“Marc looks after the cellar.” “Julie knows the till.” “For groups, we ask Sofiane.”
In a small house, the organisation is not written down: it settles in. Everyone takes what they are good at, habits form, and it works. It works very well, in fact — until the first Saturday Marc is ill.
That day you discover that nobody knows what is in the cellar, at what temperature, or what has been ordered. Not because it is complicated, but because it was written down nowhere.
A role is not a person
This is the distinction that changes everything, and it is simple.
A role is a set of tasks that go together: the wash-up, the greeting, the wine of the day, taking payment, closing down. It exists independently of who holds it. It does not go on holiday, it does not resign.
A person is someone you entrust with one or more roles, for a given service.
Organising around roles rather than around people does not make a house less human. It simply makes it able to work on an evening when someone is missing — which, in this trade, happens every month.
Writing the roles down: the useful-sheet test
You do not need a grand hotel's binder. One page per role is enough, and the exercise is done once.
The test is simple:
List your roles — opening, mise en place, greeting and bookings, taking orders, drinks, sending, working the room, taking payment, cellar and stock, wash-up, cleaning, closing. A dozen, in a forty-cover house. Then write each one on a page.
It is two or three hours' work. It pays for itself at the first stand-in.
The only org-chart question that matters
In a small house, the org chart fits in three boxes and interests nobody. Only one question deserves to be settled in writing:
Who decides what when you are not there?
Who can give away a dessert, and up to what amount. Who can turn a customer away. Who can accept a group of eight at 9 pm. Who decides to take a dish off.
If the answer to any of those is “it depends”, the problem will show up on a Friday night, at the worst possible moment, and it will cost you either a customer or a member of staff.
What organisation earns, in euros
Front-of-house organisation is not a comfort question. It is measured on one line: table turns.
The time between one table leaving and the next sitting down is made of clearing, resetting, the bill and payment. Each of those four gestures gets shorter with a clear organisation — and nobody eats any faster for it.
The method for establishing your margin per cover is the same as for a dish: Set menu or à la carte: what your choice does to your margins.
The briefing: five minutes, three things
Standing up, before service, and short. Three subjects, not four:
- What is off. Dishes finished, wines run out. Nothing damages a service more than a dish announced and then refused at the table.
- What we are pushing. One dish, two at most, with the reason — a delivery, a margin, stock to clear. A team that knows why recommends it better.
- What is special tonight. The group of twelve at 8.30, the birthday on table 7, the regular coming back after a bad experience.
Casual staff: what the law imposes on your organisation
Hospitality is one of the sectors permitted to use the contrat à durée déterminée d'usage — a fixed-term contract for jobs that are temporary by nature. That is what allows the Saturday-night extra, and it is perfectly lawful.
But the practice has limits, and the two main ones are often ignored:
- The need must genuinely be temporary. An extra present every Friday and Saturday for two years is not meeting an occasional need: they are occupying a permanent post. The repetition of contracts is precisely what a judge looks at.
- The HCR collective agreement sets a threshold: beyond around sixty days worked in the same calendar quarter, the extra can ask for their situation to be reclassified.
Reclassification as a permanent contract brings a reclassification payment, notice pay, and the rest. It is not a fine: it is an employee you had without knowing it.
The link with organisation is direct. If your casual staff hold permanent roles, that is not a contract problem, it is a staffing problem: you are short of a post. Writing the roles down makes that reality visible on one page — and it is often the real discovery of the exercise.
What to check yourself
- Your single-point roles. For each one, ask who would hold it if its usual holder were missing tomorrow. The ones you have no answer for are your to-do list.
- The current text of the HCR collective agreement, and your real situation, with your accountant or an adviser: thresholds and terms change, and this article does not replace a review of your contracts.
- Your current turn rate, service by service. Without that measurement, any discussion about organisation stays a matter of opinion.