Workers

Introduction

Hiring is the moment your shop starts running while you do something else, and it is also the moment your fixed costs jump. Nine workers unlock between shop level 10 and level 45, each with their own checkout speed, restocking speed, one-off hire fee and daily salary. None of them is simply the best at everything, so the strongest rosters split duties: one fast till operator to keep queues short and one fast restocker to keep shelves full, rather than stacking your most expensive all-rounder in a single role. This hub covers who is worth hiring and when, how the hire fee compares with the salary over a realistic payback window, which workers are genuinely useful early despite poor overall stats, the price adjustment duty that makes one of the cheaper hires worth keeping, and the save-timing quirk that can wipe your duty assignments after closing.

Worker Roster By Tier (community data)

Staff Roster

Core Mechanics

Workers are assigned to duties rather than to fixed posts, and the two duties that matter are the checkout and restocking. Checkout speed determines how quickly a queue drains, and a queue that reaches the door loses paying customers regardless of how good your prices are. Restocking speed determines how quickly an emptied shelf is refilled, and an empty shelf is a sale that never happens even if the product is sitting in your warehouse. Each worker has a different pair of speeds, so a specialist who is excellent at one duty is often mediocre at the other, and the strongest roster pairs a fast till with a fast restocker instead of hiring the single best all-rounder twice. Cost comes in two parts: a one-off hire fee and a recurring daily salary, and the hire fee is the number that decides when a worker becomes affordable rather than the salary. Some cheaper hires exist mainly for price adjustment duty, and one save quirk is worth knowing before you rely on the system: duty assignments are not retained if you save after closing time.

Advantages

The value of hiring is that it converts your own attention into a scalable resource. Before workers, every sale depends on you standing at a register, which caps your income at your own walking speed; after workers, the shop keeps selling while you open product, build decks or plan the next expansion. Splitting duties is what makes that leverage work, because hiring two specialists costs less than hiring two of the most expensive all-rounder and produces better throughput in both roles. The tiering also gives you a sensible purchase order rather than a best-in-slot list to chase: cheap generalists bridge the gap while you save, flexible mid-tier hires cover whichever duty is currently your bottleneck, and the single dominant performer becomes worth the hire fee only once his salary is small relative to your daily revenue. Because costs split into a one-off fee and a recurring salary, you can evaluate a hire against a realistic payback window instead of against your bank balance, which keeps staffing decisions reversible and cheap to correct.

Challenges

Hiring is the point where a shop's costs become structural. A worker's daily salary is charged whether the shop is busy or not, so wages plus the per-counter fee plus electricity form a fixed drain that has to be covered before a single unit of profit exists, and a roster hired too early converts a healthy balance into a slow bleed. The top of the roster is also gated behind cash as much as level: the strongest checkout and restock performer in the game carries a five-figure hire fee and a salary to match, which makes him a late-game purchase that a mid-game shop cannot recover the cost of. Information about the roster is imperfect as well, since the widely cited worker table was last edited during Early Access and the community wiki is internally inconsistent about at least one worker's name and about whether the recruitment achievement needs eight or nine staff. That inconsistency matters if you are planning a payback calculation from community numbers rather than from your own save, and the save-timing quirk around duty assignments adds a fourth risk that can silently undo work you have already done.

Frequently Asked Questions

Quick Tips