Staff: skills, wages and scheduling
Staff decide two of the biggest factors in your review stars, service quality and meal quality, and whether orders get delivered at all. This guide covers what each skill level actually does, how wages work, and how to schedule.
Levels: what the game shows
Internally, the game counts skill levels from 0. The game screen shows that number +1, so skills run from level 1 to 10. This site always uses the levels you see in the game.
Roles
Each staff member can be assigned any combination of four roles: serving, cooking, cleaning and managing. One person can hold several roles at once, and you can change roles at any time.
What each skill level does
| Level | Service quality | Order-taking time | Meal quality | Cleaning speed | Buying discount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.5 | ×1.0 | 0.6 | ×0.6 | −10% |
| 2 | 0.6 | ×0.9 | 0.7 | ×0.7 | 0% |
| 3 | 0.7 | ×0.8 | 0.8 | ×0.8 | 5% |
| 4 | 0.8 | ×0.7 | 0.9 | ×0.9 | 8% |
| 5 | 0.9 | ×0.6 | 1.0 | ×1.0 | 10% |
| 6 | 1.0 | ×0.5 | 1.1 | ×1.1 | 12% |
| 7 | 1.1 | ×0.4 | 1.2 | ×1.2 | 14% |
| 8 | 1.2 | ×0.35 | 1.3 | ×1.3 | 16% |
| 9 | 1.3 | ×0.3 | 1.4 | ×1.4 | 18% |
| 10 | 1.4 | ×0.25 | 1.5 | ×1.5 | 20% |
- Service quality comes from the serving level of whoever serves the order, and it goes straight into review stars: each serving level is worth +0.1 stars.
- Meal quality comes from the cook's cooking level. It enters stars at 0.75×, so each cooking level is worth about +0.075 stars. Higher cooking skill also makes cooking faster: the cooking-time multiplier goes from about 1.2× at level 1 to 0.75× at level 10.
- Cleaning speed comes from the cleaning level and keeps cleanliness up.
- The buying discount comes from the managing level. A level 1 manager actually makes purchases 10% worse.
Level for level, a server adds more stars than a cook, and a level 1 server costs you half a star compared with a level 6 server. See Review stars.
Wages and happiness
- Wages are per hour, and the game pays for hours actually worked, so the real daily cost is usually lower than wage × scheduled hours.
- Each person wants a wage within a certain range. The range rises with their skills; in our reading, cooking raises it the most, then serving, then cleaning.
- Happiness mostly depends on where their wage sits in that range. Unhappy staff may quit.
Scheduling
Customer traffic follows an hourly curve that depends on the location. For example, one busy market district peaks around 10:00–14:00 and again around 18:00–22:00. The site's suggestions use these simple rules of thumb (our own heuristics, not game rules):
- Open hours: stay open while local traffic is at least 30% of its peak.
- Stagger shifts: split each role between an early shift and a late shift, so both shifts overlap at the lunch and dinner peaks. In the quiet hours, about half the team is on duty.
- Servers: once you have at least two servers at level 3 or higher, take level 1–2 servers off serving. They lower your average service quality.
- Cooks: keep anyone with cooking level 3 or higher in the kitchen.
- Everyone else: put them on cleaning rather than leaving them idle.
- Managing: it's worth giving this role to someone with managing level 4 or higher, for the buying discount.
- Don't cut headcount to save wages if it causes incomplete orders. A single incomplete order costs about 2 stars on that review.
Try it
- Load your save under My Save and open the staff page to see your staff's skills (in game levels) and suggested roles.
- Look people up in the people wiki.