Summer Seasonal Hiring Checklist for Pennine Hotels, Cafés and Pubs

Peak season in the Pennines has a habit of arriving early. One weekend the beer garden is half empty; the next, a coach party turns up unannounced, the kitchen rail is full, and two people call in sick. The businesses that cope aren't the ones with the biggest team — they're the ones that started looking in March, trained properly in May, and had a plan for the week everything went wrong.

What makes the hills harder than a city centre is the shape of the season. There is no gentle ramp-up. A café on the road over to Hawes, a pub with eight letting rooms, a hotel that does weddings on Saturdays and walkers on Mondays — all of them meet the same wall in the last week of May, and all of them are fishing in the same small pool of people who live within a twenty-minute drive. Get the hiring wrong and you spend July apologising. Get it right and the season pays for the winter.

Start Recruiting Before the Diary Fills Up

Work backwards from your busiest weeks rather than forwards from today. For most hospitality businesses in the hills, the crunch starts with the first warm bank holiday and runs to the end of September, with a second spike around school holidays and any local festivals you sit near.

If you need someone on the floor by the May half-term, advertise six to eight weeks earlier. That leaves room for interviews, trial shifts, notice periods and the applicants who accept a job and then disappear. For a head chef or a duty manager, add another month; those searches rarely move quickly in a small town.

There is a quieter argument for starting early, too: by the time the sun arrives, the best people have already been taken. Every pub, café and hotel within ten miles is running the same advert in the same week, and the applicants know it.

A recruitment calendar that works

• February: review last year's rotas, name the gaps, and ask existing staff whether they want more hours or a different role.
• March: write and place the adverts, contact returning seasonal staff, and put a note in the window for the local market.
• Early April: interviews and paid trial shifts, while kitchens are still quiet enough to give someone proper attention.
• Late April: contracts, right-to-work checks, allergen and licensing paperwork, uniform and till logins.
• May: shadow shifts, cross-training and one deliberately busy practice service before the first bank holiday.

Think about who is genuinely available: students home for the summer, college leavers, parents wanting school-hours shifts, semi-retired cooks happy with three days a week. They are often the people who stay for the whole season.

Decide What You Need, Role by Role

A vague feeling that you'll need "more staff" produces a vague advert and a mismatched hire. Spend an hour with last year's rotas and compare an ordinary Tuesday with a sunny Saturday in July. The gap usually sits in one or two places: the bar between six and nine, or housekeeping on changeover days.

Then decide how to fill it. Extending a reliable team member's hours is often calmer than recruiting a stranger. Promoting a kitchen porter who has watched every service for a year usually beats an unfamiliar pair of hands. Only then write the advert — and make sure it answers these questions:

• What are the actual hours, including split shifts, and which days are non-negotiable?
• What does the pay come to in a good week, once tips or tronc are included?
• Is there accommodation, what does it cost, and how far is it from the door?
• Who do they report to, and who writes the rota — a named person, not "management"?
• What happens at the end of September: does the job end, or is there something in the autumn?
• What experience is genuinely needed, and what are you willing to train?

An advert that answers those questions honestly will attract fewer applications and better ones. That is the point. A candidate who already knows the shift is 11am to 3pm and 5pm to 11pm, four days out of seven, is far less likely to walk out in week three.

Train Before the Rush, Not During It

Training in August is a contradiction in terms. Nobody has time to explain the till when there are twelve orders on the rail and a table waiting for their bill. So the training has to happen in May, in the quiet hour before service, and it has to be specific to your building.

Generic online modules have their place, particularly around allergens and licensing, but they don't teach anyone where the spare gas bottle lives, or how to explain to a table of eight that the kitchen stops taking orders at nine. That knowledge lives with your team, and it has to be handed over deliberately rather than absorbed by accident.

What "trained" should mean by the first busy Saturday

• They can open or close the till, take a card payment and process a refund without hunting for help.
• They know the allergen folder exists, where it is kept, and that they must never guess.
• They know the menu well enough to sell it, not just carry it.
• They know who to fetch when a customer is unhappy, and they are allowed to fetch them early.

A new starter's first Saturday in August is not a training day. It is a test — and the person being tested is usually you.

Plan for the Week Everything Goes Wrong

At some point between June and September you will lose two people to illness on the same day, or the dishwasher will fail on a Saturday, or someone will simply not turn up and stop answering their phone. This isn't bad luck; it is a normal feature of seasonal hospitality, and it can be planned for.

• Keep a named reserve list: former staff, students home for the holidays, an agency you have actually used before.
• Write down a short fallback menu that two people can cook and that you would still be happy to serve.
• Cross-train at least two people to cover the till, the coffee machine and the cellar.
• Give every new starter a written rota two weeks ahead, plus the number of the person they ring when ill.
• Decide in advance who has the authority to send someone home, call in extra help or close a section.

None of this takes long to set up in May, and all of it is impossible to improvise at 6pm on a bank holiday Friday.

Keep the team you hired

Retention is the cheapest recruitment you will ever do. Seasonal staff leave for predictable reasons: the rota changes late, the hours are worse than promised, tips are shared unfairly, or nobody ever says thank you. A modest end-of-season bonus, a rota you stick to, a proper staff meal and a genuine reference for the winter all cost far less than re-advertising in July.

It is also worth telling good people early that you want them back. A short message in January to someone who worked well last summer is worth ten applications in April.

Your Summer Seasonal Hiring Checklist

1. Review last year's rotas and name the specific gaps, by role and by shift.
2. Ask existing staff about extra hours, changed roles and recommendations before you advertise.
3. Advertise six to eight weeks before the first busy week, and a month earlier again for senior roles.
4. Write an advert that states hours, pay, accommodation and end date plainly.
5. Interview quickly and use a paid trial shift, never an unpaid one.
6. Complete right-to-work checks, contracts, allergen and licensing training before the first shift.
7. Run shadow shifts and one practice service while the weeks are still quiet.
8. Build a reserve list and a fallback menu before the season starts.
9. Publish rotas two weeks ahead and share tips transparently.
10. Plan the end of the season now: thank people, pay any bonus, and ask the good ones back.

Do most of this by the end of May and the summer largely looks after itself. Leave it until the beer garden is full and you'll spend the season recruiting instead of running the place.

Photo: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels