Staffing an Overseas Opening: Working Back from 12 Months Out

When planning a restaurant opening abroad, the premises, fit-out, supply routes and permits tend to move first, and people get left until later. But if you are bringing a chef from Japan, the visa process alone takes several months in some countries. Counting back from the opening date, you may not make it unless the staffing plan starts before the premises are settled.

This article organises the staffing plan for an overseas opening by what to decide, and how many months before opening. The overall hiring process is covered in How Japanese restaurants abroad hire chefs from Japan.

1. Start the staffing plan before the premises

There are three reasons.

• The visa process depends on preparation by the company. In some countries, you go through employer registration, labour market testing (advertising locally) and sponsor approval before the individual's visa application can proceed. Some steps cannot start until the local company has been set up.
• Chefs in Japan cannot move immediately. Between an offer and departure, they have to resign from their current job, hand over their work and sort out their housing.
• The concept determines who you need, and who you need determines the visa route. A counter sushi restaurant and a ramen shop built for multi-site expansion need different numbers of people from Japan, in different roles.

2. Three things to decide first

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

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

2) The visa route

The country, the occupation and the salary decide which visa routes are available. As of September 2026, some countries, like the UK, have effectively closed new overseas sponsorship, while others, like Singapore and Australia, set high salary thresholds. As soon as the country is decided, check whether a route is open on your terms. 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 threshold rather than the market rate. On top of that come costs beyond salary, such as visa fees, levies, travel and housing. For how to think about those costs, see Designing housing and relocation packages.

3. Work backwards from visa lead times

Below are the time-related requirements we could confirm in public sources, by country. Actual processing times vary with timing and the individual case, so always check the latest processing times published by each authority.

For the US E-2 and O-1, Australia's Skills in Demand visa and Singapore's Employment Pass, we have not confirmed official processing time guidance for this article. For route details, see the individual articles linked from the country-by-country visa guide.

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 is given. In practice there is handover and the workplace's own rules, so it is safer to allow one to three months from offer to departure.
• Documents: graduation certificates, certificates of employment, a copy of the cook's licence (調理師免許) and so on. Some countries require translation or certification, and obtaining them in Japan takes time.
• Procedures around departure: notifying the local municipality of the move abroad, filing a residence notification (在留届; under Article 16 of the Passport Act, anyone staying abroad for three months or more must notify the consulate), and so on.

4. A schedule starting 12 months before opening

Below is a template plan for bringing one head chef from Japan and hiring kitchen and floor staff locally. Bring it forward in countries with long visa processing times and push it back where they are short.

The key is to have the head chef arrive one to two months before opening. If they arrive just before opening, there is no time for training local staff or test cooking, and the chef ends up setting up their life and preparing the opening at the same time.

5. Combining local hires and hires from Japan

Look for Japanese people already there first

If there are Japanese people locally who already have work rights, there is no visa problem. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1,298,170 Japanese nationals lived abroad as of October 1, 2025, of whom 588,486 were permanent residents. The top cities are the Los Angeles metropolitan area (63,972), Bangkok (51,297), the New York metropolitan area (38,251), Singapore (33,397) and Shanghai (31,733). How many Japanese people live in the city where you are opening is the first clue to how feasible local hiring is. Detailed city data is in Japanese residents abroad by city.

Limit hiring from Japan to the core roles

By the jobs-to-applicants ratio, chefs in Japan are in a seller's market. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the ratio for food preparation workers was 2.18 in July 2026 (1.05 for all occupations). It is down from 2.90 in 2023, but you are still asking someone who has options at home to move abroad. Limiting hires from Japan to the roles that have to be filled by someone from Japan, as listed above, makes sense in both cost and time.

Look at local competition too

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, there were about 181,000 Japanese restaurants outside Japan in 2025, the first decline, from about 187,000 in 2023. But countries are moving differently, and Indonesia (+2,580), Brazil (+1,670) and South Korea (+1,590) are among those growing. In countries where Japanese restaurants are multiplying fast, expect competition for local staff with Japanese cuisine experience, and start hiring earlier.

Staffing models

6. Handling launch support from head office

Many companies send a head chef or trainer from head office in Japan for a few weeks around the opening. The catch is that whether someone entering on a short-term business visit may stand in the kitchen cooking or serving guests differs by country. Some countries allow training and meetings but treat working in a kitchen during service as employment. Check with local professionals in advance how business visitors' visas are treated.

7. 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 Bronze in MAFF's cooking skills certification is one option.
• 9 months: contract renewal for the Japanese chef, and a conversation about their role and pay in year two.
• 12 months: if a second site is planned, start hiring the next head chef now, because an international hire takes several months from decision to arrival.

Companies with restaurants in Japan can also consider 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 schedule is a template for planning, and actual lead times should be confirmed with the primary sources below and local professionals.