What's the best way to make money?

[☾ L a d y o f W i n t e r;]

I thought this was gonna be fun and now I'm 7k in the hole and I lowered prices and have the bare minimum workers. Any tips??

[Lonesomepoet]

cater to the upper class

[Padelboot]

A good tip I picked up on this forum years ago is to at least add 4$ to every meal on top of the ingredient cost. So if a meal costs 2$ in ingredients, you should put it to 6$ for it to become profitable. 6$ is also still low enough for cheepskates, but... you don't want those.

Now the tutorial advises you to cater to cheapskates first, because their expectations are rock bottom and thus you don't need fancy decor or cleaning or fancy meals or literally anything as long as the food is cooked semi-properly. Good to boost early reputation, but your wallet will be crying.

I recently started a new game and went in with the goal of getting rid of the cheapskates pretty much immediately. First have an idea what kind of restaurant you want to run in the beginning. A family restaurant? More youthful hip one? Do you want a dessert paradise? Or maybe a grill specialized in steak?

In any case, you should prepare a decent amount of recipes, ideally you go into custom recipes only as soon as you can. Your initial ingredient and skill points are limited, so this is something to work towards. Pick ingredients and food templates you think you will use often. I usually love cheesecakes, so I always pick up the cheesecake template, as an example. Same with Lasagna. Custom recipes are also a good way to make cheaper recipes. Vegetables are much cheaper than meat, for instance, so you can create some vegetarian or vegan meals with very low ingredient costs. Always try to get to 100 points when creating a meal, because then it's truly superb and will usually get much better once you unlock more skill perks and better ingredients.

Why is the type of restaurant important? The different customer groups naturally. In the beginning food enthusiasts are a good option, because they pay a lot, order full meals and are quite forgiving on other aspects as long as you have wunderful food. Low budget families and tourists are also willing to spend more money on full meals, but do have decor expectations. Blue collar workers, while willing to pay much higher prices than cheapskates, don't order much, but also eat very quickly, so you can create a restaurant catering to workers, where you try to serve them quickly and get more money by higher customer numbers.

To get them, you will have to spend money. Pick at least mediocre cleaning policies, buy some decor and please, please, please buy a dishwasher in the kitchen. The dishwasher raises general atmosphere immensely and can by itself already unlock some customer types other than cheapskates.
Depending on which customers you initially want to cater to, look around your restaurant and start putting reputation points into the areas with said customers ASAP to increase your potential customer pool. After a few times you will easily notice how many more customers want to come visit.


The first few days will always be rough, because you need to buy all the stuff and get things rolling, but if you do it right, it will. And one last thing: You can easily go much higher than just 4$ above ingredient cost. ;)
Don't be afraid to raise prices, especially not, when you got a fantastic recipe. As long as cheapskates are the only people complaining it's fine.

[Yellow dog Funny]

Cook time. Some ingredients, like potato, add 10+ seconds to the cook time of some dishes. If your goal is money, your goal should be to get the most tables in and out as possible.

I like using recipes like desserts, drinks, salads, sandwiches. If I have to add a high cook time recipe, I make sure to make it a higher price to make up for time and discourage a lot of people ordering it.

This causes higher stress for workers so you will have to decide between more salaries, higher salaries, or more micromanagement.