What starts out as a cute and simple game becomes incredibly frustrating end game.
For anyone looking for a casual (or fun) business toycoon, this is not it.
But let us start with the possitives:
- customisation, you are able to customize a lot of things. From as basic as decorating your coffee shop, to advanced such as decorating your own bag
- it runs well. Not great but good enough. Most bugs luckily get patched out and I have not encountered any game breaking glitches
- fun, for the first 5 hours

Now onto the bad choices the developers have made that make the game really boring and frustrating;
- it's an utter chore late game!
I have played the gamer for quite a few hours but left after the custom drink update. I returned when the roasting update came out and was disapointed. Now I have returned just to be met with the same boring game I have left behind.
Let us start with the terrible, never changed UI. It is impossible to quickly navigate anywhere and I find myself clicking every button everytime I boot up the game. It's overcrowded, simple as that. Too many tiny menus hidden in even bigger menus and every possible info is scattered here and there.
If you do manage to find your way through the UIs, be prepared for the most boring mini-game imaginable. To full-fill the quest "serve a coffee of 90 points" you must full-fill brewing-quests. Brewing quests are incredibly boring! You are forced to watch a line for 3 minutes for +10 times. If you succeed that is. I usually got the best brew result by simply not using the incredibly poorly designed brewing controlls.
Therefore, I can never full-fill that quest. The developers are incredibly naive to believe that you will roast more than 10 different bags of coffee. I stopped as soon as I had a roast with level 90. And I did not have fun getting there, nor did my failed attemps get me anywhere near the requirements for the must-have item to fullfill all levels of the game.
Speaking of unrealistic requirements; one of the achievements is for the stock market. The stockmarket is incredibly broken, inconsistent and nothing but text on screen. No sane person would ever work towards it for fun.

Last but not least, keep in mind that this game has been started in 2017. It still looks like it is in 2017 and it certainly feels like it still needs way more time in the oven.

As much as I loved the first few hours of the game, it's just not worth it.

Had for years, played for a while and completed it several times I want this review taken with full seriousness with what is said. Very little has changed from early access to final besides levels turning into fans to unlock stuff that has made padding for the game.

The UI and graphics are still so basic and for the 3D models that can be excusable and considered it's style and cutesy but for the UI there isn't a excuse. Everything is flat and nothing pops, As impressive as the images on the steam page have gotten none of it is reflected in game, there's no borders or shadow just a rounded rectangle and a symbol for the icons and it affects the feel of the game. It doesn't feel like effort is there, it feels like graphic design practice.

I cannot see any noticeable changes made every time I played over the years on and off.

I'm not sure why this reviews are so positive ?

The idea is great, the concept has great potential, but the game just lacks gameplay, thrill, depth, logic, challenge, REALISM ?

I mean, what's the point ? You only get to supply the shop with coffee and to brew it once and then. The money will come whatever else you do, and that's pretty much it. After an hour, you'll be rich and don't know what else to do. There is no challenge, no real depth that is expected of management games. Each customer buys one coffee for 800-1000$ ? in 10 minutes you'll have like 100k with which you can buy pretty much everything. You don't get to change prices of the coffee, no real influence on demand and supply. Only options you have is to add seasonal menus by adding another types of coffee (which you have to buy for few thousand bucks to unlock, I mean WTF?), but that doesn't matter really. you can add one type of coffee and will still be ending rich. There are options to promote your Coffee shop to gain some sales boost, which you can do for 1k - 3k $ (for which you have to sell 1-3 coffees :) Other small options have really no much influence, so I mean what's the point of this game ?
It's not just unrealistic, it's boring. The worst 6€ I gave for a game, it's really not worth.

A fun concept with frustrating execution and lack of depth. The only reason i have so many hours is because i wanted to get all the achievements and i am stubborn.

What i liked:
- The geometric 3D look of the shops reminded me of The Sims 1. Very nostalgic and nice!
- Customizable drinks and you can give them silly names like "Crystal Meth"
- Customizable bean bags; lots of options to make some pretty cool designs!
- I liked the personalized end credits and how it was implemented
- Once you upgrade your workers they can do some tasks automatically which is nice 'cause you can focus on other aspects of the game (though this is only beneficial at certain points)

What i didn't like:
- The biggest challenge is the game's UI
- The only difference between the "types" of customers are what drinks they prefer. It would be more engaging if they had different needs, like businessmen working on their laptop and need electric outlets, casuals want to read magazines, students need a place to study etc.
- The game eventually becomes an idle game as everything can be automated, which is lame
- Once the idling is over you constantly have to manage your marketing campaigns (which somehow aren't automatic) and then later on the roasting...
- Ah, the roasting... INCREDIBLY tedious, even though you can "auto-roast" once you have a high enough skilled employee
- Late game feels more like "Coffee Roast Tycoon" than "Coffee Shop Tycoon"
- It took an online guide to figure out EXACTLY what the game expected of me when it came to the roasting "mini game", and once i figured it out it was boring
- Once you have a 500~ point roaster employee they can drag you through most of the roasting challenges, but this is STILL incredibly tedious and gave me carpel tunnel. Not well designed, nor integrated...
- Each level introduces new features (e.g. research) that aren't reused in subsequent levels, which feels odd
- Pre-made drinks have different cup shapes, but custom drinks can only use one type of cup
- Syrups and pastries are underutilized; they just kind of exist. It would be great to create custom syrups and pastries
- There are some random events in the game, but they don't really affect anything and don't matter (they could help or work against you in early game, but once you open the second shop it doesn't matter anymore)
- You unlock furniture as you go. The first few tables and chairs you can customize with a lot of different color palettes. Everything that you unlock later on is a set color or only has 1 color variant
- There are no cute sitting nooks, benches, or couches

Overall, the game had many ideas that were poorly implemented, making it feel shallow (as another reviewer also commented). It's a shame because i did feel it had potential.

I'm very disappointed, I was hoping for a lot from this game but there is no real challenge, no management, no fun... It's far from other management games... too bad!

If it didn't have so many bugs I could recommend it. When you have your staff automatically buy items they can keep buying and far exceed the limit that you have in place. Moving furniture is a nightmare and if you place something in the wrong place there is no undo button, so if you placed it somewhere unknown or out of bounds you can't leave that screen.

I also found it very tedious how often the staff retire which forces you to train more again.

I thought this game was decent when it was free on early access, but now that it's been released with a price, I don't think it's worth paying for. The lack of polish compared to other simulation games in the same price point is quite obvious, and it honestly just feels more like a mobile game I shouldn't have to pay for. Not just the art, but the way the game works just seems very surface level.

Despite employing baristas, you have to manually click to brew each pot of coffee. You have to repeat this when it goes stale or sells out, which occurs every few minutes. Nope.

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Edit: As per the developer's response, I carried on and got employees to level 4 so I could automate brewing and ordering and this did indeed remove some of the early tedious repetitiveness. However the rest of the game is very shallow and it's hard not to fail. I was able to get to a top-rated award-winning business in under 90 minutes and I'm struggling to find reasons to continue.

Its just not very hard. You quickly figure out the game can be beaten by just doing the same steps over and over again. Its fun for a while though but you will get bored quickly.

I want to like this game. It has some fun mechanics and there are portions of the game that have progression that feels good, but I've hit the 4hr mark and the last two hours have been forcing myself to see if something good is coming. The UI is buggy and limited, a lot of the progression is really shallow, and though it does a commendable job at trying to include some of the more overlooked aspects of running a shop, the management aspects are so clunky and crude that you end up trading one micromanagement for another when the promise is to allow the player to delegate. If there were substantial improvements or the price were a bit lower, I'd say it's worth a few hours, but at the moment I've been forcing myself to find a reason to keep playing.