How to hire staff and run the sushi restaurant of your dreams in Dave the Diver

A woman with glasses scowls
(Image credit: Mintrocket)

Recruiting the best staff in Dave the Diver is vital to free up some of your time and to help you run a successful business. When you're not busy shooting fish with a harpoon and carrying out research, you're tasked with helping run a sushi restaurant—what labour laws, am I right? In the beginning, you'll be the lead (and only) waiter in the restaurant, pouring green tea, tidying up, and bringing tasty fishy delights to customers. Once you've completed a few quests, however, you'll be able to unlock advertising and can start recruiting newer—and often better—staff to help cook, clean and serve customers. Some are better than others, though, and you'll want to invest in your staff to get the best from them, so here's how to recruit the best staff. 

How to recruit staff in Dave the Diver 

Before you can recruit staff, you'll need to wait for the Not Enough Workers quest to unlock in Chapter 1, then complete a specific quest for Yoshie, namely, fetching a shark's head. Easy work, then. To catch a Whitetip Reef Shark, look at your little radar and head to the right side of the swimmable area and stay in the semi-shallow waters. Eventually, one will approach you, and you'll want to make sure you have upgraded your gun and have enough rounds to knock it out. 

Once you've collected the shark's head, you'll need to cook it with olive oil. Olive oil is the reward you'll get by completing the first quest in Tracking the Sea People, so it should be in your inventory already. Head back to the restaurant to research your fancy new dish from the Research tab, which you'll need to spend three Artisan's Flames on. After that, cook it up for Yoshie and you'll then be able to search for and recruit workers.

How to hire and train staff 

When choosing staff, you'll want to consider the different skills available. Someone with Cooking++ will obviously be a better chef, whereas a Drink Serving Master will be firing out green teas at an alarming rate. Platinum and Gold tier staff are the best and worth investing in, but some Silver tier employees come with great skills, too. 

You'll need to assign staff to an area, such as waiting tables or helping in the kitchen, and train them to help them reach their potential, which is their level 20 stats. Once trained, you can unlock additional skills and can level them up by spending some coin. 

Employees have four traits: Cooking, serving, procure and appeal. Having a good balance across the board is best in the early game, but you'll want to recruit high-tier staff with specific traits, like Il Nino with his super high serving skill. There's no point putting someone with a cooking skill in the waiting room, so pay attention to the numbers.

Procurement and appeal influence your income and the restaurant's rating, so it's good to have staff with decent cooking and serving skills but high procurement and appeal in the waiting room to get better tips and reviews. It's worth noting that you'll want to save your cash for only the best staff training as it can get very expensive quickly.

Best staff

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

While you're free to choose whoever you want to hire, there are a few names to watch out for that will make a massive difference to your income and Cooksta rating. Here are the staff you'll definitely want to hire as early as possible and invest in their training. 

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Staff memberSkillsCookingServingProcureAppeal
YoneCooking++, Ingredient Prepping Expert1752330794132
MakiCooking+, Cooking++2100332020
Il NinoDrink Serving Master, Cleaning Master1321033769901
TohokuCooking+, Cooking++1294440660264
JandiTip Master, Wasabi Refill66507375441
BillyTip Master, Cleaning Master308616310442
MasayoshiIngredient Prepping Expert, Dispatch Master786253814378
ItsukiDrink serving, Irresistible Charm438932628963
Guides Editor

The first three games Lauren played on PC were Star Wars: X-Wing, Zoo Tycoon and Barbie Fashion Designer, which explains her love of all things space, strategy and aesthetically pleasing. Lauren recently took over as PC Gamer's Guides Editor after three years of writing many dozens of Destiny 2 guides at VG247, as well as casually trying to shoehorn in The Witcher 3 articles wherever possible. When she's not trying to force everyone to play as a Warlock in Destiny 2, Lauren is either mastering her SEO abilities to help smash the competition, or patting one of her red sons.