How to make money with the fast food restaurants?

[darkbetter]

I took out loans to accomplish tutorial objectives, mainly headquarters and warehouse setup. Expensive gifts I was selling in the gift shop was my main source of income whereas I was barely turning a profit with the fast food shop. So I gambled, took out the last 10k loan I could and bought a pizza oven as well as some pizzas from the wholesaler and... it didn't work. Nothing I was selling even came close to the profit margins I got from expensive gifts.

Btw got barely 1k and no more loans available so I think this is the end for this save.

[David Estes Creations]

There is a little AI customer but that makes the queue back up if you're watching in real time. If you "time machine" forward, that bug shouldn't happen. If that's your issue, this might help a lot!

Other than that, make sure your customer service and interior scores are up!

[Pedroig]

Fast Food is not profitable early game...

[Jarod]

I too started to take a nose dive following the tutorial and opening a fast food restaurant.

I don't think it should tell you to do that, I tried all sorts of things to make it profitable, opened up the hours, added employees, nothing.

[scarboy17]

My fast food place is now earning about 4k in profit each day i was the same barely earning 1k a day. So went and gotten around 150k loan from the bank their are 2 banks one lets you get more. Moved my fast food place to midtown after a few days of moving furniture, equipment and supplies finally had it ready to go. Currently serving around 20 customers and hour but once i can get a 2nd pizza oven will be serving 40 an hour at most.

It can be profitable but takes some time

[Pedroig]

I turned it into another gift shop, sold the food specific stuff, repurposed everything else, minimized the loss as much as possible...

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by scarboy17:

It can be profitable but takes some time

I agree, it can definitely work, but I also agree that it's not an ideal second business, especially for brand new players!

[Nique84]

I actually think the tutorial puts you on the wrong foot here. Why does it want you to open a fast food restaurant while it is clearly not profitable at all at start?

[Sarsgamer]

Is fast food specifically part of the tutorial? It's been awhile since I've played the tutorial.

I don't recommend fast food early on, until you have a delivery system. And you definitely want to sell more than pizza. Pizza is one of the lower selling items I find.

Don't think of fast food as a specific food type in the game. Like you can't open a pizza shack and just sell pizza and have it profitable. You want to sell everything the fast food has and can even add in coffee, donuts, cupcakes etc (coffee shop items).

Adding all the machines and stocking them is a bit expensive early game and keeping them stocked without the delivery system is a lot of work.

[FxFighter]

You don't really make any money early with cheap gifts or fast food like what the tutorial suggests (at least on hard, haven't tried other difficulties).

The tutorial sends you down the path of bankruptcy by setting up a bunch of unprofitable stuff. I'm sure it'll have to be balanced in the future.

Right now just selling expensive gifts is enough to give you easy profits without much effort so you can at least try out how the rest of the game works.

[Parkera]

Yeah I ended up closing my fast food for a day got a loan and bought 2x Fryers and Hot Dog grills, extra shelves and cabinets and couple extra dining booths. While it was closed I also sent all my staff into training. The next 2 days I ran it myself with limited basic 9-5 hrs then as trained staff (now 85% is customer service min) came back I redid the schedule and hrs and now I am making a decent profit from it.
It does take ages and is somewhat of a grind and I do feel the tutorial leads you somewhat astray with this as others have said early game its a grind and you need to invest alot into it.

[blueman1027]

Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like there's a bit of a disconnect between what you see inside the shop vs what's going on under the hood in this game. In my restaurant, watching in real time made it look like I needed a bunch of cash registers and staff because I couldn't get customers through the line fast enough. The vending items (grill, bakery case, fryer, etc) appeared to refill themselves. So, why ever have more than one of each? Right? Wrong, apparently. That business barely broke even every day, despite my best efforts to get customers out the door faster.

Here's the thing. Watching my shop painted a rosy picture, but Bizman was telling a different story. In Bizman, I was limited to 1/3 of the customers the building could handle due to not having enough vending items, and that I actually went overkill on the cash registers and staff. So, I bought what I needed to buy to get rid of the bottleneck in Bizman and turn those yellow dots green. What do you know? The shop is turning a healthy profit now.

So basically, I think the money you get at midnight is based upon how things are going in Bizman, not what you might see when you're in the shop itself. I'm not sure if this is your problem or not, but figured I'd throw it out there because I was in the same boat with the fast food shop.

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by blueman1027:

Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like there's a bit of a disconnect between what you see inside the shop vs what's going on under the hood in this game.

Correct. And that is being worked on. If you stand in the store, it goes based off of that AI crowd animation, which gets laggy, especially in a fast food store. If you "fast-forward" time or are not in the store, it goes off of a better simulation which does not get laggy.

[Swisspike]

Originally posted by blueman1027:

Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like there's a bit of a disconnect between what you see inside the shop vs what's going on under the hood in this game. In my restaurant, watching in real time made it look like I needed a bunch of cash registers and staff because I couldn't get customers through the line fast enough. The vending items (grill, bakery case, fryer, etc) appeared to refill themselves. So, why ever have more than one of each? Right? Wrong, apparently. That business barely broke even every day, despite my best efforts to get customers out the door faster.

Here's the thing. Watching my shop painted a rosy picture, but Bizman was telling a different story. In Bizman, I was limited to 1/3 of the customers the building could handle due to not having enough vending items, and that I actually went overkill on the cash registers and staff. So, I bought what I needed to buy to get rid of the bottleneck in Bizman and turn those yellow dots green. What do you know? The shop is turning a healthy profit now.

So basically, I think the money you get at midnight is based upon how things are going in Bizman, not what you might see when you're in the shop itself. I'm not sure if this is your problem or not, but figured I'd throw it out there because I was in the same boat with the fast food shop.

The animation in the store has nothing to do with sales.

You can prove this by walking out, then back into the store. The store will go from full, and then to empty, with no change in revenue.

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by Swisspike:

The animation in the store has nothing to do with sales.

You can prove this by walking out, then back into the store. The store will go from full, and then to empty, with no change in revenue.

The issue is that the sales are directly linked to the animation if you're in the building. You get sales for each customer that physically walks up to the cash register and buys something. So, if the animation queue gets backed up, you get less profit.

If you are not in the building, it simulates the building in a way that is more profitable.

[Sarsgamer]

Originally posted by David Estes Creations:

Originally posted by Swisspike:

The animation in the store has nothing to do with sales.

You can prove this by walking out, then back into the store. The store will go from full, and then to empty, with no change in revenue.

The issue is that the sales are directly linked to the animation if you're in the building. You get sales for each customer that physically walks up to the cash register and buys something. So, if the animation queue gets backed up, you get less profit.

If you are not in the building, it simulates the building in a way that is more profitable.

Yep! I reported this issue awhile back, but it's pretty minor. It's not very often you're in the store watching, especially in later game.