A quick run down of some helpful advice and tips for those just starting out on their pizza Adventure.
The Basics
All credit goes to The Apothecary!
Starting Out
Ok so you want to start your very first pizza joint. Thats great , but what are some of the things that you should look at?
Well first thing is first, go ahead and pause your game and take a gander at what the city has to offer in terms of shops. The things I will typically look for are:
- Rent – I want a cheap place with a respectable customer base for my first restaurant. Don’t shoot for the moon right off the bat because odds are you will crash and burn. At the same time do not be a cheapskate. And remember , once you establish a foothold THEN you can begin the assault.
- Warhouse Locations – This is one of THE most important aspects to this game. A good warehouse is either very close to your restaurant without TOO many street crossings, or a warehouse right next to a subway entrance if your restaurant is also near a subway. The best warhouse is one on the same “block” without any street crossings. This will give your runners a clear line.
- Diners in the Area – Ok so this can go hand in hand with Rent, however later on this will eclipse rent in terms of importance, however you are just starting out. So for a starter place it is best to aim for 1-2 demographics. You will not be wanting a ton of variety which I will cover in a later section. This is also where you will decide the operation times of your place. I like to shoot for 2 shifts off the bat.
Pizzas
Ok so we have a nice plot of land we have made our own. Now its time to cultivate some profits. Time to make PIZZAS! So for this step its very important to know what your target demographics want. So I will do a quick rundown of what each “tab” means. If you dont know what I mean by tab, click the question marks above the faces when making a pizza. This will open up your “preference” tab.
Variety – Variety covers the ingredient’s “families” I guess you could say. So if Teens have a frowny face under Variety, then that means they dont want a ton of different types of stuff. They will only want lets say Meat and Cheese. On the other hand if they have the Goofy face that means load that sucker up with all types. This also means watch how many of each “family” you add as that also counts in variety. The phone message for this will be “How you USE your toppings”
Topping – As far as I can tell this is the actual amount of topings you will put on. This will range from kind of skimpy to loader up. This one is pretty easy to grasp. The phone message will be “The WEIGHT of the pizza”
Types – I wont really bother with this one. Meat is Meat, Veggie is Veggie. So on and so forth.
One this I will say when it comes to ingredients, do NOT use every possible one out there. This will put a giant strain on your stock room. Idealy I shoot for 9-12 ingredients in each restaurant. THIS TIP is how you avoid giant catastrophes down the line. Using to many variations means you cannot keep your place stocked well no matter how many runners you hire. Once you have a giant store room later on you can go crazy with stuff, however for starting off show a little restraint.
Furniture and Service preferences – Another self explanatory tab. This covers the furniture you use and the oven the pizza is made in. This is just knowing the demographic and catoring to them.
A final note of when making pizza’s.Once people begin flooding in you will see heart bubbles on the top left. This means you have discovered a favorite ingredient for a social class. Use this to create new and better pizza’s. Never stop evolving your culinary arsenal.
Staffing
So you have the food sorted out, now to decide who will cook and serve your amazing cuisine. To start out we need to decide how many we will employ.
In my experience a starter restaurant can get away with 1 chef , 2 servers, and 2 runners per shift. This will keep you covered on practiaclly all sides. Best of all you can adjust if you need to. Spend 2-3 days just watching your place. What are our high and low times? Are the servers getting everyones orders on time or are people leaving due to having to wait? Can the Chef keep up with orders? How are those stock rooms.. do you run out of ingredients and if yes then how often? These are the questions you will want answered.
So who do I hire Apoth? WELL, lets do a quick rundown of what to look for.
Cooks – The 2 stats we have for a Chef are Quality and Speed. Quality obviously is how good they can make a zaw. Speed is how quick. Take quality over speed any day. This does not mean tank your speed value, but if they are making garbage then speed wont matter because no ones coming. Also be mindful of the salary of chefs. Chefs are the highest paid in the game ranging from 700$-250$. Snag something around the 400 mark. Good quality and acceptable speed. And remember if they cant keep up that can be a good thing as that means you have more customers than you can handle. In which case hire yourself a second chef.
Service Staff – These are your Waiters/Waitresses obviously. Their job will be taking the orders and then running the pizza’s out. With them it is a choice of Friendliness vs Speed. This can be a little tougher of a call but generally speed win out at the start. We are not looking to make friends, just to push out top quality pizza’s. Hire some staff who are quick on their feet but wont be complete jerks to the customers. A good idea for this would be maybe 80%speed 30-40 % Friendliness. As for wages we will be hiring 2 of them. I like to hire 2 servers for the same wage as my 1 Chef. So 2 at 250$ if I have hired 1 chef at 500$.
Runners – These are by far the bane of my existance in this game. Runners can easily make or break you restaurant. If they cant keep up, the entire place will shut down and people will leave in droves. Starting out have at LEAST 2 per♥♥♥ 3 if your warehouse is some distance away. Find a happy middleground for Runners. You want them to be quick but also bring back lots of stuff to keep the engine going. Also while under this topic of runners, if you ARE having trouble with keeping the room stocked this may also be a sign you are using to many different ingredients in your pizza’s. So consider cutting that down before you go crazy and hire 20 billion runners.
Restaurant Layout
So the staff is now hired. Time to design your dream restaurant. Well… maybe not your dream, but we can make a nice cozy place to make lots of early cash money. So under Arcitech you have a few choices.
Change Layout & Change Rooms- This will let you decide how many and how big of rooms you have. Unfortunantly this tool does not have a TON of variations until later, however it will serve its purpose for now. So the 2 choices you have are do you want a big dining room or do you want a big stock room. I choose the larger dining room, especially if you have heeded my advice and are not using a lot of different ingredients. However if you ARE using a good variety then perhaps the stockroom is the better choice. You WILL notice you have a 4 room option however that is for later when you have unlocked the delivery option.
Hire Interior Designer – I dont know about you, but I dont play a game just to let the game play for me. This is a cute little tool and is useful if you are just trying to truck through the game quick. In my eyes its a huge waste of money. Dont be lazy and make your own darn restaurant.
Post-Opening
So your little shop is open for business, you are feeling proud and excited. However perhaps you are not getting a customer base you are happy with. That is ok because now I will cover some topics to help you drive those customers in and make you a true Pizza Mogul.
Area of Influence – So what is area of influence you say? Simply put when you click on your restaurant it is the green circle around it. How this works is any time someone hungry (as indicated by the pizza above their head) walks into your influence ring, they will immediately make a B line for YOUR restaurant. This is also the case for your mascots and advertisement signs. So lets break it down even further
Restaurant – It may be a little to late now but this is a learning experience. What you should look for with your restaurants influence ring are places like subway hubs, stadiums, hotels. Heck even factories if the exit will run them into or near your circle. And remember the circle gets substantially larger when you upgrade.
Mascot – This guy(OR GIRL) is amazing for driving business in right when you need it. Starting off on a simple 3 hour shift, you can place this little guy anywhere in the city you want. Dont see many customers during a certain shift? Find a buildiing with high traffic at those times and toss this guy(OR GIRL) in front, set him to that timeframe and then sit back and watch the customers roll in. At the measly 1000 $ a day this guy (OR GIRL). A VERY smart investment. One place I truly love to put them is infront of subway hubs. People will walk out and then immediately back in, coming to MY restaurant.
Marketing Signs – Pretty much exactly like your restaurant, people walk into the green circle and if they are hungry then off they go to your little shop. These are obviously less customizable location wise to mascots, but often times they are also cheaper. As with everything else, Subway hubs and high traffic areas are the best. Also the most expensive usually.
Ending Thoughts and Extra Tips
So this about wraps up the guide. I do plan on writing another guide for more advanced stuff such as sabotage and the glorious worlds of global marketing and delivery service. For now tho I feel you should be off to a fantastic start. In this section I will just shoot off some major tips that were buried deep in the mounds of text I wrote. So have fun and remember that life is just a slice of pie.
Tips
- Be mindful of your area of influence when choose shop spots. Subway hubs or high traffic venues are best
- Pizza carts are your best friend. Find a good school or Mall and put it infront of it with pizza directly made for that style of customer. Can easily make 4-5k profit a day.
- Mascots are very helpful to fill in dead zones in your day. Choose a timeframe you dont see much business and set him to that time infront of a high traffic area… of that time
- Runners can use subway hubs to get to and from warhouses, drastically cutting down on run times. If you have a place right beside a hub and there is a warhouse even across the city but has a hub next to it, that is still a very good place to link to your restaurant
- KEEP YOUR INGREDIENT COUNT LOW. 7-12 is the numbers I found to shoot for, at least starting out. You have a small stock room so it is not best to have 20 different ingredients in it.
- A number one way to make money are low cost pizzas set to higher prices. Customers dont care if the pizza costs YOU 2 bucks to make but you sell it for 15 bucks. Be mindful of the customer guide and set accordingly. You will be amazed how far you can push it.
- When making pizzas for a certain demographic make sure you pay very close attention to your little ? icon. That is your cheat sheet to what people like. It can be very easy to cater to one demographic by simply following that sheet to a T.
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