Can I employee chinese chef?

My friend who is Irish has opend small chinese takeaway-restaurant three month ago. Currently, she have two chinse chef who can only working 20 hours a week/each person--- because of they are both have student visa.

She was considering offer work permit to one of them to allow him working as a full time chef.

She asked me to help her find more information about work permit. I found plenty of info from relevant website but I can't find any information about following section:



As she just opened the restaurant and the restaurant is very small size also very small turnover--- we were wondering If she can apply employee who need work permit ex : chinese? She assume she can offer more than 30.000 salary. Anyway she need pay around this amount to two part-time chef a year even she didn't employee chinese chef who has work permit.





The restaurant mainly runs as a delivery service and there are only 4 small tables in the restaurant.



As I am chinese student my spelling or gramma may wrong so please forgive about my mistake.

And I hope anyone ....can help me answer this question....Thanks^^Can I employee chinese chef?
She just can not offer one a work permit? this is a government decision, she has to go to the home office and find out what she should do, normally work permits are given to people with especial qualification that not a British person has, in this case there are loads of local people can do the job after some training, so its more like it the work permit request will be turn down.Can I employee chinese chef?
If the students became full time employees their visa would be invalid because their visa is to study and not to work.



I suspect there are Chinese chefs looking for work so perhaps she could try an employment agency.



To help her business along she could submit her menu to www.take-a-way.co.uk, its free