How many people each service needs: restaurant staffing coverage
Reviewed on October 23, 2026 · 3 min read
In short
Coverage is defined per service: each peak, such as lunch from 13:00 to 16:00, has a minimum number of people for each day of the week, plus opening and closing. Whoever is present for the whole peak counts towards it, and reviewing the day in 30-minute slots shows exactly where people are missing.
Before deciding who works when, you have to write down how many people the restaurant needs at each moment. Without that number, a schedule can only be judged by eye, and the eye tends to put people where it always has.
Services, not loose hours
A restaurant's demand is not even. It has services, and within each service there is a stretch of peak demand. Coverage is defined per service:
- The service: lunch, dinner and closing.
- Its peak: for example, lunch from 13:00 to 16:00 and dinner from 19:00 to 22:00.
- The minimum number of people that peak needs, per day of the week. A Friday doesn't ask for what a Tuesday does.
- Opening and closing, which usually need fewer people but at fixed times.
Who counts
The rule that makes coverage measurable: whoever is present for the whole peak counts towards that service. Someone who arrives at 14:00 for a 13:00–16:00 lunch doesn't count as a lunch person; they count as half of one, and in practice as a problem.
That is why shifts are cut to start before the peak and end after it, never in the middle. That way each person either is or isn't part of a service, with no ambiguity. The detail is in the shift catalogue.
Look in 30-minute slots
To review a day, the most useful view is to count how many people are on the floor in each half-hour slot and compare it with each service's minimum:
The figure says something a column schedule doesn't: Saturday isn't short "in general", it is short at two precise moments. One is fixed with one more person at dinner; the other by having one of the dinner shifts stay to close.
Minimum and target
It helps to write down two numbers per service:
- The minimum, below which the service suffers.
- The target, what you'd like to have if the hours allow.
With both, the schedule has a clear priority: first reach the minimum in every service, then move towards the target where paid hours are already available, and never pile people into a service that's at its target while another is short.
When it doesn't stretch
Sometimes the staff can't cover every minimum, for example when everyone must take their two Sundays off a month and Sunday needs a lot of people. Then there are three paths: overtime, hiring or redesigning shifts. They are compared in hire or pay overtime?.
How Batuta handles it
In Batuta coverage is configured per service and per day, with its peak, minimum and target. The engine builds the month to meet the minimums first, and the schedule shows each service of each day with its coverage, so a gap is visible before publishing.
Frequently asked questions
- Does someone who arrives halfway through lunch count towards lunch?
- It is better not to count them. If the rule is that only those present for the whole peak count, coverage is unambiguous and shifts are cut to start before and end after.
- What is the difference between the minimum and the target?
- The minimum is what the service needs to work; the target is what you would like if the hours allow. First every service reaches its minimum, then the rest is spread.
- What if the staff can't cover the minimums?
- There are three paths: overtime, hiring or redesigning shifts. Each has a different cost and different limits.
This guide explains Chilean law for information only and is not legal advice. Legal quotations are given in the original Spanish, the authoritative text, and each links to its official source; if something changed after the review date, the source prevails.