Colorado requires a 30-minute uninterrupted meal break — and you must schedule it.
Under COMPS Order #40, every non-exempt worker on a shift longer than 5 hours must receive a 30-minute, uninterrupted, duty-free meal period. The break must fall at least 1 hour after start and 1 hour before end of shift to the extent practical. Schedule it wrong, and you owe make-up pay.
30-Min Meal Break — Shifts > 5 Hours
Ensures every shift exceeding 5 hours includes a scheduled 30-minute uninterrupted meal period, ideally 1 hour after start and 1 hour before end.
What those rules do as you build a 6+ hour shift.
The hero card configuration: Critical blocks publish without a scheduled break, Avoid warns on poorly-timed breaks. Here's what each does at runtime.
When a manager tries to publish a shift over 5 hours without a scheduled meal break, the publish is blocked. "Cannot publish: shift requires a 30-minute meal break." Manager must add the break before saving.
If the meal break is scheduled too close to start or end (less than 1 hour from either), the manager sees a yellow indicator: "Break falls outside ideal window." Save proceeds; the timing is logged.
Deploy meal-break compliance in your Teambridge.
Tell us about your workforce. We'll spin up meal-break enforcement — alongside the other 17 Colorado policies — in a sandbox tenant.
Thirty minutes, duty-free, in the middle.
The rule has three components: duration, freedom from duty, and timing within the shift. All three must be met for the break to count.
Duration: 30 minutes minimum
The break must be at least 30 minutes. Shorter breaks (e.g., a 20-minute lunch) don't satisfy the rule. Longer breaks are fine and count as the meal break.
Duty-free
The worker must be relieved of all duty during the break. A worker who must answer the phone, monitor a process, or be available for emergencies is not on a qualifying break.
Teambridge schedules the break for you, then verifies it happened.
Meal-break compliance has two halves: scheduling the break correctly and verifying the worker actually took it. Teambridge handles both.
5+ hour shifts auto-include a meal break.
When a manager creates a shift longer than 5 hours, Teambridge auto-inserts a 30-minute meal break in the middle of the shift. Manager can move it but cannot remove it.
No break, no publish.
If for any reason the shift lacks a meal break, the publish is blocked. The manager sees the requirement clearly stated.
Break confirmed via clock-out/in.
On the worker app, the worker clocks out at break start and back in at break end. The system verifies the actual break duration.
Auto make-up pay if break didn't happen.
If the worker didn't take a qualifying break (clocked through, took less than 30 minutes, or break fell outside the window), Teambridge auto-adds 30 minutes of compensable time to the timesheet.
Still evaluating? Get a free Colorado compliance audit.
Send us your existing Colorado scheduling and pay configuration. Our compliance team returns a written audit within 5 business days — every Colorado-specific exposure ranked by risk and back-pay liability.