Your Rota Is Your Wellbeing Policy: Fixing the Pressure in Pub Kitchens

TL;DR: Hospitality is talking more openly about mental health, but the pressure behind it hasn’t eased. Wellbeing initiatives help, but the real fixes are staffing, rotas, prep and menu design.

Will a wellbeing day or a poster on the staffroom wall ease the pressure in your kitchen? Not on its own. Initiatives like these can help people feel heard, but if your brigade is still covering vacancies with eleven-day runs, the pressure stays exactly where it was. The people working closest to the problem agree: in a pub kitchen, the most effective mental health interventions are the everyday ones, meaning how you staff, rota, prep and write the menu.

The pressure hasn’t gone away.

The Licensed Trade Charity took around 6,000 helpline calls in 2025, a 55% rise on a like-for-like basis, and supported 45,000 people over the year, up from 40,000. The charity is careful to point out that greater awareness of its services contributed to the rise, and because calls are anonymous, it can’t say how many came from chefs. But its Wellbeing at Work report found that one in three pub and bar employees had faced wellbeing challenges in the previous 12 months.

Hospitality Action’s Taking the Temperature research found that 74% of respondents had experienced mental health challenges, and 51% said their work in hospitality had triggered them. Among managers who had experienced a mental health issue, 65% said work was the trigger. Burnout, under-resourcing and excessive workloads were the three leading reasons given for poor work-life balance.

Research shared by The Burnt Chef Project shows how much of this stays hidden. Four in five hospitality professionals report poor mental health at some point in their careers, yet only 17% feel comfortable discussing it with their employer, and 42% would give another reason for an absence rather than mention their mental health.

Why a wellbeing app can’t cover a missing commis.

Kris Hall, founder of The Burnt Chef Project, puts it plainly: “You cannot mindfulness your way out of a rota problem.” His point is that if someone works eleven days straight because two roles are vacant, the answer is structural, not an app. Mark Lewis of Hospitality Action makes the same argument: a workshop can’t fix a working environment that is unsustainable to begin with.

Do the maths and it’s easy to see why. Picture a pub kitchen that needs 225 chef hours a week, covered by five chefs on 45 hours each. Lose two, and those 90 hours still have to come from somewhere. Spread across the three who remain, that’s 75 hours each, every week, until the roles are filled.

It’s also worth remembering the legal floor. Under the Working Time Regulations, adult workers are entitled to 11 hours’ rest between working days, 24 hours’ uninterrupted rest each week (or 48 hours each fortnight), a 20-minute break when working more than six hours, and an average working week of no more than 48 hours unless they’ve opted out. Rules for under-18s are stricter. These are minimums, not targets.

Where the fix actually lives

Joe Walker, executive chef at Herts Pubs Company, argues that if your chefs need ridiculous hours every week just to get the menu ready, that isn’t commitment: something is wrong with the menu, staffing, prep or systems. There will always be Saturdays when everyone digs deep. It just can’t be every day.

Menu engineering

A menu with too many dishes, too many components made from scratch or too much last-minute work doesn’t only hurt your GP. It adds hours to every shift. Tightening and re-costing the menu and moving more work into planned prep is a staffing decision as much as a margin one.

Prep lists and par levels

Without clear par levels and prep lists, work gets crammed into the last hour before service every day. Setting out exact quantities and timings on your prep sheets removes that daily scramble, which makes it as much a wellbeing measure as a kitchen discipline.

Rotas that don’t rely on heroics

Long runs of consecutive days usually mean goodwill is filling a vacancy. Set a firm limit on consecutive working days and treat a persistently uncovered role as the operational emergency it is. Predictability matters too. Hall points to chefs who don’t know when they’ll finish or who get their rotas too late to plan their lives, and the charity Kelly’s Cause recommends publishing rotas at least a month ahead.

Leaders who are trained to lead

In the Hospitality Action research, 47% of respondents said management training was an area where more support was needed. Walker’s point is that we spend years teaching chefs to cook and run a pass and should put the same effort into teaching them to lead people. Kelly’s Cause adds that a mental health policy without trained managers is little more than paper in a drawer.

Good leadership can also be practical. When a young chef at Herts Pubs Company was struggling in one of its busier kitchens, the company adjusted their role and moved them to a calmer site so they could keep developing rather than burn out.

Real progress, with a catch

It isn’t all bleak. In the Hospitality Action research, 66% of respondents felt able to talk openly about mental health at work, up from 62%, and 67% said they had a good work-life balance, up from 59%.

But look at the third, who disagreed about their work-life balance. Of those, 44% said burnout being treated as part of the job was a factor. Talking more openly about a problem is progress. Still accepting it as unavoidable is not.

A head chef’s checklist

1. Audit a full week of actual hours worked against rostered hours.
2. Flag the dishes that create last-minute pressure and cost out simplifying them.
3. Set clear par levels and prep lists for every section.
4. Publish routes as far ahead as you can, ideally a month.
5. Cap consecutive working days and escalate any breach.
6. Cross-train your brigade so no single vacancy falls on one person.
7. Train your managers to have calm, private conversations about workload and wellbeing.

Frequently Asked Questions

We already run wellbeing days. Why isn’t it working?
Wellbeing days can help people feel valued, but they don’t change the job itself. If shifts are still understaffed and prep is still crammed in before service, the daily pressure stays the same.

How do I start a menu review to reduce kitchen pressure?
List every dish that needs significant last-minute work. For each, ask whether it could be simplified, prepped further ahead or removed without hurting covers or GP. A tighter menu usually improves both margin and hours.

What if I genuinely can’t recruit to fill vacant roles?
Cross-train your team so cover is shared on a planned, rotated basis rather than falling on the same one or two people. Consider trimming the menu or opening hours temporarily to match the brigade you actually have.

How should I handle a chef who won’t open up?
Don’t push for disclosure. Make visible, practical changes such as fairer rotas and realistic workloads, and create chances to talk away from the pressure of service. If declining performance appears, consider whether someone might be struggling before treating it as a disciplinary matter.

Is management training worth the cost for a small pub kitchen?
Nearly half of the hospitality workers surveyed by Hospitality Action said it was an area needing more support. Many of the most effective changes cost time rather than money, such as predictable rotas, proper breaks and simply asking people how they are.

Free, confidential support is available to hospitality workers through the Licensed Trade Charity, Hospitality Action and The Burnt Chef Project.