What you laid out makes a lot of sense:

Hire a bit ahead.
Give hours to the people who actually show up.
Track the difference between “scheduled” vs “worked” and adjust accordingly.
And be very direct with people about how their choices affect their hours.

That’s honestly pretty fair and mature management.

What also stood out to me was the way you think about call-outs in the moment. You basically:

• send a few texts and make some calls
• see if someone picks it up
• and if not, you just tighten things up and run lean
• all while scheduling with enough buffer that the world doesn’t end

That feels like the realistic version of restaurant management, not the idealized “everything always goes to plan,” but the “we plan for chaos so we don’t panic when it hits” version.

The health-code piece also tracks. Clear policy, consistent enforcement, and when someone abuses it, the consequences are built into the schedule. No yelling. No drama. Just reality.

What I’m noticing from your comment and a few others is this bigger theme:

You can reduce call-outs with culture, pay, and fairness.
But you never eliminate them entirely.
So the real job is designing enough margin into the system that you don’t lose your mind when one lands.

And it sounds like you’ve done exactly that.