As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly create a restaurant staff rota.

What to actually do

1. Use a tool built for this

   The route this page recommends

2. Do it yourself

   Second choice

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the restaurant's current opening-hours sheet and booking or demand forecast, then record each day's opening times, service periods and required roles and headcount.
   2. Gather the current staff availability, leave dates, roles, required skills, contracted or target hours, maximum preferred hours and opening or closing permissions from your rota system or staff messages.
   3. Paste the restaurant details, staff data and house rules into the prompt, using staff IDs instead of unnecessary personal information.
   4. Paste the resulting draft into a spreadsheet with separate columns for date, staff member, role, start time, finish time and total hours.
   5. Compare every shift against the original availability, leave, role permissions, opening hours and required staffing levels, and mark each conflict the model identifies.
   6. Ask the model to revise only the marked conflicts using the available staff data, then compare the revised totals and coverage with the source documents again.
   7. Have the duty manager check breaks, working-time requirements, payroll implications, fairness and operational practicality before publishing the final rota to staff.

   Prompt

   Create a draft weekly staff rota for a UK restaurant using only the information below. Do not invent availability, staff, qualifications, contracted hours, breaks, demand or legal requirements. Treat the stated opening hours and staffing levels as fixed unless you identify a conflict.
   
   Restaurant details:
   - Week beginning: [DATE]
   - Opening hours by day: [PASTE HOURS]
   - Required staffing by day and service period, including roles: [PASTE REQUIREMENTS]
   - Expected busy periods or bookings: [PASTE DETAILS]
   
   Staff data:
   [For each person, provide name or staff ID, role and required skills, availability, unavailable dates, minimum or contracted hours, maximum preferred hours, leave, and any restrictions.]
   
   Rota rules:
   - [PASTE REST BREAK, MAXIMUM SHIFT, CONSECUTIVE-DAY, FAIRNESS, OR OTHER HOUSE RULES]
   - [PASTE WHO CAN OPEN, CLOSE, HANDLE CASH, SERVE ALCOHOL, OR COVER EACH ROLE]
   
   Produce:
   1. A day-by-day rota table showing staff member, role, start time, finish time and service period.
   2. Total scheduled hours for each person.
   3. Any uncovered role, understaffed period, availability clash, duplicate booking, excessive hours or other conflict.
   4. A short list of assumptions and missing information, with no guesses presented as facts.
   5. Two alternative changes for each unresolved conflict, such as moving a shift or requesting cover.
   
   Keep the rota practical and minimise unnecessary split shifts. Do not claim that it complies with UK employment law. Mark every item that a manager must check before publishing.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

3. Hand it to a person

   The distant third

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.