Staffing Plan and Timeline for Opening a Restaurant Abroad

Work backwards from your target opening date, not forwards from today. A head chef from Japan needs the visa route decided, the company registered as an employer, and (in most countries) a local job ad run before the individual application can even be filed; add one to three months for the chef to resign and prepare in Japan. For most routes that means starting the staffing plan 10 to 12 months before opening, with the head chef arriving one to two months before the doors open, not the week of.

1. Start the staffing plan before the premises

There are three reasons. The visa process depends on preparation by the company: in most countries you register as an employer, run a local job ad, and clear sponsor approval before the individual's visa application can even start, and some of those steps cannot begin until the local company exists. Chefs in Japan cannot move immediately: between an offer and departure they resign, hand over, and settle their housing. The concept decides who you need, and who you need decides the visa route: a counter sushi restaurant and a ramen shop built for multi-site expansion need different people from Japan, in different roles and numbers.

2. Three things to decide first

1) How many people to bring from Japan, and in what roles

Start from "which roles have to be filled by someone from Japan," not "how many Japanese staff do we need."

2) The visa route

Country, occupation and salary decide which routes are open. As of September 2026 the UK has effectively closed new overseas chef sponsorship, while Singapore and Australia set high salary thresholds. Check whether a route is open on your terms as soon as the country is decided; the situation by country is in our country-by-country guide to work visas for chefs and sushi chefs.

3) The staff cost budget

The salary for a chef brought from Japan is often set by the visa salary floor rather than the market rate, and costs beyond salary (fees, levies, travel, housing) come on top. For how to think about those costs, see designing housing and relocation packages.

3. Work backwards from visa lead times

Where an authority publishes a service standard, use it as your planning figure. Where none exists, use the one official, enforceable calendar item that does exist, and say plainly what is unconfirmed. Actual timing varies by case; always check each authority's current published times.

Time needed on the Japanese side

• Resignation: under Article 627 of Japan's Civil Code, employment without a fixed term ends two weeks after notice. In practice, handover and workplace custom make one to three months from offer to departure the safer planning figure.
• Documents: graduation certificates, certificates of employment, a copy of the cook's licence (調理師免許). Some countries require translation or certification, which takes time to arrange in Japan.
• Departure procedures: notifying the municipality of the move abroad, and filing a residence notification (在留届; Passport Act Article 16 requires this for anyone staying abroad three months or more).

4. A worked example: Singapore, end to end

Take a restaurant targeting a 1 October 2027 opening, bringing one head chef from Japan on an Employment Pass. This is the one country in our visa table with a published decision-time standard, so it is the clearest full countdown we can build without guessing.

The single point that makes this schedule work is never asking the chef to resign before the IPA is issued. Everything before that point is reversible at low cost; after it, the chef has no job in Japan to fall back on if anything slips.

5. A generic schedule starting 12 months before opening

Where your country is not Singapore, adapt this template: bring it forward where visa lead times run long, and back where they are short. For the country-specific version of this schedule, see the relevant opening staffing plan such as New York, Los Angeles or Bangkok; this table is the method those pages build on, not a replacement for their local detail.

The key figure is the head chef arriving one to two months before opening. Arriving just before opening leaves no time for training local staff or test cooking, and the chef ends up setting up their life and preparing the opening at once.

6. When it slips: delay, refusal, withdrawal

The schedule above assumes nothing goes wrong. Build in what happens when it does.

7. Combining local hires and hires from Japan

Look for Japanese people already there, limit Japan hires to the core, and watch local competition

If Japanese people locally already have work rights, there is no visa problem. MOFA counted 1,298,170 Japanese nationals abroad as of 1 October 2025 (588,486 permanent residents); top cities were the Los Angeles metro area (63,972), Bangkok (51,297), the New York metro area (38,251), Singapore (33,397) and Shanghai (31,733). How many Japanese people live in your target city is the first clue to how feasible local hiring is; see Japanese residents abroad by city.

Chefs in Japan are in a seller's market: MHLW's ratio for food preparation workers was 2.18 in July 2026 (1.05 for all occupations), down from 2.90 in 2023 but still meaning the person you want has other options at home. Limiting hires from Japan to the roles listed in section 2 makes sense on both cost and time.

MAFF counted about 181,000 Japanese restaurants outside Japan in 2025, the first decline, from about 187,000 in 2023, though Indonesia (+2,580), Brazil (+1,670) and South Korea (+1,590) grew fast. Where Japanese restaurants are multiplying, expect competition for experienced local staff, and start hiring earlier.

Staffing models

8. Handling launch support from head office

Many companies send a head chef or trainer from head office for a few weeks around opening. Whether a short-term business visitor may stand in the kitchen cooking or serving guests differs by country: some allow training and meetings but treat working the pass during service as employment. Check with local professionals in advance how business visitor status is treated where you are opening.

9. The staffing plan for the first 12 months after opening

• 3 months after opening: put recipes and procedures into numbers. Get closer to producing the same flavours without the Japanese head chef.
• 6 months: pick a sous chef candidate from local staff and start developing them; aiming for MAFF's Bronze cooking skills certification is one option. See training local staff in Japanese cuisine.
• 9 months: contract renewal for the Japanese chef, and a conversation about role and pay in year two.
• 12 months: if a second site is planned, start hiring the next head chef now; an international hire takes several months from decision to arrival.

Companies with restaurants in Japan can also build a medium to long-term plan that does not depend on visas: training foreign cooks in Japan through the Japanese food culture overseas promotion training programme, then bringing them into your restaurant in their home country after they return.

This article is general information, not legal or immigration advice. Visa requirements and processing times vary by country and over time. The schedules are templates for planning; confirm actual lead times with the primary sources below and local professionals.