BBQ match-night and holiday-eve surge scheduling SOP - when a final runs the house past midnight, who comes, how they're paid, and how next day compensates, decided before the night

You are a scheduling consultant for a BBQ restaurant. Write "match-night and holiday-eve surge scheduling" as an archivable SOP. The event list, lead time, and bonus amounts are this shop's conventions at [ ] - not yours to fill.

Six sections, each written down to who does it, at what moment, and what counts as done:

1. Trigger and lead time:
   - The event list [ which nights count as surge: cup finals / New Year's Eve / shows letting out nearby, etc. ]
   - The surge process starts [ N ] days ahead; the basis is this shop's event-night history (peak hour, how late close ran) - the first time with no history runs conservative: peak staffing up [ percentage ], closing pushed later [ duration ]
2. The surge roster:
   - Volunteers first (a signup thread in the group chat, with a cutoff), then the rotation backstop [ rotation rule ] when signups fall short
   - A cap on late-night headcount - more is not better: grill positions and running lanes are finite, and extra bodies just stand and burn their late-night stamina
   - The rule for a volunteer who cancels last-minute
3. The night's own plan:
   - The closing crew and late wrap-up staffing; rest rotation points (taking turns sitting out after midnight)
   - The kitchen handoff: skewer volume and drink stocking for the event night reconciled a day ahead (who reconciles, over what)
   - Post-let-out conflict risk: who holds the door that night, who joins after what hour, from when staff leave in pairs - event nights run several times the usual blood-alcohol
4. Next-day comp time:
   - The comp rule for the event-night crew [ how they rest, who covers ]
   - Red lines: nobody works two event nights in a row; surge shifts without comp time mean nobody signs up next time
5. Bonus and terms:
   - The surge bonus [ amount / settlement method ], fixed once and never improvised on the night - improvise once, and every future night opens with someone negotiating from "but last time"
6. Debrief:
   - Event-night ledger fields: peak hour, stocked-out items, staffing surplus or shortage, actual closing time, incidents
   - Logged within [ N ] days of the event - the next surge's schedule and stocking come entirely from this ledger

Constraints:
- No labor-regulation citations; every line is this shop's own [ ]
- No "how many guests this event will draw" forecasts - use the ledger; without history, apply the conservative uplift and label it conservative
- One and a half pages max; the roster and night-plan sections must survive being torn out and taped up in the office
- No "for the team" pep-talk language - clear rules make mobilization unnecessary

Why it is written this way

The two-layer roster - volunteers first, rotation backstop underneath - is what makes surge scheduling sustainable. Pure-volunteer shops draw on novelty the first time, goodwill the second, and nobody the third; pure-assignment shops get bodies without minds, which late-night shows immediately. The signup thread preserves the dignity of choice, the rotation rule holds the floor, and only the combination runs for ten years - whether it does depends entirely on section 4's comp time and section 5's bonus being honored. That is why "surge without comp time means nobody signs up next time" is written as a red line: not a moral reminder but the mechanism's own causality.

The late-night headcount cap is the most counterintuitive line in the document. On a blowout night the instinct says more people, always more - but this format's output bottleneck is grill positions and the running lanes; a floor packed past capacity trips over itself while surplus staff burn the stamina they will need at 2 a.m. What an event night is actually short of is not bodies but a shift structure that stays coherent at closing time. The rest-rotation points serve the same logic: a twelve-hour late shift without rotation collapses in quality over its final two hours, and those two hours are precisely when the event night's reputation gets written.

Bonus terms get their own "fix once, never improvise on the night" section because they are the fastest-rotting part of any surge mechanism: a number made up at midnight saves the evening and converts every future surge into a negotiation - what staff remember is that last time's number was open to discussion, not that the shop has rules. Once the terms are filed, "but last time" loses its space, and what the fix saves is not money but the friction of every subsequent night.

The event-night ledger sits in the final section with a mandatory debrief so the SOP evolves on its own. Event-night traffic is highly repetitive (peak hour, stocked-out items, let-out rhythm); every log sharpens the next schedule by one notch, while an unlogged shop treats every final as its first and improvises from scratch each time. The five ledger fields deliberately avoid "impressions" - numbers and time points only, because a debrief's job is parameters the next night can use directly, not stories about this one.

Variables