Staffing a Second Restaurant Location: The Full Plan

Staffing a second location is a different job from staffing the first: you already have a working team, and moving the wrong people weakens the restaurant that pays the bills while the new one finds its feet. Build a staffing matrix naming who moves, who is promoted and who backfills, start recruiting 16 to 20 weeks out depending on whether any role needs a visa, and test site one running a full week without anyone who is leaving before you commit to opening. Protect site one with a named leader, a pay rise for whoever is promoted, and weekly checks on food cost and complaints.

1. Why the second site is harder to staff than the first

When you opened the first restaurant, the owner or head chef was there every service. Standards were held by one person's eyes. At two sites, that person can only be in one place. Three things usually go wrong:

• The best people all move to the new site. The opening is exciting and the strongest cooks want in, leaving the original restaurant with its weakest team in years.
• Nobody was ready to run a kitchen alone. An excellent number two is suddenly head chef, with no one above them to call.
• Hiring started too late. Local hiring takes weeks; hiring from Japan takes months once a visa is involved.

Each is a planning problem, solvable on paper before you sign the lease.

2. Split the team or build a new one

There are two basic models. Most groups end up somewhere between them.

A useful rule: never move more than one of the top three people from any one kitchen. If the head chef moves, the sous chef stays, and vice versa, promoting from within.

It comes down to one question: is there a number two at site 1 who could run it tomorrow? If not, fix that first as a separate project rather than folding it into this timeline. See building a number two.

3. A staffing matrix for two sites, blank and filled in

Write the plan as a grid: one row per role, one column per site and stage, with a named person or "to hire" in each cell. Copy the blank version below and fill it with your own names before you decide anything else. A grid you can see is worth more than a plan in your head, because it makes every gap visible at once.

Here is the same grid worked through for a sushi counter group opening a second, similar restaurant, as an example of how the cells fill in:

Two things the grid makes visible: every promotion creates a vacancy lower down, so count the "to hire" cells for your real recruiting load, usually bigger than expected because promotions cascade; and a new hire trained at site 1 before opening is worth two who arrive on opening day.

4. A 20 week timeline, and what to cut on a shorter one

This assumes local hires with existing work rights. If any role will be filled from Japan with a visa, that role's clock starts much earlier than week 20; see our staffing plan for new overseas openings for lead times by country.

Three things set the 20 weeks, and each tells you what a shorter runway forces you to give up:

• Notice periods. A backfill hire employed elsewhere typically owes two to four weeks' notice, more for a senior cook under contract. This sets the week 16 to 12 floor; compress it and you hire people who are not free to start.
• Training on real services. A new cook learns your fish supplier, shari and pass by running real services under a senior cook, not in a classroom. Eight weeks (12 to 4) is a minimum above entry level. Compress it and the backfill hire, not the site 2 opener, is undertrained on opening night.
• Local advertising minimums. Where a role needs a work permit, several countries set a minimum ad period before filing, commonly four weeks or more; see the country guide for the role. This floor cannot be compressed at all.

If your runway is 12 weeks rather than 20, the week 4 test is what you sacrifice first, not the notice periods or the visa floor. A compressed plan looks like this:

The week 4 test, where it fits, is the single most useful line in the whole plan. If site 1 cannot run a full week of normal service without the people who are moving, you find out while you can still fix it, not on opening night.

5. Protect the first restaurant

Protecting site one is the actual point of this exercise, so it earns more than a warning. Put a number on three things before you open:

Replacement cost per role. There is no official, cross-country figure for replacing a cook or chef; it depends on your market, channel and role. Total it rather than guess a headline number: advertising or agency cost, the value of shifts run short-staffed or on overtime cover, and the hours a senior person spends training the replacement. For a Japan-sourced hire, MHLW's FY2024 placement-business report puts Japan's average agency fee at about ¥1.03 million per permanent placement, capped by law at 10.8% of six months' wages. Use that as one line, not the total.

Ramp time for an external senior cook. Even an experienced hire needs time on your menu, suppliers and pass before running at your standard: four to six weeks to reach competent, ten to twelve to reach a level a regular would not notice as different. Budget that ramp into the start date rather than starting them the week the mover leaves, which means running short-staffed for the whole ramp.

What to check at site 1 in the twelve weeks after opening. Put these on a weekly log, not a mental note:

• Food cost percentage against the pre-move average.
• Guest complaints about consistency, not one-off service issues.
• Ticket times during a normal Friday or Saturday service.
• Whether the moved-out leader has been pulled back to fix something in person.
• A short, private word with two or three team members, not only whoever now runs the kitchen.

Two more points. Pay the promotion: a sous chef running site 1 while the head chef opens site 2 is doing a bigger job, and unchanged pay and title risks losing them at the worst moment. Hold the menu steady at site 1 for the same quarter; a new team should cook what it already knows.

Plan for someone to quit during the project. Restaurant turnover runs well above the all-industry average in every major market this site tracks; across 20 people and two sites, expect at least one departure. Keep one or two strong runners-up from each hiring round warm rather than closing a search the day a role is filled.

6. Sponsored staff and moving between sites

If any team member holds a work visa or permit you sponsor, check its terms before including them in the plan. A permit can be tied to a specific employer, job title, pay level or work location, and changing any of these can require a new application or a report to the authorities; running each restaurant through a separate company matters here if the permit names the employer.

Country rules differ too widely and change too often to list here. Our country guides, such as Australia and Canada, point to the official sources. Ask the immigration authority or an adviser before you announce the move to the employee.

7. The first three months after opening

• Weeks 1 to 4: the experienced leader runs site 2, with daily check-ins with site 1's acting head chef.
• Weeks 5 to 8: the site 2 number two runs some services alone; the leader returns to one or two services a week at site 1.
• Weeks 9 to 12: formal review of both teams against the weekly log from section 5, confirming or adjusting promotions, pay and titles, and deciding whether the leader returns to site 1 or takes a group role. Our probation review format is reusable here.

At the end of the three months, redraw the staffing matrix as it now stands; if a third site is next, the gaps in that grid are your next hiring list.

General information, not legal or immigration advice. Work permit conditions differ by country and route; check the official rules before moving sponsored staff between roles, companies or locations.