Last updated: 2 May 2026
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Most new pub licensees overstaff their bar in the first year, then panic when labour costs spiral to 35–40% of turnover. I didn’t learn this lesson from a course. I learned it by doing it wrong at Teal Farm Pub in Washington, and then fixing it. The truth about pub staffing levels is this: it’s not about how many staff you think you need—it’s about understanding exactly what cover and covers-per-hour you can actually achieve, and then building your rota around that one number. This article walks you through the real calculation, shows you how to handle busy nights without overstaffing, and explains why your labour percentage matters more than your staff headcount. You’ll learn how to build a sustainable rota that doesn’t burn out your team, keeps your labour costs competitive, and honestly assesses whether a part-time bar assistant or a full-time supervisor is what you actually need to hire next.
Key Takeaways
- Pub staffing levels should be based on your actual covers per hour and turnover, not on assumptions about how many staff “feel right.”
- Labour percentage—wages divided by turnover—should sit between 15% and 25% for most UK pubs; above 30% signals overstaffing or undertraining.
- Match day and quiz night events require different staffing models than regular sessions; planning these in advance prevents costly last-minute hires.
- Understaffing causes staff burnout and customer complaints; overstaffing erodes profit faster than almost any other operational mistake.
What Actually Determines Your Staffing Levels
The most effective way to determine your pub staffing levels is to divide your weekly turnover by your hourly labour capacity, not by guessing how many staff “feel right.” This sounds obvious, but I’ve watched dozens of new licensees hire their mate from their last job because they needed someone, then get surprised when the labour bill is eating 40% of their turnover.
Your staffing level is entirely dependent on three things: your covers per session, your average spend per cover, and your kitchen capacity (if you serve food). Nothing else matters. A 180-cover community pub in Washington doesn’t staff the same as a 80-cover wet-led village local, even if they’re in the same postcode. And a pub with a commercial kitchen and a food service does not staff the same as one with a microwave and a toastie maker.
At Teal Farm Pub, I serve an average of 60 covers on a quiet Tuesday lunch, 120 on a Saturday afternoon, and 180 on match days. That drives my staffing. I’m not staffing for peak; I’m staffing for the pattern. Three sessions a week hit 160+ covers. Most others sit between 40 and 80. My rota reflects that reality. If I hired the same number of staff for Tuesday lunch as for Saturday, I’d be bankrupt by Easter.
Here’s what actually happens when you get this wrong: you hire five staff for a 180-cover pub. On a quiet Tuesday when you do 50 covers, you’ve got four people standing around earning minimum wage while you’re making £300 in net sales. On Saturday when you do 180 covers, those five people are drowning and you’re losing orders. The answer isn’t to hire two more people for Saturdays. The answer is to understand that Tuesday needs two people, and Saturday needs five, and that’s a scheduling problem, not a hiring problem.
Calculating Your Labour Percentage the Right Way
Labour percentage is weekly wages divided by weekly turnover. That’s it. But most pub licensees don’t actually know their labour percentage, because they don’t track it weekly. They know it when the accountant tells them once a year, which is far too late to fix.
The UK hospitality benchmark for labour percentage sits between 25% and 30%; most profitable community pubs operate at 15% to 22%. I run Teal Farm at 15%, which is below the industry average, and that’s not because I underpay my staff or work them to the bone. It’s because I’ve staffed correctly from the start and then trained people properly so they’re not standing around waiting for something to do.
To calculate your labour percentage accurately, you need to include all labour costs: wages, National Insurance, pension contributions if applicable, and any training time off the bar. Most licensees forget to include NI and pension, which can add 15–20% to the apparent wage bill. If you’re paying someone £12 an hour, the actual cost to your business is closer to £13.50 once you’ve added employer NI.
The way to track this properly is weekly. Every Sunday night, add up the hours your team worked that week, multiply by the blended hourly rate (including NI), and divide that by your weekly net sales (before VAT). That number should be your target. If it’s creeping above 25%, you either need to increase sales, reduce hours, or re-examine whether your pricing is right. Many licensees don’t realise their labour percentage is high because their pricing is wrong, not their staffing.
Using a pub profit margin calculator is faster than doing this by hand each week, and it stops you making the mistakes most new licensees make—like forgetting to factor in the cost of training unpaid inductions, or not accounting for holiday pay accrual when it comes time to actually pay it in August.
Staffing for Different Session Types
Not all sessions are created equal. A quiet mid-week lunch is not a Saturday. A quiz night is not a regular Tuesday. A match day is not a quiz night. Your staffing model needs to flex, and if your pub software doesn’t let you build that flexibility into your rota easily, you’ll end up either overstaffed or understaffed almost every session.
Quiet Sessions (Weekday Lunches, Quiet Afternoons)
These typically need one or two staff members, depending on your covers. One person can handle up to about 40 covers if the service is fast (wet only or minimal food). Add food service and you need two. Add a busy kitchen and you may need a dedicated kitchen person. The mistake most licensees make is running a quiet lunch with three people because they have three staff members available. You don’t have to use all your staff in every session.
Regular Sessions (Friday/Saturday Evenings, Sunday Lunch)
These are your bread and butter. Your rota should assume you’ll hit 120–180 covers and staff accordingly. For a 180-cover night, I typically have one bar manager (me or a senior staff member), two bar staff, and one kitchen person if we’re running a full food service. That’s four people for 180 covers, which is a ratio of one staff member per 45 covers. That works when your staff are trained and the bar flow is smooth.
Event Sessions (Quiz Nights, Match Days)
These are where new licensees make their biggest staffing mistakes. A quiz night might pull 200 people in for an event you didn’t expect to staff differently than normal. A match day might bring in 300 covers in two hours, all ordering at the same time. If you staff these like a regular Saturday, you will lose orders and frustrate customers. More importantly, you’ll burn out your staff trying to keep up.
For how to run a pub quiz night, staffing typically requires an extra bar person or two, depending on whether you’re serving food or just drinks. For match days, I add two extra bar staff and make sure I’m on the bar myself. That might cost me £150 extra in wages for the session, but I’ll turn over an extra £500 in sales, so it’s completely justified.
The key is knowing in advance which sessions are likely to be busy, and building your core rota to reflect that. Pub staff rota legal requirements state that you must give staff at least one week’s notice of their hours (in most cases), so you can’t suddenly call people in on Saturday morning if you’ve underestimated. You have to plan ahead.
Common Staffing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
After 15 years in hospitality and three years running my own pub, I’ve made every staffing mistake in the book. Here are the ones that cost real money.
Hiring for Peak Instead of Average
This is the single most expensive mistake. You look at your busiest night and staff for that, then find yourself overstaffed five nights a week. Staff standing around doesn’t cost less than staff working hard; it costs the same. If your busy night is Saturday and you do 180 covers, don’t hire five people and keep them all. Hire four, make Saturday work, and then figure out how to add a fifth person or a shift-swap system for events.
Keeping Underperforming Staff Too Long
Someone who can’t handle a Friday night rush isn’t going to improve without training. But some staff, no matter how much you train them, just aren’t suited to the bar. Keeping them on because “they’re a nice person” costs you money and frustrates your good staff. By month three, you’ll know who your reliable people are and who you should have let go in week two.
Not Factoring In Sickness, Holiday, and Training
Your staffing plan should assume someone will be off sick most weeks. It should account for three weeks of holiday per person per year. And it should include paid training time for new staff in their first month. Most new licensees budget their rota for 100% availability, which means every time someone takes a day off, they’re scrambling. Build in a 10% buffer—if you need four people, plan to have 4.5 on your payroll.
Undertraining and Oversupervision
If your staff don’t know how to use your EPOS system efficiently, how to pour a pint correctly, or how to handle difficult customers, they’ll be slow and mistakes will pile up. You’ll find yourself thinking you need more staff, when actually you need to train the ones you have. I spend money on training, and it’s the single best ROI in my business. Well-trained bar staff can handle more covers faster, which reduces the number of bodies you need on the bar.
Building Your Rota Legally and Sustainably
Your staffing levels have to work within UK employment law, and they have to be sustainable for your staff. You can’t have someone working 60 hours a week for three months because it suits you financially. They’ll leave, and then you’re hiring and training someone new, which costs more.
Sustainable staffing requires scheduling staff for consistent hours, reasonable notice of shifts, and a clear roster pattern that doesn’t change week to week without agreement. This isn’t just good employment practice—it’s the difference between staff who stay and staff who burn out. Staff burnout costs you 2–3 times the cost of wages in recruitment, training, and lost productivity.
At Teal Farm Pub, I have a core team of five people on consistent hours. Two of them do 20 hours a week, two do 16 hours, and one does 12 hours. That gives me flexibility—I can roster all five for a big Saturday, or just two for a quiet Tuesday. But each of them knows roughly what they’re getting each week, which means they can commit to the job. I don’t have to hire eight people to have a team of five.
Your rota also needs to account for breaks. Staff working a 6-hour shift don’t legally need a break, but staff working 8+ hours need a 20-minute break, and you have to factor that into your coverage. If you’ve got two people on the bar and one of them takes a 20-minute break, you’re down to one person for 20 minutes. That’s part of your staffing model—you can’t pretend it’s not there.
When you’re planning your staffing for the long term, use pub management tools for small pubs that let you see your rota pattern across multiple weeks. It’s much easier to spot problems if you can see “I’m always short on Tuesday afternoons” or “Friday nights are always tight” when you’re looking at an 8-week view instead of a week at a time.
When to Hire More Staff and When to Train Harder
This is the decision that separates profitable pubs from struggling ones. The instinct for most new licensees is to hire more staff when things get busy. The instinct for me, after running a pub for three years and an Marston’s NSF audit passed in March 2026, is to ask whether I’ve got a staffing problem or a training problem.
You need more staff when:
- You’re consistently hitting your maximum covers per session and turning customers away
- Your queue time at the bar is routinely longer than 5 minutes during service
- Your existing staff are working more than 40 hours per week consistently
- Your labour percentage is actually below your target, which means you can afford it
You need better training when:
- Covers are good but staff are slow (they don’t know the menu or the EPOS system well)
- Orders are getting lost or messed up regularly (communication problem)
- Customers are complaining about waiting but the bar doesn’t look busy (service problem, not staffing problem)
- Your labour percentage is creeping up without turnover increasing (inefficiency)
The honest truth: most pubs that struggle with staffing don’t have a staffing problem. They have a training problem or a management problem. Weak bar managers will always ask for more staff instead of fixing the systems and training the team they have. Before you advertise for a new hire, make sure you’re not just hiring your way out of a training and management problem that will follow you forever.
When you’re staffing correctly, your labour percentage will track predictably, and you’ll know exactly how many covers you can handle in each session. The best time to work this out is before you take on a pub—before you sign a tenancy agreement and commit yourself to a business you don’t fully understand. That’s where your numbers become mission-critical.
Before you sign anything, know your numbers. Pub Command Centre gives you real-time financial visibility from day one. You can see your labour percentage in real-time, track staffing costs against your budget, and make staffing decisions based on actual data instead of guesses. £97 once, no hidden monthly fees.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the ideal labour percentage for a UK pub in 2026?
The ideal labour percentage for a UK pub sits between 15% and 25% of turnover, depending on your pub type. Community pubs typically target 18–22%, wet-led pubs can achieve 15–18%, and pubs with full food service often run 22–28%. Calculate it weekly: total wages (including NI) divided by net turnover.
How many staff do I need for a 180-cover pub?
For a 180-cover pub, you typically need four to five full-time staff on your payroll: one bar manager, two senior bar staff, one junior bar person, and one kitchen staff member (if serving food). This assumes good training and efficient EPOS systems. Total hours might be 160–200 per week across the team.
Should I hire more staff or improve training first?
Improve training first. Slow bar service, lost orders, and customer complaints are almost always training or management problems, not staffing problems. Only hire when your existing team is working efficiently and you’re consistently turning customers away due to lack of capacity.
How often should staffing levels change in a pub?
Your core staffing should be stable week to week. However, seasonal variations (summer busier than winter, Christmas busier than January) mean you might add 10–20% extra cover in peak seasons. Event sessions like quiz nights and match days should be planned separately with additional staff budgeted in advance.
What’s the most common staffing mistake new pub licensees make?
Hiring for peak nights instead of average demand. New licensees see a busy Saturday and staff for that level, then find themselves overstaffed five nights a week. Staff standing idle costs the same as staff working hard. Build your rota around your typical weekly covers pattern, not your busiest night.
Knowing your staffing costs in real-time transforms how you manage your pub—but most licensees only see the full picture once a year when the accountant delivers bad news.
The Pub Command Centre shows you your labour percentage, weekly P&L, staff shift costs, and cash position—updated live as you serve. £97 once. No subscription. No monthly fees. Built by a pub landlord who had to learn these lessons the hard way.
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