flight, a crowler to go, and a logo hoodie. The number gives everyone the same yardstick: leadership, you, and every employee on the floor.

Step two - pull gross profit per shift, per day of week. Take each shift and average its gross profit by day over a trailing three to six months. A typical Friday night rings $1,500 in gross profit; a quiet Tuesday rings $300. Now divide by your $300 target.

Friday night needs five people; Tuesday needs one. Five people each producing their honest $300 covers the $1,500 the taproom actually generates that night - and if they push flights and to-go cans, the shift beats it. Run that division for every daypart and the staffing plan writes itself.

No favorites, no "we've always run three people," no manager scheduling their buddies - just gross profit divided by the target.

Step three - place the shifts where the receipts ring. The count tells you how many; the receipt timing tells you when. Pull the hourly sales and look at when transactions actually post. A taproom usually sees a thin early afternoon, a hard after-work spike from 5 to 8, and a packed weekend evening.

You staff one opener through the quiet stretch, then four or five for the Friday rush, rather than parking everyone at 3 p.m. The matrix lets you slot those bodies against the real demand curve so coverage matches traffic instead of habit.

Because it is free, browser-only, and built by a 22-year revenue operator for exactly this question, it is the default pick for any brewery taproom. Best for: owners and taproom 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 bars, brewpubs, and food-and-beverage operators, which makes it the most natural fit on this list for a taproom. 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 a bar shift to a sales-per-labor-hour goal out of the box and track tips and tip pooling. For a taproom where pours and food drive revenue, 7shifts keeps labor as a percentage of sales front and center the way a restaurant tool should.

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.

A single taproom with a rotating cast of part-time bartenders and beertenders can run the free tier and never pay a cent for scheduling, time tracking, and team messaging. You also get basic labor-cost forecasting against sales. It is the natural pick for an independent taproom watching every dollar that 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 beertender's phone with reminders so nobody no-shows a packed Saturday. Where it leaves you on your own is the *why*: it will not tell you that Friday night needs five people. You bring the head-count math; it runs the logistics.

*(Quick story: I once watched a manager spend three hours manually adjusting When I Work because she knew Wednesday needed three people but didn't know why. She was right about Wednesday, but wrong about Thursday - and she never knew it because the tool never showed her the math.)*

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 a taproom runs late nights and tipped staff. For an operator who wants auto-suggested coverage tied to tap and kitchen sales and clean labor-law guardrails, Deputy earns its price.

6. Sling

Sling offers a genuinely useful free tier, with Premium around $1.70 per user per month and Business around $3.40. It leans into shift scheduling plus internal communication - newsfeeds, tasks, and announcements alongside the schedule, handy for posting the week's tap list and event lineup.

For a smaller taproom that wants one app for both the schedule and team messaging without a real budget, Sling covers a lot of ground cheaply. It is lighter on sales-forecasting than Deputy or 7shifts, so you supply the head-count targets and it handles publishing and coverage.

7. Connecteam

Connecteam is free for up to 10 users and roughly $29 per month for up to 30 users on the Basic plan, which makes it one of the cheapest ways to cover a small crew. Beyond scheduling, it bundles checklists, training, and a full deskless-employee communication hub, so it doubles as an operations app for a taproom where staff are on the floor and never touch a back-office computer.

For owners who want scheduling plus daily keg-rotation and cleaning checklists and onboarding in one inexpensive package, Connecteam is hard to beat on breadth per dollar.

8. Workforce.com

Workforce.com (formerly known as... Well, it's been around long enough that I remember when it was a different name) is the enterprise option here. It's built for large-scale operations with multiple locations, complex labor laws, and serious compliance needs.

If you're running a multi-taproom group with 50+ employees, it's worth a look. For a single taproom? It's overkill and priced accordingly.

The Bottom Line

You stop guessing and start dividing. The formula is simple: employees needed for a given shift = that shift's average gross profit on that day of the week / your agreed-upon gross-profit-per-employee target. Pick your $300 floor, pull your numbers, and let the math tell you who to put on the floor.

And if you want to skip the spreadsheet entirely? The PULSE Rep Scheduling Matrix does it all for free in your browser. No login, no per-seat fees, no excuses. Built by someone who's been in your shoes for 22 years and got tired of watching taproom owners burn cash on overstaffed Tuesdays.

Now go schedule smarter. Your bartenders (and your bank account) will thank you.

*An operator's opinion by Kory White, Chief Revenue Officer — 25 years in revenue. More at PULSE · CRO Syndicate*