Staffing Fridays & Game Days: A Pizza Ops Guide to Labor & Scheduling

Staffing Fridays & Game Days

A Pizza Ops Guide to Labor & Scheduling

A complete labor and scheduling playbook for pizza operators — from demand forecasting to post-shift debrief.

Understanding Your Peaks

Know exactly when your rushes hit, how big they get, and what drives them

What Makes Fridays & Game Days Different

Not all busy nights are created equal. A packed Thursday dinner service is manageable because the volume builds gradually and tails off predictably. Fridays and game days are a different animal — they compress enormous volume into tight windows, hit multiple channels at once, and leave almost no margin for staffing errors.

Volume spikes vs. everyday service

On a typical weekday, a pizza location might process 80–120 orders over a full evening. On a high-demand Friday or during a major game, that same location might see 200+ orders in a 90-minute window. The difference isn’t just in total volume — it’s in the rate of incoming orders, which is what breaks teams that aren’t staffed for it.

Event multiplier

Local sports schedules, broadcast kickoff and tip-off times, and even school calendars all amplify your baseline Friday demand. A playoff game starting at 7pm means orders surge around 6:15–6:45 as fans order before tip-off. Knowing these patterns lets you build your staffing around the actual demand curve, not a guess.

Dine-in vs. delivery/carryout split

On a normal Friday, you might see a 40/60 split. On a game night, that can flip to 20/80 or even 10/90 as fans eat at home or at watch parties. That shift has major implications for how many delivery drivers you need versus front-of-house coverage.

Why traditional scheduling templates fall short

Most templates are built around average volume — designed to be efficient on a typical night, which means they’re systematically underbuilt for your biggest ones. Applying a standard Friday template to a playoff Friday is a recipe for an 80-minute ticket time and a flooded inbox of complaints.

Mining Your Historical Data

Your POS is sitting on a goldmine of scheduling intelligence. Before you build a single shift for your next big Friday, spend time in your data. Here’s what to pull and what to look for.

Pulling sales data by hour and day-of-week: Export at least 12 months of hourly sales data, segmented by order channel (dine-in, carryout, delivery). Look for your top revenue hours on Fridays specifically — most pizza operations see a clear 5:30–8:00pm peak, but game nights often extend that window or push it later.
Identifying your top 10 highest-volume Fridays from the last 12 months: Sort Fridays by total sales. You’ll likely see clear clusters — home game Fridays, playoff weeks, back-to-school weekends. Note what was happening on each of those top 10 days. That’s your event calendar for next season.
Overlaying local sports calendars: Cross-reference your top sales dates against local team schedules — NFL, NBA, college football, local high school rivalry games. The correlation is almost always strong. Build a forward-looking calendar that flags every Friday where a major game falls.
Using labor reports to find gaps: Pull your labor detail reports for those same high-volume Fridays. Look at total hours scheduled vs. hours worked, overtime incidents, and compare labor percentage to sales. High labor % on a high-revenue night usually means you were understaffed and burning overtime. Low labor % might mean you got lucky — or you left service gaps you don’t know about.

R365 Tip

In Restaurant365, go to Reporting > Labor to pull hourly sales-to-labor comparisons by day. You can filter by location, date range, and day-of-week to quickly surface your highest-demand Friday patterns.

Learn More: Forecasting for Restaurants: Implications for Inventory and Labor →

Learn More: Restaurant Budgeting and Forecasting →

Building a Demand Forecast

A demand forecast doesn’t need to be complicated. For most pizza operators, a tiered approach based on historical sales comps is accurate enough to drive meaningful scheduling decisions.

Setting a baseline: Start with your average sales on a non-event Friday. This is your floor — the minimum you should staff for. Pull the median (not the average) of your bottom 50% of Fridays to avoid letting outliers inflate your baseline.

Defining event tiers: Create three tiers based on expected demand lift above your baseline:

TIER 1

Major Events

NFL/NBA playoffs, Super Bowl, championship games

60-100%+

Lift over baseline.

Maximum staffing. On-call fully activated.

TIER 2

High-Interest Events

Local rivals, regular season prime matchups, major college games

30–50%

Lift over baseline.

Elevated staffing with on-call backup ready.

TIER 3

Standard Season

Regular season mid-tier matchups

15–25%

Lift over baseline.

Enhanced standard staffing.

Accounting for wildcards: Weather, school breaks, and holidays all affect your forecast. A rainy Tier 2 game night can push carryout and delivery even higher as fans stay home. A school break Friday often means earlier families plus late-night traffic. Build adjustments into your forecast for these variables.
Forecasting delivery surge separately: Delivery volume often spikes earlier and steeper than dine-in on game nights. Make sure your forecast models delivery order rate by hour, not just total sales, so you can staff dispatch and drivers accordingly.

Learn More: Restaurant Sales Forecasting: What Numbers You Should Use Now →

Building the Right Schedule

The right people, at the right stations, at the right times — with flexibility to absorb a surge

Staffing by Station, Not Just Headcount

The most common scheduling mistake in pizza operations is thinking about staffing as a headcount number. ‘We need 8 people tonight.’ The problem is that 8 people distributed wrong will underperform 6 people distributed right. Start with stations, then assign people.

The pizza ops station model: For a high-volume pizza location, your core stations are:

Make Line

1–3 people by volume tier. Building pizzas from stretch to sauce to toppings.

Oven / Cut / Box

1–2 people. Pulling pies, cutting, boxing, labeling, and staging for pickup.

Phones / POS

1–2 dedicated people on game nights. Order intake only — does nothing else during surge.

Expo / Quality Check

1 person on Tier 1 nights. Last set of eyes before an order leaves the building.

Delivery Dispatch

1–2 dedicated people on game nights. Order intake only — does nothing else during surge.

The Forgotten Role

Dedicated order intake. Never split this with cash-out or other tasks during surge windows.

Minimum coverage per station for a Tier 1 event night: You should be able to state the minimum staffing for each station before the schedule is built. If you can’t cover every station at minimum, you’re not ready to open. Build your schedule to this floor, then add buffer for your surge window.
When to double up on make line vs. adding a runner: Doubling the make line increases throughput on raw pizza production. Adding a runner (someone who can float between stations) helps when the bottleneck is at cut/box or staging. Watch your ticket times on past event nights to identify where your actual constraint was.
The forgotten role — dedicated order intake: On a normal night, your counter person can handle orders while doing other tasks. On a game-night surge, someone answering phones while also trying to cash out a dine-in table will create errors and delays. On Tier 1 and Tier 2 nights, dedicate at least one person solely to incoming orders for the peak window.

Learn More: How to Make a Restaurant Employee Schedule →

Shift Structuring for High-Volume Nights

The structure of your shifts matters as much as the number of people you schedule. A poorly structured 10-person schedule will underperform a well-structured 8-person one.

Staggered start times — why everyone clocking in at 4pm is a mistake: When everyone starts at the same time, you pay for labor during the slow build-up before rush, then have everyone hitting max hours right as the surge hits. Staggered starts let you have a lean prep crew early and a full team ready exactly when volume peaks.
The surge window approach: Identify your 90-minute peak window — the period where order rate is highest. For most game-night Fridays, this is roughly 5:30–7:30pm for early games, or 7:00–9:00pm for prime-time starts. Staff this window at maximum coverage. Taper before and after.
Sample staggered structure for a 7pm game start:

3:30 PM

2 prep staff — dough, toppings, station setup

4:30 PM

Make line lead + oven/cut person clocks in

5:00 PM

Order intake starts, delivery dispatch begins

5:30 PM

Second make line + second delivery driver

6:00 PM

Full team on — surge window begins

8:30 PM

Staggered releases as order rate slows

Late-shift overlap: Keep at least one experienced person from the surge window through the back half of the night. Handing off to a fresh crew mid-service is a recipe for continuity errors, especially on large game-night orders that come in late.

Learn More: Effective Staff Schedule Template for Businesses →

Scheduling Lead Time & Best Practices

The best game-night schedule is built the week before, not the night before. Lead time gives you room to fix problems before they become shift-day crises.

Post schedules 7–10 days in advance for high-volume weeks

This gives staff time to arrange transportation, childcare, or personal commitments — which means fewer last-minute call-outs. It also gives you a longer runway to fill gaps before you’re scrambling.

Lock in availability requests early

For known high-volume events, collect availability requests at least two weeks out. Block the dates internally as soon as the schedule is posted.

Communicate event tier to staff

Tell your team why this Friday is different. Context motivates people differently than just being told to show up on time.

Use scheduling software to catch conflicts before they become problems

1 person on Tier 1 nights. Last set of eyes before an order leaves the building.

Learn More: Top AI Tools for Scheduling Employees →

Your On-Call & Flex Pool Strategy

The best game-night schedule is built the week before, not the night before. Lead time gives you room to fix problems before they become shift-day crises.

Build a list of 3–5 reliable on-call employees: These are your most dependable, highest-availability team members who have agreed — in advance — to be available on high-demand nights. Rotate the list seasonally and review it each quarter.
Set clear expectations for on-call: Define what ‘on-call’ means at your store. How much notice will you give? Is it guaranteed hours or just potential hours? What’s the callout window? Document this and make sure on-call employees sign off on it.
Cross-train for coverage flexibility: An on-call employee who can only work one station doubles your problems if your shortage is somewhere else. Cross-train your most reliable staff across at least two stations. A make-line person who can also run dispatch is twice as valuable on a Tier 1 night.
Incentivize game day availability: Consider a small bump for shifts flagged as Tier 1 events, priority scheduling for consistent game-night availability, or recognition programs that reward employees who step up. You don’t have to break the budget — even a $1/hour premium on game nights can improve availability significantly.

Learn More: Effective Cross-Training of Restaurant Staff →

Labor Cost & Compliance

Know exactly when your rushes hit, how big they get, and what drives them

Setting Your Labor Budget for Event Nights

Start with your target labor percentage, then build backward to a dollar figure and then to hours. Most pizza operations target 25–32% labor as a percentage of sales, but that range needs to flex based on volume.

Event Night Labor Budget Estimator

Most pizza operations target 25–32% labor as a % of sales. Adjust the inputs below to build your budget and see what happens if volume misses your forecast.

Forecasted Sales $14,000

Target Labor % 28%

Avg Hourly Wage $16/hr

Labor Budget

$3,920

at target %

Estimated Hours

245 hrs

to staff

If sales miss 20%

35%

labor % at $11,200

If the 20% shortfall scenario pushes your labor % above your comfort zone, identify which staff can be released early and communicate the contingency before the shift.

If you bring in additional staff to handle a Tier 1 surge and that investment produces a $15k night instead of a $10k one because you maintained ticket times and kept customers happy, the percentage calculation still works in your favor. Don’t let a percentage target prevent you from staffing appropriately for your biggest nights.

Learn More: How to Calculate Labor Cost Percentage →

Learn More: Restaurant Labor Costs Every Store Manager Should Track →

Learn More: How to Calculate and Optimize Your Restaurant Payroll Percentage →

Overtime: Managing the Risk Before It Happens

Overtime is one of the most preventable labor cost problems in restaurant operations — and one of the most common. The key is visibility. You can’t manage overtime you can’t see coming.

Track weekly hours in real time

By Wednesday or Thursday of a game-night week, you should know exactly how many hours each employee has worked so far. Any employee approaching 32–35 hours is overtime-adjacent. Make scheduling decisions for Friday accordingly.

Identify overtime risk before building the schedule

Before you publish the Friday schedule, flag every employee who will hit 40+ hours if scheduled for a full shift. These employees are your highest overtime risk. Either schedule them for a shorter shift, move them to an earlier cut, or substitute a part-time employee for their Friday hours.

Smart substitutions to avoid OT triggers

Part-time and flex employees are your overtime buffer. If a full-time employee is at 37 hours by Thursday, schedule a flex-pool employee for their Friday station and slide the full-timer to a shorter support role or an earlier out. You get coverage without the 1.5x hit.

When overtime is actually worth it

Sometimes paying OT is the right call — particularly for experienced employees who are critical to a specific station (your best make-line person on a Tier 1 night, for example). The question isn’t whether overtime costs more. It’s whether the alternative — an understaffed station or a less experienced substitute — costs more in lost sales, errors, and customer experience.

Compliance Considerations for High-Volume Scheduling

Labor law compliance doesn’t pause for game nights. High-volume events are actually when compliance violations are most likely to occur — when managers are distracted and employees are pushed to stay longer.

Minor labor laws

In most states, minors cannot work past 10pm on school nights and are limited to 6–8 hours per day. Flag these employees and build hard stops into their shifts before the surge window ends.

Break requirements

Many states require a paid 10-minute rest break for every 4 hours worked, and an unpaid 30-minute meal break for shifts over 5–6 hours. Build breaks into the schedule explicitly — skipping them creates wage liability.

Predictive scheduling

In most states, minors cannot work past 10pm on school nights and are limited to 6–8 hours per day. Flag these employees and build hard stops into their shifts before the surge window ends.

Audit trail

Document all schedule changes, call-outs, and manager-initiated early cuts in writing. Good records protect you in wage and hour audits — legally required in predictive scheduling markets.

Learn More: Predictive Scheduling Explained →

Real-Time Labor Monitoring During the Shift

Publishing a good schedule is the starting point. Managing labor in real time on a game night is where the cost control actually happens.

Check labor-to-sales ratio at the 2-hour mark: About two hours into a high-volume shift, your manager should check actual sales vs. projected and actual labor hours vs. scheduled. If volume is tracking above forecast, hold your planned early cuts. If it’s tracking below, start calling early releases.
Cutting early vs. holding: This is the judgment call that separates good operators from great ones. Cutting too early costs you service quality. Holding too long costs you labor. The framework is simple: if ticket times are under control and the order board is clearing, you have room to start releasing staff on the back end of the surge window.
Manager communication protocol: Assign a single manager as the ‘labor owner’ for each high-volume night. This person tracks the real-time labor dashboard, makes the cut calls, and communicates them to the floor. When multiple managers are making independent labor decisions, you get inconsistency.

R365 Tip

Restaurant365’s real-time labor dashboard shows you actual hours, labor cost, and labor-to-sales ratio updated continuously during service. Your managers can check it from a tablet on the floor without leaving the line — so the data informs decisions in real time instead of after the fact.

Learn More: Control Restaurant Labor Costs with Daily Flash Reports →

Learn More: Restaurant Labor Cost Control: 11 Reports to Optimize Labor →

The Pre-Shift Playbook

Game nights aren’t won in the first 30 minutes of service — they’re won 48 hours before

48-Hour Prep Checklist

Run through this checklist for every Tier 1 and Tier 2 event, starting two days before the shift.

Confirm all scheduled staff have acknowledged their shifts

Verify inventory levels against your demand forecast

Run a quick inventory check on your top-volume items — dough balls, cheese, your most popular toppings, pizza boxes. Calculate what you need for your forecasted order volume, then check what you have. Order gaps now, not at 6pm when your supplier is closed.

Review outstanding call-outs and identify backup coverage

If anyone has already called out for Friday, this is the time to activate your on-call list — not the morning of. Every hour of lead time is one more option you have.

Confirm delivery driver count and vehicle readiness

Game nights are delivery-heavy. Run through your driver roster, verify who has confirmed, and spot-check that vehicles are operational. One driver with a car issue can create a cascade of delayed deliveries when you’re running at max volume.

Alert third-party delivery platform reps (if applicable)

If you have high-volume accounts with third-party platforms, notify your rep that you’re expecting a surge night. Some platforms offer volume support tools or pausing options that can help you manage incoming order rate if you hit capacity.

Learn More: Best Practices for Communicating with Restaurant Staff →

Day-Of Manager Briefing

Every game-night shift should begin with a structured team briefing. Five minutes before service starts can prevent 50 minutes of chaos during it.

Lead with the game plan, not just the schedule: Tell your team what kind of night it is, what you’re forecasting, and what the plan is if volume exceeds expectations. ‘We’re expecting our second-biggest Friday of the year. Kick-off is at 7pm, so we’re expecting our surge window to run 5:45 to 7:30. Here’s how we’re positioned.’
Assign roles explicitly — no ambiguity: Every person should leave the pre-shift knowing exactly which station they own, who their backup is if they need a break, and who to flag if something goes wrong. ‘You own make line one. If you need a break after 7:30, flag Marcus.’ Clarity like this prevents the floor from becoming a committee when it gets busy.
Set measurable service expectations: Give your team a target. ‘Our goal is sub-12-minute ticket times for carryout and under 35 minutes for delivery. If we start slipping past those numbers, I need to know immediately.’ Concrete targets give your team something to aim for and alert you early if things are going off track.
Cover the contingency plan: What happens if volume runs hotter than expected? Who gets called off the on-call list? What’s the escalation path if a piece of equipment goes down? Game-night surprises are less surprising when you’ve pre-gamed the responses.

Learn More: 7 Activities to Include in Restaurant Leadership Training →

Learn More: Restaurant Employee Training Guide →

Prep Strategies That Save Labor During Rush

Labor efficiency during a surge isn’t just about how many people you have — it’s about how much physical and mental work they have to do per order. Smart prep reduces that work and lets your team process volume faster.

Pre-portion toppings and prep dough ahead of the surge window: Every topping that’s already measured is a second saved per pizza. On a 200-order night, seconds per pizza add up to hours of throughput capacity. Build a prep target — how many ounces of each topping should be portioned and staged by 5pm.
Stage boxes, labels, and supplies at every station before rush: Nothing slows a make line like someone leaving to get more boxes or a new roll of labels in the middle of a surge. Do a complete station audit at 4:30pm. Every station should be fully stocked before the first game-night order comes in.
Pre-route delivery zones: Map out your delivery zone clusters before service starts. If dispatch knows that all northwest-quadrant deliveries go to Driver A and southeast goes to Driver B, routing decisions take seconds instead of minutes. Pre-routing also prevents the scenario where three drivers leave at once for adjacent neighborhoods while another zone waits.
Run a dry drill for new staff before their first game day shift: New employees who haven’t seen a high-volume Friday can freeze up when the ticket rail fills. Walk them through the pace — physically — during a slow morning. Show them what a 30-ticket board looks like. Let them practice moving at game-night speed before they’re doing it live.

Learn More: Restaurant Back-of-House Guide →

Post-Shift Analysis & Continuous Improvement

Every big night is a data point — operators who debrief consistently improve

The Post-Game Debrief

A 10-minute debrief after the shift closes is one of the highest-ROI habits you can build into your game-night process. The goal isn’t to assign blame — it’s to capture institutional knowledge before the details fade. Hold it before anyone leaves.

Hold the debrief before anyone leaves: The temptation at the end of a long, high-volume shift is to get out the door. Push through it. A 10-minute debrief immediately after service is more valuable than a 30-minute debrief the next morning, because the details are still fresh.
Core debrief questions: Run through these five every time:
- Where did we slow down or back up?
- Was every station adequately covered at every point during the surge?
- Were there any staffing gaps, early departures, or unexpected no-shows?
- What did customers complain about, or what almost went wrong?
- What went better than expected, and why?
Document it, don’t just discuss it: The value of the debrief is in the record, not just the conversation. Even two or three sentences in a manager log — ‘Make line backed up around 6:45. Second cut/box person clocked out 20 minutes early. Ticket times hit 22 minutes for carryout’ — gives you actionable data for next time.
Include frontline staff, not just managers: Your make-line person knows things your manager doesn’t. Your delivery driver knows which zone backed up. Build in a quick survey or a standing ‘anything to add?’ to every debrief so frontline perspective makes it into the record.

Learn More: 5 Restaurant KPIs to Track Weekly →

Key Metrics to Review After Every Event Night

Pull these numbers the morning after every Tier 1 or Tier 2 event shift and log them alongside your debrief notes.

Labor cost

Actual vs. Forecasted Labor Hours & Cost

Did you come in over or under? If over — was it overtime, unexpected volume extension, or poor early-cut execution?

Service speed

Average Ticket Time — Peak Window Only

Did you come in over or under? If over — was it overtime, unexpected volume extension, or poor early-cut execution?

Accuracy

Order Accuracy Rate

Did you come in over or under? If over — was it overtime, unexpected volume extension, or poor early-cut execution?

Delivery

Delivery Time Performance

Did you come in over or under? If over — was it overtime, unexpected volume extension, or poor early-cut execution?

Learn More: Restaurant Labor Cost Control: 11 Reports to Optimize Labor →

Learn More: Control Restaurant Labor Costs with Daily Flash Reports →

Updating Your Scheduling Templates

Every game-night shift should begin with a structured team briefing. Five minutes before service starts can prevent 50 minutes of chaos during it.

When to revise the template vs. treating the night as an outlier: One rough night isn’t necessarily a template problem — it might be a staffing anomaly (three call-outs), a demand anomaly (Tier 3 event that performed like Tier 1), or a one-off execution issue. Two or three similar nights with similar patterns is a template problem. Trust the pattern, not the single data point.
Build event-tier-specific templates: Don’t maintain a single ‘Friday template.’ Maintain a Tier 1 template, a Tier 2 template, and a Tier 3 template. Each should have specific station minimums, surge window staffing targets, and on-call activation triggers. Update each template at the end of each relevant season.
Share learnings across locations for multi-unit operators: If you run multiple stores, your best-performing location’s game-night template is a gift to your other locations. Build a process for sharing debrief notes, template updates, and scheduling learnings across your portfolio. What works at your top store usually works everywhere with minor local adjustments.

R365 Tip

Learn More: Effective Staff Schedule Template for Businesses →

Learn More: Restaurant Back-of-House Guide →

Tools & Technology for Smarter Labor Management

On game nights, when the margin for error is slim, purpose-built tools make a measurable difference

What to Look for in a Scheduling Platform

Not all scheduling tools are built for restaurant operations. Here are the capabilities that specifically matter for high-volume event management.

Sales-driven scheduling

The best restaurant scheduling tools link your shift structure directly to projected sales. Instead of guessing how many people you need, you enter your forecast and the system suggests a staffing model based on your historical sales-to-labor ratios. This removes guesswork from your highest-stakes nights.

Availability and conflict management

The tool should flag availability conflicts, requested time off, and scheduling overlaps automatically — before the schedule is published. Finding out an employee can’t work their scheduled shift after you’ve posted is a preventable problem.

Mobile accessibility for staff

Your team should be able to view their schedule, confirm shifts, request changes, and receive notifications from their phone. Game-night schedules get attention when they’re easy to access — and staff who can’t find their schedule are staff who show up late or not at all.

Overtime alerts before they happen

You need visibility into projected overtime before you finalize the schedule, not after you’ve already locked in shifts. A platform that shows projected weekly hours per employee as you build the schedule lets you make adjustments in advance.

Payroll integration

Actual clock-in and clock-out data should flow directly into your payroll system without manual re-entry. On a high-volume night when schedules flex in real time, manual data entry creates errors and delays. This is non-negotiable for high-volume operators.

Learn More: Top AI Tools for Scheduling Employees →

Learn More: Best Affordable Restaurant Scheduling Tools for Small Businesses in 2026 →

Learn More: Restaurant Labor Management Software →

How Restaurant365 Supports Game Day Scheduling

Restaurant365 brings labor scheduling, forecasting, and real-time cost visibility into a single platform — which means your game-night decisions are informed by the same data source, start to finish.

Forecast-linked scheduling: R365 integrates your sales forecast directly with your scheduling workflow. When you’re building a Tier 1 game-night schedule, you can pull your projected sales for that night and build labor around it — with real-time visibility into projected labor cost and labor percentage as you add or adjust shifts.
Real-time labor vs. sales dashboards: During service, your managers can see live labor cost, labor percentage, and sales data on a single screen — from a tablet on the floor. This makes real-time cut decisions data-driven rather than gut-driven.
Reusable schedule templates: Build your Tier 1 game-night template once, save it, and apply it as a baseline for every major event. Each location can maintain its own templates, and multi-unit operators can share templates across stores.
Compliance tracking built in: R365 flags minor labor violations, break requirements, and predictive scheduling conflicts as you build the schedule — so compliance checks happen before the shift, not during an audit after it.
Manager log and communication tools: R365’s manager log lets your team document debrief notes, flag issues, and pass operational context across shifts — all in a searchable, timestamped record that’s accessible to leadership across locations.

Learn More: Time and Attendance Software →

Quick Reference: Game Day Staffing Checklists

Use these checklists every time you’re preparing for a high-volume event night

7 Days Out

Identify event tier (Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3) and confirm game start time
Pull sales comps from the last comparable event
Set demand forecast and identify surge window timing
Apply appropriate shift template and adjust for this event's specific demands
Check projected labor cost vs. forecasted sales — adjust if needed
Post schedule and collect confirmations from all scheduled staff
Flag any employees approaching overtime risk this week

48 Hours Out

Confirm all shifts have been acknowledged by employees
Identify and fill any open gaps — activate on-call staff if needed
Check inventory against demand forecast; place any missing orders
Confirm delivery driver count and vehicle status
Brief management team on the plan, contingencies, and labor owner for the night
Alert third-party delivery platform rep if applicable

Day Of — Pre-Shift (by 4:30pm for an evening game)

Complete prep audit: toppings portioned, dough ready, stations fully stocked
Confirm all surge-window staff are on-site or en route
Pre-route delivery zones and brief dispatch staff
Conduct team huddle: game plan, role assignments, ticket time targets, escalation path
Set labor check-in time with the designated labor owner (e.g., review at 7:00pm)
Test POS, online ordering integrations, and printer connections before service starts

Mid-Shift (at your designated labor check-in time)

Check actual sales vs. forecast — are you tracking above, below, or on plan?
Check actual labor hours and cost vs. budget
Review current ticket times — are you within your target range?
Decide: hold all staff, begin phased releases, or call in on-call backup

Post-Shift

Conduct 10-minute debrief before staff leave
Log actual vs. forecast labor hours and cost
Record ticket times, order accuracy incidents, and delivery performance
Note staffing gaps, late arrivals, or early departures
Update your shift template with any changes for next time
Recognize standout team members — and tell them directly

Build a Team That Wins on the Big Nights

Game days and high-volume Fridays aren’t just revenue opportunities — they’re reputation-defining moments. The orders you process on a playoff Friday reach customers who are already emotionally invested in the night. Get it right, and you build loyalty that lasts a season. Get it wrong, and that’s the story they tell their friends.

Smart staffing is the foundation. Not just more people, but the right people at the right stations with the right preparation, real-time visibility into what’s happening, and a consistent process for learning afterward. The operators who dominate their market on game nights don’t get there by accident. They build systems — and they run them every time.

The checklists, frameworks, and strategies in this guide are starting points. The goal is for your team to internalize them so thoroughly that running a Tier 1 game night feels like second nature — not a scramble.

Schedule smarter. Control labor costs. Win your biggest nights.

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