Why Staff Rosters Never Quite Work, and Why We Handed Ours to OR-Tools
We pulled out the scheduling CSV we'd put together earlier and gave it a proper look. The verdict was a bit awkward: it looked neat, but it didn't hold up in a real restaurant.
It also made one thing clearer to us: no single template is going to fix scheduling.
1. What actually makes scheduling hard
The layout of the roster isn't the hard part. The hard part is meeting several requirements at the same time:
- Every time slot needs enough people, and nobody can be missing during the lunch or dinner rush;
- Working hours and rest breaks have to stay compliant, so you can't put anyone on a shift that breaks the rules;
- If you run multiple outlets, you can't have staff bouncing between locations every day;
- When someone calls in sick or wants to swap a shift, the whole roster shouldn't fall apart.
When you schedule by hand, fixing one problem usually creates another. Change one person and a whole row of cells shifts with it, so a month's roster ends up going through several rounds of rework.
2. How MakanCloud handles it: let the solver deal with the constraints
Under the hood, MakanCloud's scheduling module runs on the CP-SAT solver from OR-Tools.
The idea is simple: you tell the system your outlet's rules and constraints, and the solver works out the best monthly roster it can. It's aiming for two things: staying compliant, and keeping cross-outlet transfers to a minimum.
So the person doing the roster doesn't have to juggle all those conditions in their head. They spend their time reviewing and fine-tuning.
3. Leave and shift swaps go through a proper process, not a group chat
Once the roster is set, changes are the real headache.
In MakanCloud, leave requests and shift swaps both go through two-stage approval. No more "I can't make it tomorrow" dropped in the WhatsApp group, followed by the manager scrambling to find cover. It's always clear who asked and who approved.
4. Part of the same platform as everything else
Scheduling isn't a standalone tool. MakanCloud puts ordering, the central kitchen, delivery and POS on one platform, and scheduling is one piece of that. Multi-outlet teams can run the daily operations that go wrong most often from a single system.
How to try it
Staff scheduling comes with the Pro (S$129/month), Growth (S$199/month) and Enterprise (S$299/month) plans. Right now you can try Pro free for 14 days. No credit card needed, and initial setup takes about 5 minutes: https://makancloud.com/register
How do you handle scheduling at your place right now? Which part is the biggest pain? Tell us in the comments, and we'll pick the topics people care about most for the next post.