Restaurant Staffing Calculator

Front-of-house and back-of-house staffing are driven by two different things, which is why this calculator splits them into separate calculations rather than deriving both from a single number. FOH staffing scales with seating capacity: servers are sized from peak occupancy (85% of total seats, a realistic full-house assumption) divided by a guests-per-server ratio that gets tighter as service style gets more attentive — fine dining assigns one server to roughly 10 guests, casual full service to 20, and counter-style to 30, reflecting how much table-side attention each style demands. Bussers scale as roughly a third of the server count, a second host is added once seating passes 50, and bartenders only appear for full-service or fine-dining styles, sized to seating.

BOH staffing instead scales with actual covers served — line cooks are sized from daily covers divided by a covers-per-cook capacity that also tightens with service style (fine dining's more involved plating supports fewer covers per cook than fast casual's simpler menu), prep cooks are estimated at half the line cook count, and dishwashers scale directly with covers with a one-person floor. Labor cost then multiplies total staff by operating hours and average wage to project daily, weekly, and monthly totals — note this uses a single blended average wage across every position, so a real kitchen with meaningfully different pay tiers between line cooks, servers, and dishwashers will see its actual labor cost mix differ from this simplified blended estimate even if the total is a reasonable approximation.