The handover between shifts, in two minutes

A cafe runs two or three teams through the same room every day. Each team learns things the next team needs.

Almost none of it survives the change. The morning crew knew the grinder was drifting, and the afternoon crew rediscovers it at two.

Three questions carry almost everything

A long handover form gets skipped. Three questions get answered, and the useful information arrives anyway.

1. What broke or drifted? Equipment, a supplier, a delivery that never came.
2. What are we short of Anything that will run low before the next order.
3. What is coming? A large order, a repair visit, somebody arriving late.

Three answers take two minutes. Your next shift starts with the same picture the last one finished with, which almost never happens otherwise.

Write it down, because the overlap is shorter than you think

A spoken handover needs both people in the room and neither of them busy. A cafe at shift change has neither.

The three answers go somewhere the next shift opens. The handover then survives a late arrival and a rush that ran long.

Attach it to the shift, not to a notebook

A notebook works until somebody takes it home or spills coffee across it. The roster already knows who is on and when.

The handover belongs on the shift itself, so it reaches whoever opens next. A new starter then reads it without knowing where anything lives.

Name the person who reads it back

A handover nobody reads becomes a diary. Your incoming supervisor reads the three answers first and acts on them before service starts.

That single habit turns the record into a control. Without it, the writing continues for a month and then stops.

Escalate the repeats

The same note three days running is no longer a handover item. A grinder drifting daily needs a technician, not another mention.

Your manager reads the week once and pulls out anything that appeared more than twice. Those few lines are the real maintenance list.

Keep the closing checks separate

A handover reports what happened. A closing checklist confirms what somebody did, and mixing the two buries both.

Our guide to opening and closing checks covers the second half, and why a vague item cannot fail.

The opening shift hands over to nobody

An opening team arrives to a room the closing team left. Whatever happened at nine last night reaches them only through a written note.

Your closing handover matters more than the midday one, because the gap is longer and nobody overlaps at all.

A new supervisor needs the last week, not the last shift

Somebody stepping up reads one handover and sees a normal day. The pattern lives across the week, and that is what tells them what to watch.

The handovers belong somewhere a supervisor can read back seven days. Five minutes of that teaches more than any briefing you could give them.

Your closing team is also the tiredest, so the handover has to be short enough to survive that. Three questions works because it fits at the end of a long shift.

A supervisor reading back a week also spots the thing nobody escalated. The same supplier appearing on four evenings is a conversation with the supplier.

What to change first

• Three fixed questions at every shift change
• The answers get written rather than shouted across a rush
• The handover attaches to the shift, so it reaches whoever opens next
• One named person reads it back before service starts
• Anything appearing more than twice in a week leaves the handover
• The handover and the closing checklist stay apart