Customer capacity and customers each hour

[zodi_kid]

Hello. I recently started playing and after 70 days kinda stuck with the fast food restaurant, I was wondering about a few gameplay mechanics.

First, I would like to know how does customer capacity work. I understand that you have a building with a inherent customer capacity (say 30), and each product selling point has also a maximum. The current maximum of your business is the lowest maximum. However, in the Insight window where you can check that, each station has three numbers: X / Y and below them Z. Z seems to be the real maximum. What do the other two numbers mean? Could it be one is the building maximum and the other one the appliance maximum? And I guess they are compared and one of them gives its vaule to Z, but I don't understand the logic behind it. Sometimes it picks the bigger one, sometimes it picks the other.

Furthermore, my current maximum seems limited by my industrial grill with a capacity of 20 customers/hour. However, I currently have two employees + myself working on the cash register and I can see customers that walk into the store and complain about the queue or being unable to find a cash register. Three cash registers means a potential limit of 60, even though in reality it happens to be a bottleneck.

Secondly, how can I know when I have reached my maximum capacity? For example, if the previous day my store was opened for 8 hours, it has a maximum of 20cust/hour and I got 160 customers, it is clear that I reached the limit. But what if i got 140, and it happened during 7 hours I had 20 cust/hour and during the opening hour it was totally empty? It is some info I have been unable to locate, the amount of customers every hour, which would also be useful to set the optimum working hours to maximize profit.

Finally, how does popularity play in all of this? How many customers will a 100% popularity get me? Can it be possible that I am investing in marketing for a store which currently has reached its maximum for most of its opening hours, effectively wasting resources?

I will be very grateful if someone can offer me some insights in all of this. And thank you in advance for your time.

[David Estes Creations]

Hello and welcome!

The building has a maximum. You cannot exceed that number. However, to reach that maximum, you need to have enough to each equipment type. So if a clothing rack has 10 capacity, you would need 3 to hit the building's maximum of 30.

However a cash register has a capacity of 20. So you need two of them. Now *technically* this would give 40 capacity, but since the building limit is 30, you cannot go above that.

And finally, if any piece of equipment doesn't reach the maximum, it limits the entre building.

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To know how you're doing each hour - look at the BizMan > Insights page and switch the customer graph at the bottom-right to "Yesterday" and it will give you an hourly breakdown of your customers that you served.

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Promotion (which is what I think you meant by popularity) is a combination of your building's natural traffic and your marketing. However, there are many factors at play - expensive things like electronics, clothing and jewelry have lower possibly customers than things like fast food due to their level of necessity and price. Additionally, the more competitors that are selling a product in a district, the lower the demand will be for that product, which could lower your potential customers. Things like customer satisfaction also play into it.

So...if you are not reaching your full customers, marketing can definitely help increase that and earn a lot more money. But for some things, you might already either be reach all the customers or hitting your building limit, and in that case, more marketing won't do anything buy waste money!

[zodi_kid]

I still have a few doubts.

First, then I guess in the customer capacity window it is comparing Station capacity / Building capacity. But what does the number below mean? Because it sometimes picks the minimum, sometimes picks the maximum (https://imgur.com/a/eGhn1LZ). I think the player needs more information to read that data correctly.

Related to that, my fast food joint does not have a kebab grill nor a salad bar yet. In case I bought enough appliances to raise the capacity to the building capacity (30), but then I bought the kebab grill and it had a capacity of 20, would that lower my establishment's capacity, even though I am adding stations?

Second, about the customers every hour, I noticed there is some considerable variance between each day. I take that it is currently the only way to check that, but it could be very useful to have the mean of costumers every hour for the past 7 days. It would give more information about "hot and cold" hours where you should add staff or close the store, respectively.

Finally, yes, sorry, I meant promotion. It is cool that the elasticity of products (or businesses) was taken into account, so less elastic ones are less likely to need promotion. It adds immersion to the game. That part was perfectly clear, thank you so much.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by zodi_kid:

I still have a few doubts.

First, then I guess in the customer capacity window it is comparing Station capacity / Building capacity. But what does the number below mean? Because it sometimes picks the minimum, sometimes picks the maximum (https://imgur.com/a/eGhn1LZ). I think the player needs more information to read that data correctly.

The first one is the limit of the installation itself (for example the pizza oven). The second one is the limit of the building.
You have enough pizza ovens for 20 people, in a building that's big enough for 30. So the customer limit is 20.
20/30 (instalation/building size)
20 (maximum customers)

Now you have cash registers for 60 people, but there is still only room for 30 people in the building.
60/30
30

The total capacity per hour uses the lowest of the instalation maximums. So yes, it would lower he establishment's capacity if you add a 20 customer instalation in a shop that has a total capacity per hour of 30.

[David Estes Creations]

Overall, what zoid said is correct, but to summarize each point:

Originally posted by zodi_kid:

First, then I guess in the customer capacity window it is comparing Station capacity / Building capacity. But what does the number below mean? Because it sometimes picks the minimum, sometimes picks the maximum (https://imgur.com/a/eGhn1LZ). I think the player needs more information to read that data correctly.

Each station has its own limit. Your pizza oven has a limit of 20, and you have one of them. So, you only have 20-capacity from that item. If you got two of them, that would be 40, however, your building limit is still the overall maximum. So even with 2 pizza ovens, you would still only get 30-capacity from that.

The number at the bottom is limited by the smallest capacity in the list. So, if everything else is at 30, but one item is still at 20, the whole store will be limited to 20.

Originally posted by zodi_kid:

Related to that, my fast food joint does not have a kebab grill nor a salad bar yet. In case I bought enough appliances to raise the capacity to the building capacity (30), but then I bought the kebab grill and it had a capacity of 20, would that lower my establishment's capacity, even though I am adding stations?

If you only got one, yes. If you got two, then you would be fine.

Originally posted by zodi_kid:

Second, about the customers every hour, I noticed there is some considerable variance between each day. I take that it is currently the only way to check that, but it could be very useful to have the mean of costumers every hour for the past 7 days. It would give more information about "hot and cold" hours where you should add staff or close the store, respectively.

Correct, each day is different, and depending on the type of stores, certain days of the week might not even be profitable to be open. The UI will continue to be adapted as time goes on, as "more data" is a common request :)