How to Build a Cost-Optimised Roster for a Multi-Venue Hospitality Group

Key Takeaways

• Set a venue-specific labour cost target (typically 25-35% of revenue) and track actuals weekly so overspend never hides until payroll day.

• Use POS sales data and demand forecasting to roster each venue to its trading pattern, not just its opening hours.

• Build a cross-venue staff pool so you can fill gaps by moving people between sites instead of calling in expensive last-minute casuals.

• Layer award interpretation into every roster build to help you stay on top of penalty rates, overtime, and break rules across all venues.

Table of contents

• Why multi-venue rostering is harder than single-site rostering

• Set a labour cost target for every venue

• Use demand data to roster each venue to its trading pattern

• Share staff across venues to fill gaps without overspending

• Keep rosters award-compliant across every venue

• Centralise oversight without micromanaging venue managers

• Measure, review, and optimise continuously

• FAQs

Why multi-venue rostering is harder than single-site rostering

If you're running rosters for a single venue, it's straightforward. You know the team, you know the busy periods, and you can fix problems on the fly. Multiply that by four, six, or twelve venues and the picture changes fast. With 967,200 people employed across Australia's accommodation and food services sector, the competition for hospitality staff is fierce.

Each venue in your group has its own demand pattern. Your CBD cafe peaks at the morning coffee rush. Your suburban restaurant fills up at dinner. Your waterfront bar spikes on sunny weekends and whenever there's a live event nearby. Rostering each site the same way means you'll overstaff some venues and understaff others, every single week.

The problem gets worse when venue managers roster in isolation. Without a shared view of what's happening across the group, one site might be paying overtime while another has casuals sitting idle. According to Deputy's Big Shift Report, hospitality activity increased 28% by late 2025, but operating costs are pushing venues toward tighter trading hours and leaner staffing models. That means there's less room for rostering mistakes than ever.

Compliance adds another layer. Different trading hours at each venue mean different penalty rate profiles. A Saturday night shift at your restaurant attracts different rates than a Monday morning shift at your cafe, even if the same casual worker picks up both. Across the hospitality sector, the job mobility rate sits at 31%, the highest of any shift-based industry, according to Deputy's Big Shift Report. High turnover makes it even harder to keep track of who's qualified, who's available, and who's approaching their maximum hours.

The good news: with the right approach and the right tools, you can turn multi-venue complexity into a competitive advantage. The sections below walk you through each step.

Set a labour cost target for every venue

Before you touch a roster, you need to know what "good" looks like for each venue. That starts with a labour cost target.

In Australian hospitality, labour costs typically run between 25% and 35% of revenue. Recent industry analysis by ScaleSuite shows hospitality and retail businesses report 40% lower profitability than the broader SME average, largely because wages are rising faster than revenue. But the right number depends on your venue type and service model. A high-volume fast-casual cafe with counter service can operate at the lower end. A full-service restaurant with table service, sommeliers, and a large kitchen brigade will sit closer to the top.

Here's how to calculate your venue-level labour cost percentage:

1. Add up total wages for the period. Include base pay, penalty rates, overtime, superannuation, and leave loading.

2. Divide total wages by total revenue for the same period.

3. Multiply by 100 to get your percentage.

For example, if your Surry Hills cafe paid $28,000 in wages last week and turned over $100,000 in revenue, your labour cost percentage is 28%.

Once you've set a target for each venue, build guardrails around it. Head office sets the acceptable range. Venue managers build rosters within that range, using their local knowledge of demand and staff. The key is reviewing actuals against the target every week, not waiting until the end of the month when it's too late to course-correct.

With rostering software like Deputy, you can see projected wage costs in real time as you build each roster. That means your venue managers know whether they're tracking to budget before they publish a single shift, not after payroll runs.

Use demand data to roster each venue to its trading pattern

Gut-feel rostering is one of the most expensive habits in multi-venue hospitality. When you roster based on instinct instead of data, you end up with flat staffing across the day: the same number of people on during a quiet Tuesday lunch as a packed Friday dinner.

Match staffing to revenue patterns, not opening hours

The fix is simple in theory: staff to your demand curve, not your opening hours.

Pull point-of-sale (POS) sales data by hour and day of week for each venue. Look at the last four to six weeks to smooth out one-off spikes. You'll quickly see patterns:

• Your CBD cafe does 60% of its revenue between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m.

• Your restaurant is quiet until 5:30 p.m., then ramps up until 8 p.m.

• Your bar trades steadily from Thursday to Sunday but barely covers costs Monday to Wednesday.

Map your staffing levels to those curves. More staff during peak revenue hours, a skeleton crew during the troughs. Don't pay for a full team to stand around during periods that generate little revenue.

Compare your venues side by side. The patterns will tell you where to concentrate your labour spend and where to cut back. Deputy's demand forecasting pulls your POS sales data to predict demand per venue, then auto-rostering builds rosters around those forecasts, so you're not starting from scratch each week.

Factor in events, seasons, and local conditions

Regular trading patterns are your baseline, but they don't tell the whole story. Local events (a cricket match, a music festival, a food market) can spike demand at one venue while others stay flat. Seasonal shifts matter too: summer brings outdoor dining, school holidays change foot traffic, and public holiday weekends reshape your whole week.

Build a shared events calendar across the venue group. When your operations team knows that the Melbourne Cup is coming up, or that a new competitor just opened two doors down, every venue manager can adjust their roster in advance rather than scrambling on the day.

Weather is another factor worth watching, especially for venues with outdoor seating. A forecast of heavy rain on a Saturday might mean you need fewer floor staff at your rooftop bar but more at your indoor bistro.

Share staff across venues to fill gaps without overspending

This is where multi-venue operators have a real edge over single-site businesses. Instead of hiring extra casuals every time one venue is short, you can redeploy staff from a quiet site to a busy one.

Start by building a cross-venue staff pool: a group of team members trained at two or more of your venues who can pick up shifts at any site. Cross-training takes some upfront effort, but the payoff is significant. Staff who work across venues learn more, get access to more hours, and tend to stay longer. That matters in an industry where turnover is a constant challenge.

Deputy's Big Shift Report found that Gen Z now makes up 64% of hospitality shift workers, and micro-shifts and poly-employment are on the rise. Workers want flexibility. Giving your team the option to pick up shifts at different venues, rather than only at their home site, is one way to offer that flexibility without increasing your headcount.

Here's how to make cross-venue staffing work in practice:

• Set clear availability rules.

  Staff update their availability once, and it applies across all venues.

• Account for travel time.

  Don't roster someone for a close at your Southbank venue and an open at your Fitzroy cafe the next morning if the travel makes it unrealistic.

• Keep award conditions consistent.

  The same

  Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020

  conditions apply regardless of which venue the shift is at, for most workers.

Mari Bornelli, General Manager at Funk Drinks Co., describes the challenge well: "The biggest struggle that I had was being able to make sure that everyone was being paid the right rates and penalties and everything across, depending on where they're working," they say.

With Deputy, you can see staff availability across all your locations, assign shifts at different venues from a single platform, and let the system calculate the correct award rates for each site. That removes the manual guesswork and reduces the risk of underpayment when staff move between venues.

Keep rosters award-compliant across every venue

Running multiple venues under the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 means compliance risk compounds with every site you add. Penalty rates differ by day, time, and employee classification. A single mistake, multiplied across several venues and hundreds of shifts, can add up fast.

Here are the most common compliance traps for multi-venue operators:

• Cumulative hours across venues.

  A casual working shifts at two of your venues can exceed maximum ordinary hours without either venue manager realising, unless you have a centralised view.

• Incorrect penalty rates.

  Late-night, weekend, and public holiday rates vary. If your rostering system doesn't apply the right rate automatically based on the shift time and day, errors creep in.

• Missed break entitlements.

  The Award specifies meal and rest break requirements. When staff work back-to-back shifts or pick up extra hours at a second venue, break compliance gets harder to track.

Award interpretation technology helps here. When you build a roster in Deputy, the system applies the correct penalty rates, overtime, and allowances automatically based on the Hospitality Award. It surfaces potential issues during roster creation, before shifts are worked, so you can fix problems before they become payroll errors.

Mari puts it plainly: "My level of compliance confidence was pretty low at about 50%. I'm at an 80-90% now," they say.

Closing the loop with payroll integration matters too. When rosters flow into timesheets and timesheets flow into payroll with no manual re-entry, you remove the data handoff points where errors typically occur. Deputy connects rostering to time and attendance and payroll so the numbers stay consistent from roster build to pay run.

Centralise oversight without micromanaging venue managers

One of the biggest questions for multi-venue operators is governance. Should head office control rostering? Or should venue managers own it?

The answer is both. Set the boundaries centrally, then let your venue managers operate within them.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

• Group-wide policies from head office.

  Labour cost targets per venue, maximum shift lengths, mandatory break rules, and approved overtime thresholds. These are your non-negotiables.

• Local roster-building by venue managers.

  They know their regulars, their peak hours, and their team's strengths. Let them build rosters using that local knowledge, within the guardrails you've set.

• Central review before rosters go live.

  Use a group-level dashboard to review projected roster costs across all venues before they're published. If one venue is running five percent above its labour target, that's a coaching conversation, not a roster rebuild.

A weekly review cadence keeps things on track. After each trading week closes, compare actual labour costs vs budget for every venue. Look for patterns. Is one manager consistently overspending? Is another regularly short-staffed? These conversations are easier when you have the data in front of you.

Deputy's analytics give operations managers roll-up visibility across the whole group, while venue managers keep control of their day-to-day rosters. It's oversight without micromanagement.

Measure, review, and optimise continuously

A cost-optimised roster isn't something you set up once and forget about. Trading patterns shift, staff come and go, and new venues open. You need a regular rhythm of review.

Track these three metrics weekly, for each venue and across the group:

1. Labour cost as a percentage of revenue.

   This is your headline number. If it's creeping above target, dig into the detail.

2. Actual hours vs rostered hours.

   A big gap means either your rosters are off or your managers are making too many last-minute changes.

3. Overtime and penalty rate spend.

   These are the costs that blow out budgets fastest. Track them separately so you can spot problems early.

After each trading week, review your roster efficiency. Did you overstaff quiet shifts? Understaff peaks? Could you have redeployed staff from one venue to another instead of calling in extras?

Benchmark your venues against each other. Which venue managers are consistently hitting their targets? What are they doing differently? Share those insights across the group. What works at your best-performing venue can lift the rest.

Adjust your demand forecasting inputs quarterly. Seasonal menus, new competitors opening nearby, or a venue refurbishment can all shift trading patterns. Deputy's reporting tools give you group-level and venue-level views of labour cost trends, so you can spot changes before they become problems.

FAQs

How does Deputy help multi-venue hospitality groups optimise their rosters?

Deputy gives you a single platform to roster across all your venues, with AI demand forecasting, real-time labour costing, and award interpretation built in. Operations managers get group-level visibility while venue managers build rosters within set labour budgets.

What labour cost percentage should a multi-venue hospitality group target?

Most Australian hospitality venues aim for 25-35% of revenue, but the right target depends on your venue type, service model, and trading hours. Set different targets per venue based on their operating model and review actuals weekly. Deputy's real-time labour costing lets you track actuals against your target for each venue as you build each roster.

Can I share staff between venues using Deputy?

Yes. Deputy lets you view staff availability across all your locations, assign shifts at different venues, and automatically apply the correct award rates for each site, so moving staff between venues doesn't create compliance headaches.

How do I keep rosters compliant with the Hospitality Award across multiple venues?

Deputy's award interpretation engine applies the correct penalty rates, overtime rules, and break entitlements during roster creation. It surfaces potential issues before shifts are worked, helping you stay on top of compliance across every venue.

A cost-optimised roster across multiple venues doesn't happen by accident. It takes clear targets, demand-driven rostering, a flexible staff pool, strong compliance workflows, and a regular rhythm of review. The operators who get this right spend less on labour, run smoother service, and give their teams better working conditions.

Ready to see how it works for your group? Try Deputy for free or talk to our team about your multi-venue setup.

Important Notice

The information contained in this article is general in nature and does not take into account your personal situation. You should consider whether the information is appropriate to your needs, and where appropriate, seek professional advice from a financial adviser or legal professional. Deputy is not a law firm or accounting practice. Deputy's tools support compliance workflows, but employers are responsible for their own compliance obligations.