Any tips or advice for this game?

[hrb673]

I'm having a hard time earning the money I need to progress in the game. Today it revealed that I can buy the celebrity area for $15,000. I'm already trying my hardest to save up $30,000 for the next appliance. After that I need to buy the next boat dock for $10,000. By the time I get the money for one thing there are several other things I have to buy. I cannot afford to contribute food to all the other side challenges! This is getting very frustrating.

[tartan]

Honestly, the best thing is just to look at it as an idle game. Once you get to higher levels the cost and wait is much higher and it's just as hard to afford. The Indian station, for example, costs 550000 coins and you have to wait a week for it to be built. The station before it was 500000. It's a mobile game with microtransactions, and that's how they get people to spend money on it. That said, here are some pointers:

1. Don't serve your orders as you make them. Instead, you want to save them up until you can serve them all while using a coin booster, preferably a 2x one.
2. Critics and celebrities give the highest rewards, so if you are getting close to having one visit, make sure you are ready to do tip #1.
3. Prioritise getting all three docks - these give supplies for boosters and upgrades. The middle one is the most important as it gives the materials for x2 coin boosters. I would recommend only filling the orders on the middle one to get booster materials, but you can use the other two when a dock challenge comes up to get at least some of the rewards.
4. Don't buy the singer stage, you don't need it. You can also ignore foodland as it's just another distraction. Food trucks are a little better but can be ignored too, especially to begin with.
5. Make good use of your store - while you're waiting to use your order boosters make extra dishes and sell them. You can sell a stack of 5 dishes at a time, and some sell for good money. You can also visit other stores and buy up anything that is discounted and sell it at full price yourself. You can also visit Matt's store every two hours - it'll have 4 items, mostly discounted. Be aware that some items are slow sellers and can linger for days until they're bought by the store bots. I also recommend expanding your store by at least double as you can make good money, especially at higher levels.
6. Find an active team and make use of the tournaments. There are different leagues based on points brackets so you don't need to be in the highest ranking teams to get a good reward. You will also want to follow and friend as many active players as possible as performing help tasks (watering, food truck orders, speeding up cooking) gives you a reward. You can also see which of your friends have stock in their store, so you can easily look for items to resell at a higher price.
7. Expand your storages as soon as possible. You can get the ingredients for this from star boxes, other stores (preferably on discount), and from chef masters chests. Once you have fully expanded the storages sell the extras back in your store. You also get extra booster storage space for competing in the chef masters league, so that is also recommended.
8. Never level up with goodies leftover - Be very careful when you're getting close to levelling up because it refills your goodies, meaning you "lose" any you had from before. If all your stations are full just buy fruit trees or a bunch of expensive ingredients you'll need anyway.

Hope this helps.

[Wiani]

Great tips and advice Tartan. I agree on skipping the foodland and singer stage. I myself find the celebrities annoying. One other thing that makes things easier is adding everyone you can to friends list. A lot of free experience when helping others. It also allows for more people to help you. I recommend the food trucks, both of them. Lots of experience and money. The more friends = more help.