Running a successful restaurant is a delicate balancing act. Having the right number of staff members is a key ingredient. From operating a bustling full-service eatery to a modern food truck, your staffing choices directly influence customer satisfaction, employee morale, and profitability. Determining the optimal number of restaurant staff members is important for smooth operations.
Assessing Your Restaurant’s Specific Needs
Every restaurant is different. From the menu to the layout, numerous factors play a role in determining how many restaurant staff members you’ll need. The first step is understanding your restaurant’s specific requirements.
- Type of Restaurant
The type of restaurant you operate heavily influences staffing needs. A casual counter-service establishment typically requires fewer employees than a fine dining restaurant. This is where guests expect attentive service and carefully plated meals.
- Food Trucks: These compact setups often operate efficiently with a small team. Usually, a chef handles food preparation while a cashier takes orders and payments.
- Counter-Service Restaurants: These venues operate with minimal table service and rely on kitchen staff and a cashier. A few team members may also be needed to keep the dining area clean.
- Full-Service Restaurants: Expect to need a reliable team, including chefs, servers, bartenders, and managers. They are necessary to handle both front-of-house and back-of-house operations.
- Fine Dining Establishments: Fine dining restaurants typically require the largest staff due to their emphasis on high-quality service. This includes specialized roles like sommeliers and pastry chefs.
- Size and Seating Capacity
A restaurant with 50 seats will naturally have different staffing needs than one with 150. A general rule is to align your front-of-house staffing with the number of tables.
For example, one server in a casual dining restaurant can typically manage five to six tables. Larger kitchens will also require additional cooks and dishwashers to handle the workload.
- Menu Complexity
The complexity of your menu impacts the workload of your kitchen staff. A menu with intricate dishes or a high degree of customization will demand more chefs, line cooks, and prep cooks than a simpler menu. Likewise, if your restaurant has a full bar, you’ll need bartenders skilled in crafting cocktails and handling bar-specific duties.
- Peak Hours and Seasonal Trends
Understanding your restaurant’s busiest times is key. If weekends or holiday seasons bring a surge in customers, you’ll need additional staff to maintain efficiency and service quality during peak hours. Many restaurants also hire temporary staff to manage seasonal increases in business.
Breaking Down Front-of-House and Back-of-House Staffing
Front-of-House Team
The front-of-house team represents your restaurant’s service and hospitality. These employees are the face of your business. They guarantee that guests feel welcome and attended to.
- Servers: The backbone of customer service, servers handle orders, deliver meals, and address guest needs.
- Hosts: Responsible for greeting guests, managing reservations, and maintaining a smooth seating process.
- Bartenders: Bartenders craft beverages and interact with guests. They are key staff for restaurants with bars.
- Bussers: They clean the dining area and reset tables quickly to maintain service flow.
Back-of-House Team
The back-of-house team makes sure the food meets quality and timing expectations. From cooking to cleaning, these employees are the unseen heroes of your restaurant.
- Executive Chef or Kitchen Manager: This leader oversees the kitchen, guarantees food quality, and manages kitchen staff.
- Line Cooks and Prep Cooks: These team members handle food preparation, cooking, and plating dishes according to the menu.
- Dishwashers: Maintaining cleanliness is key. Dishwashers are important for maintaining clean utensils, plates, and cooking tools.
How many Restaurant Staff Members Do You Need?
The number of staff members required for a restaurant depends on its size. A small restaurant that can seat 20 to 40 people might need four to six staff members.
On the other hand, a medium-sized restaurant that seats 50 to 100 people might need eight to 12 staff members. Large restaurants with 100+ seats may need 15 or more staff members.
However, these are general estimates. The actual number can vary based on factors like the type of cuisine, service style, and hours of operation.
Tips for Staffing Your Restaurant Effectively
- Hire Based on Experience and Fit
Hiring the right staff is about finding employees who align with your restaurant’s values and style. For instance, a fine dining establishment may prioritize candidates with extensive experience. Meanwhile, a casual eatery might look for friendly personalities who excel at multitasking.
- Train for Success
Even the best hires need training to thrive. Proper training supports service and food quality consistency while promoting a positive work environment. Ongoing training programs can also help employees grow, reduce turnover, and boost morale.
- Monitor Labor Costs
Staffing must strike a balance between maintaining excellent service and managing labor costs. Overstaffing can drain profits. However, understaffing can lead to poor service and burnt-out employees. Use metrics like labor cost percentages and sales per labor hour to keep staffing levels on track.
Partnering With General Workforce
Staffing a restaurant is a continuous process of evaluation and adjustment. General Workforce encourages employers to view temporary workers as an opportunity to “try before you buy,” much like paid interns in larger companies. This approach provides on-the-job insights into workers’ assimilation into the workplace. You may assess their work ethic, intellectual curiosity, creativity, problem-solving abilities, and overall value to your team.
Unlike competitors, we provide transportation for workers to and from the workplace. This reduces ‘no-show’ occurrences and improves reliability. Additionally, we offer full legal indemnification for all workers. We offer this to relieve you of legal responsibilities associated with hiring.
Our extended service hours mean we don’t stop at 5 PM. We stay responsive to your workplace needs. Our team delivers coverage for every shift, no matter how late the hour.
With our expertise in workforce solutions, we can help you find reliable, skilled employees. Contact us today to learn more about how we can assist your restaurant.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to hire restaurant staff?
Cost depends on the role, the experience level required, and your local labor market, along with factors like training time and turnover. Back-of-house specialists and front-of-house roles with higher guest-facing skill requirements typically carry different cost profiles than entry-level positions. Rather than give you a flat number, we'd rather quote based on your specific location, roles, and shift coverage. Contact us for pricing tailored to your restaurant.
Do restaurants use staffing agencies?
Yes, regularly. Restaurants turn to staffing agencies to cover no-shows, handle seasonal surges, and fill specialized roles like line cooks or bartenders without carrying the full weight of recruiting in-house. It also gives owners a way to trial workers before committing to a permanent hire, which matters in an industry with high turnover. See how we staff hospitality roles from front-of-house to kitchen staff.
What is the 30/30/30 rule for restaurants?
It's a budgeting guideline, not a fixed formula: the idea is to keep food costs, labor costs, and overhead each around 30% of revenue, leaving about 10% as profit. Few restaurants hit that split exactly, and the right balance shifts by concept, market, and service style, but it's a useful benchmark for spotting whether one category, like labor, is running out of proportion with the rest of your budget.
How many servers do you need per section?
In casual dining, one server can typically manage five to six tables. Fine dining sections usually run smaller, since the emphasis on attentive, unhurried service means each server handles fewer tables well rather than more tables quickly. Counter-service and food truck setups often skip assigned sections altogether, relying instead on a cashier and kitchen staff to keep the line moving.
How do you staff for seasonal demand swings?
Temporary staffing is the standard answer. Rather than overstaffing year-round to cover a few busy months, most restaurants bring on temporary workers for holidays, patio season, or other predictable surges, then scale back once demand levels out. It's also a low-risk way to evaluate whether a seasonal hire is worth bringing on permanently. We support this with flexible staffing, worker transportation to cut down on no-shows, and coverage that doesn't stop at 5 PM, so you're covered for whichever shift the surge actually lands on.
