Profitable fast-food restaurant in Story

[Mister Jofel]

I saw quite some people indicating that it is hard to make a profit from the fast-food restaurant as been asked in the story mode and some even suggest to close it and sell it when the tasks are done. When I look in my game it makes more profit as my current gift shop:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2948259434

The restaurant itself has a max capacity of 30 customers and traffic 40%. It is open from 10 am until midnight (2 full time employees working 7 hours a day 7 on 7 + 1 full time cleaning person working 5 hours spread over the day)

How did I set it up? I took out the remainder loan I could from Larry (an additional 25k on top of the 15k as the story suggest)
Next to the hamburger Grill I also bought Industrial Fryer (french fries), Hotdog Grill, Drinks fridge, Salad Bar, 1 cash register, 7 cabinets, a bin, Cleaning station and 2 storage shelves. This costs a little less as 21k.
There is room for pizza oven as well, but with a little over 10k this was too expensive at this time.
It looks as simple as this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2948259815
quite a simple setup.

I know it's not a huge profit, but keep in mind I did not train my employees (according to insights customer relations is even under 20% for the fast-food restaurant) making customer satisfaction around 65%

Luckily for me it's not far of the drive-in store to replenish my stock, because that's something that keeps me rather busy each day :)

[CaponeAl [FR]]

1 or 2 tables with chairs will help to be better

[Chaezaa]

I got rid of the fast food place and moved my small gift shop there. I expanded the interior (shelfs and stuff) and it makes 12k per day.

[Mister Jofel]

Originally posted by CaponeAl FR:

1 or 2 tables with chairs will help to be better

I know my interior can use a spice up, but I ran out of budget, so a few days worth of income and it can be added for sure ;)

[Swisspike]

For starters, Fred wants you to open up a SMALL business. You did not. You opened up a larger one.

Fred wants ONE burger cooker. You have FIVE products that you are selling.

You're not cheating, but everyone is correct. IF you do exactly what Fred wants, a 15-capacity restaurant selling only burgers, you're not making a profit.

[freelancer909]

I would not train them either. Just like in real life. Lousy customer service at the burrito strand. Good Job Master!

[Mister Jofel]

Originally posted by Swisspike:

For starters, Fred wants you to open up a SMALL business. You did not. You opened up a larger one.

Fred wants ONE burger cooker. You have FIVE products that you are selling.

You're not cheating, but everyone is correct. IF you do exactly what Fred wants, a 15-capacity restaurant selling only burgers, you're not making a profit.

I thought Fred wanted me to learn things.
Fred told me to sell extra products in my shop for extra income (soda in my gift shop). I did exactly. Additionally I learned from it and did exactly the same with my fast-food restaurant. Sell extra side products.

Fred told me to do a small business for my gift shop. I did exactly that hence why my gift shop is not doing so well in my eyes. From what I remembered, he didn't mentioned size for the fast-food restaurant. So I looked for a good place to start it... in which I succeeded I think. I even think Fred would be proud of me learning from his wise lessons

[RoofCat]

Yeah, but even a mediocre early gift shop can earn 4k+ on Saturday. It would be hard with your business model to start any snowball. btw Pizza is one of the best incomes, and even better in Hell's kitchen, though that's a bit random and changes as the time passes. Pizza, salad, hot dog - roughly that order in my case. Soda sells some, but has great margin and fast food is probably best to sell it. In gift shop those 60$ a day are a joke.

Anyway, small fast food can earn you those 150$ if you work for free :D Close and forget.

[Mister Jofel]

I kept moving forward with my first fast-food restaurant (and gift shop) from the early game. I'm now at the point in the game where both shops have 100% customer satisfaction (I'm too lazy to do manual training, so the HR Manager did it for me).

Compared to the screenshots in my first post, I added expensive gifts to my giftshop (as the story told me so), learned from it and also added 1 pizza oven to my fast-food restaurant. With the expensive gifts on good saturdays I'm getting close to 5k profit like several indicated before. During bad weekdays it's half of that profit. (2,5k).
My fast food restaurant has also peaks in weekends (i've seen close to 6k) but a lot less downs during the week. (4k)

At the start the gift shop gave more profit, between 75-80% customer satisfaction they had a similar profit. Once customer satisfaction increased, the fast-food restaurant started to blossom. Probably because of the large variety of goods it sells.

I'm happy I kept that fast food restaurant :). Just as a reference, my profit during a good saturday for both my gift shop (Gifts4You) and Fast-food Restaurant (FastFeeder)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2949282307

You can also see I experimented with some other shops in the meanwhile as well ;)

[Yuri]

Good job man, while fast food and coffee shop are hard to earn, they are also the most lively shop to watch imo

[ultimegooner]

Fast food is hell and clearly not worth it time/space(warehouse)/money

i did a fast food in the best condition ( traffic/ size capacity/ demands ) it's just pure hell to manage
u need a lot of pretty everything and space in the warehouse
To keep a heavy traffic you need to have a truck all alone
After that if my truck don't struggle to deliver everything it's like that : https://i.imgur.com/BHbfsHh.png

[schutt]

Fastfood was bad in the beta 9, but my fastfood shop in the 0.1 does ok nothing to complain about. Still it earns less than the gift shop for a lot more work, but its more fun.

[aFiend]

bought this game yesterday, followed the quests, struggled with incomes.

then i went to steam forums, read some threads, sold my fastfood, got sencond giftshop and daily income went from 1,5k to 6-8k.

maybe fastfood is good in the long term, this method just let you get faster to the point where money actually doenst matter.

[Sarsgamer]

The campaign is more or less just pointing you to do some things. If you just sell burgers it's not going to be profitable. Gift shops with just cheap gifts will profit, but only a little. Also location matters, you can mark up food more in Hells Kitchen or Midtown, but can't mark up much in Murray or Garment districts, only like pizza or salad would you be able to mark up a little.

Also fast food and coffee shops are a bit unique as traffic index and marketing doesn't currently affect them. So optimal for these at locations with low traffic index. Also only ones I find that are worth having open 24 hours a day (supermarkets as well).

The one thing though is I don't like fast food shops without warehouse/ delivery setup as it's a lot of work to manually keep it stocked. But I guess in a sense that's a good learning process for new beginners.

Originally posted by schutt:

Fastfood was bad in the beta 9, but my fastfood shop in the 0.1 does ok nothing to complain about. Still it earns less than the gift shop for a lot more work, but its more fun.

What changed since beta 9? I haven't noticed anything. And I agree I have more fun doing fast food shops and as of recently coffee shops. I used to ignore coffee shops until donuts and cupcakes were released. Also I like seeing how the game AI setups the fast food and coffee shops, I bought out one awhile back and was like I like this setup and been following it a little on my new fast foods... it's basically setting up the machines and counters in a center point and tables and chairs on both sides, works and looks better in large retail locations.

[kombat30d]

I had the same issue, but after reading some comments and watching some youtube videos, my fast food restaurant is at a steady 1803.10 or so, after everything it profits around 800 - 900 dollars on average per day. To me that is pretty low. My first gift shop as stipulated in the story is around 5000 to 6000 per day, the second one is close to 15k to 16k per day. I don't know how to post a screenshot... sorry

BUT it is possible just have to utilize the props accordingly...that's it! But the fast food don't make enough money for me...

[Lelo Mariin]

ff shops are high volume for low profits. Only worth setting up AFTER you got your warehouse and logistics setup properly