From my experience:

Back of House: schedules are pretty much set. The only time things change is working around someone being out.

Front of House is famously a giant pot exceptions. Mix of professional waitstaff and folks who are just picking up some shifts to finance their passion/true focus(art, music, non-profits, teachers). So you'll need to work around some fun priorities.

How do you flag special events? This will require extra people on a Monday that is historically forecast-ed to be slow. Large parties is a specialist skill in a lot of restaurants. Pretty much any server can make a large party work, but normally a few of the staff really shine with that kind of work, and you'll want them staffed.

Respect everyone's availability/time-off: FOH usually has a good mix of full-time and part-time. And a lot of people are willing to pick up an extra shift with some head's up. And that's both part-times going full-time for a week, and full-timers working extra shifts. People have preferences around working/not working doubles and clopens. One of your full-timers requests a few shifts off next week because their band is playing the next town over. The human process is just to ask a few people who are working if they want to pick up those shifts. Often the person taking off will have found someone to cover for them before requesting the time off, so you'll need that input. Often the GM/AGM making the schedule has all of the human parts in their head and just works through it.

This is super helpful — thank you. Here's how I think they can be solved:

1. Flagging special events by pulling from the booking system so the schedule doesn’t assume a “normal” Monday.

2. Tagging staff by skillset (large parties, wine, expo, etc.) so the optimizer doesn’t just fill slots but matches people to the right shifts.

3. Flexible availability instead of binary availability — things like “prefer not,” “can pick up if needed,” “no doubles,” “no clopens,” or “I already have a cover lined up.”

4. Transparent fairness — showing why someone got (or didn’t get) a shift, how hours were distributed, and what trade-offs were made so it’s not a black box.

5. Built-in shift-swap handling, since FOH often sorts coverage themselves before the manager ever touches it.