To start a restaurant you need
1) chairs, tables, flooring, pizza recipies. rent a place.
2) create and transfer 3 or more recipies to the menu
3) hire chef, waiter
4) buy supplies (stock)
5) open the restaurant
Using quickstart easy will do #1 for you.
Borrow money from the bank or even the mafia to stock up.
Look at customer taste, it shows thumbs pointing up and down to
indicate how salty/fat/sweet/hot customer groups like their
pizza. Click on the thumbs and it'll show you actual
percentages. Note customer trends, shows which recipie items
are trendy and which are not. Use these things to create
pizzas to cater to different groups.
Bananas are good to make things real sweet, chilies for hot,
anchovies for hot/salt/fat, cheese for fat/salt, olives for salt,
etc... You want percentages close to some demographic category,
a decent calorie count, while keeping the price reasonable.
(I go for over 700 calories and under $6). You can cut up
recipie items using device in lower left corner for smaller
portion additions. Be an artist! Seems to be good to cover
most of the pizza (except maybe crust), and keep things
balanced. You might get some ideas looking at the starting
recipies that start in quickstart mode, or looking at what the
computer comes up with when you lose in chef competitions.
Transfer your recipies to the menu with the transfer button.
I tend to price things around 10-16 dollars. Look at how
things are selling to figure out how to price them. Dump
untrendy items, increase prices if you're nearing max
capacity, etc.. managers can change prices, but I only bother
with managers when i get many restaurants and can't handle
everything myself.
I try to hire chefs/waiters with good cooking/serving skill.
You get screwed if their trustworthyness is low, believe me.
Don't hesitate to give them big raises to increase their output
in pizzas per day. Competitors can steal your folks by
offering them more money. I have noticed that later in the
game it seems to be harder to get quality folks, and you can't
hire back people you've fired. Might be good to grab the best
folks as early as you can and keep em, give them raises, train
them, etc.. Not sure yet.
Managers should have good motivation, this affects how often
they shop for stock food items. Note that the default
attitude towards employees is tyranical or something like
that, i usually set this down to moderate or strict. Right
now I'm setting everything to "act yourself" and giving them
the ability to set prices, etc..
Keep your restaurant well stocked with food items. I buy from
2 star places so far, 4 or 5 day stocks. Remember the amount
you need to stock can change radically as customer demand
changes. I haven't figured out contracts very well yet.
You seem to get a discount for ordering a lot from a single
supplier. Look at the "need" column, this tells you how much
of a given ingredient you're using per day. Write this down
for each item. Use this to make your contract. The problem
is, a given ingredient may suddenly become much less popular
and you'll be stuck with huge over-orders. You can toggle the
contract to "according to contract" or "according to need",
the latter seems to be a good idea. I use single orders until
the restaurant has been around some time and order quantities
get real big.
You can use tab to switch between the restaurants you own, in
any restaurant menu. Look at competitor restaurants for
interior design ideas. I tend to use floor plants, candles,
decorative walls.. different items are good for different
demographic groups (kids, business men, old farts, whatever)
I had really good luck starting out with two restaurants at
once. Buying those super good ovens seems to be very
worthwhile. Nice flooring too. i usually go for 3 star
furniture. In the furniture menu you can click to see how
customer groups like your interior decorating.
The most important thing to keep track of is under the
animated display menu, LOOK AT CAPACITY. it shows you where
the bottlenecks are. It shows customer demand, furniture,
stocks, ovens, chefs, waiters, output. Get more of whatever
is the bottleneck. You can increase chef/waiter by hiring
more or by increasing their salary (or eventually through
training). You can cram lots of tables/chairs in the place.
Mafia side jobs are good for extra money, but there is a
chance of getting busted. In main display you can see
map/district/control displays. Use "district" to courier
places mentioned -- since it tells you which district the
places are in. Use "location" pull down to narrow down search
according to whether it is a bar/disco/hotel/whatever. Often
the meeting time is before 9am, use character menu and click
on down arrow to wake up before 9am. Click on location to
make pickup/dropoff.
Nailing competitors with lots of "joke items" (sabotage) such
as rats, laxitives, smoke bombs... rapidly rises you in mafia
ranks. I haven't figured out how to use real weapons yet --
they seem to get you busted for carrying them and I can't use
them on competitor restaurants. Chef competitions are extremely
frustrating, I always get 0's. Would love to see the docs...
advertising is good for a week. Posters seem to be a good
value. If you do a newspaper ad, try to form a complete
sentence, though this is often tough. Buying max flyers is
pretty cheap. Don't forget to do more advertising each week.
Pay back loans when you can, this will up your credit rating
so you can borrow much more later when you need it. To rent a place,
click on it and call the corresponding real estate agent.
Eventually the "palace" will let you make an appointment, and
you can make political contributions to their account (through
the bank). I'm not sure what this is good for, maybe a bribe
for restaurant reviews where you get stars. Mafia info hasn't
proved useful yet (drivel, commodity prices, more arms
dealers), nor has insurance.
Haven't figured out warehouses (depots), they seem to act as a backup
supplier to restaurants, and for commodity trades (including
weapons?)
I'm really interested in how a restaurant can gain geographic
"control" of the surrounding area. A competitor set up shop
next to me and took ALL my customers, I couldn't get them back
even after nailing him with a hundred laxatives/smoke
bombs/rats/stinky cheese.
