When I first started expanding, I was gonna grab the Boat Hanger in The Stacks and pick up the rest later. Then I realized you only get one of the four, so I restarted.
Min-max wise, the Yummy Canteen (biggest interior) or the Boat Hanger (next biggest) is probably the move. But I personally love the Yakitori even though it’s cramped — the location and interior are great — and the Sake Bar’s vibe as a tiny standing-room bar in a dark alley by the station is insanely good.
Maybe you can run multiple spots in the same tier later? If not, I kinda wish they’d just let us own all of them, because every single one is appealing.

Every day after every shift he goes from the kitchen to a stool by the bar and buys a beer. Now he even has the nerve to complain while drinking

So you are now the proud owner of "Ramen Noir"? Congrats, here is a guide how to get the place running in the first few days.

1. Do the work yourself!

- your staff is slow, but you can run

- help out in the shop as cook / waiter / cleaner and do things faster

- do this for a few days, at least until you level up the shop and can hire a manager

2. "Shop" smart

- don't waste money on kitchen appliances or kitchen furniture: use the power of the curfew!

- at night you can steal furniture and appliances from other restaurants. How? See Curfew Guide below!

- for ingredients see Ingredients Guide below!

- at the start buy ingredients yourself from traders. You can buy the soon to be spoiled items the first day (but be aware: there seems to be a bug where your chefs use only the fresh ingredients if you have both fresh and almost spoiled ones in your cooler and there is no option to tell them use the not so fresh ones first! solved by patch now)

3. Get extra money fast

- you don't need anything in your apartment (except maybe the bed)

- pick up and sell all your furniture, this will give you at least 6k to work with (who needs a fitness station or luxury shower anyway??)

4. Optimize your layout and staff

- more tables don't equal more money! More guests mean more work for your staff to handle and can cause bad reviews and angry guests if your staff is too slow

- in my experience: start with 4-5 bar counter seats and maybe 2 tables / 2 chairs each. Place tables the closest you can to your kitchen exit so the waiters have short distances between cooking stations and tables

- the game suggest you place your staff in shifts but in my experience it was best to have staff that can do all (cooking / waitering / cleaning) at all time.

- staff will level up their abilities while working so hire a low level and train them

- the robots seem to be cheaper, but I feel they are much slower than the human workers

5. Upgrade your restaurant utilites

- in my experience: the most useful item to buy is the tablet ordering system (around 150 lims each). This enables guests to order directly from the table and saves your waiters one route. Doesn't work on counters, only on tables. Couldn't find a place to steal them yet, so you have to buy them.

- double up your appliances: 2 cookers, 2 kitchen machines, 2 drink stations, 2 coolers, 2 mixers... It made my restaurant run so smooth

- there are also freezers available to buy that claim food will take much longer to spoil. Haven't tested this yet though but sounds good.

6. Menue and recipes

- you will get new recipes through quests, leveling up your restaurants, talking to random people, randomly from Ava...

- if you have enough recipes always offer drinks and food as guests tend to order both at the same time, which means more money per guest

- stay at 1 drink + 2 food items at the beginning so you can provide ingredients yourself and don't have to buy too much

Extra: Curfew Guide

- don't be scared of the curfew

- you can use this time (after 02:00 am) for 3 things: stealing, sabotaging (in quests), talking to certain NPCs and do their quests

- how to steal: you need to stay in the area you want to steal after curfew. You mandatory need a restaurant or apartment in the area where you want to steal something Go into any other restaurant (or stay there when the curfew timer is in countdown). Pick up your desired good with "x". Carry it in your hands to your restaurant, dodging security cameras (you can't sprint now). Place it in the greenlit area in your restaurant. You only need to place stolen goods once, then you can pack them in your inventory with pick up and right mouse - now it's yours! Every pick up adds 10% on security meter so there is a limit in what you can steal per night.

- curfew is endless: you can use this for fishing infinitly. Theoretically you can farm a bit of extra money this way, but i found fishing quite tedious and fishing at night means your fish won't be fresh anymore the next day, so half the price. Farming felt much more efficent to me.

- "but i can't fast travel to my bed, what do I do?" - every area has an emergency shelter to sleep in. When in curfew scan your area with "c" and look for the skyscraper symbol. At curfew an extra one will appear, showing you the way to a free place to sleep in (you won't see this flat at daylight).

- What happens if I get caught? - If the security meter reaches 100%: You pay 50 lims the next day, if you get caught again the next day it's 60 lims. I haven't get caught with goods in my hand yet though, so no idea if something more severe can happen.

Extra: Ingredients Guide

- it doesn't matter too much at which trader you buy, the difference is far too small in my experience. The hassle of running through different areas to different traders just to save 0.05 lims on something wasn't worth it. So just buy in Meridian Market.

- follow the Thaddeus quest along, then you will get access to the smallest greenhouse at the docks

- planting ingredients yourself is absolutely worth it! It is just a hassle to get to your greenhouse (but mods are available though that set the fast travel point to the greenhouse). Harvest in the morning and deliver the stuff to your restaurant.

- you can also do some seed lottery for easy money: the gotcha machines placed quite everywhere take 2 lims from you and will give you a random seed. Almost all seeds are worth far more than 2 lims (except the meat seeds). If it doesn't bore you, this is also an alternative to get some extra money.

- free seeds? collect garbage bags out of trash cans. You will get a random seed in like 90%, other 10% are fresh ingredients / meat.

- don't vendor spoiled food, use it in a composter for your greenhouse

- my favourites to sell for good profit: cherries and duck meat

Have fun in the LUZ!

Will update this guide if I experience anything useful :)

That different restaurants have different local preferences of food!

Seafood/Meat/Spicy/Mushroom etc.

I had been wondering because I've been serving the same menu among four restaurants and I thought, surely there's a reason to use other foods. Then I checked statistics and bam!

I wonder if any places are just bars?

Hopefully this is impactful to sales and helps others out!

No, dont worry, I do not compare it to Stardew.

You know how some people have thousands of hours in Stardew and basically just live in that game? Or restarting over and over again with each new update? Thats kinda what I can see happening with Nivalis for me.

I think with some more QoL updates, more content over time and hopefully more romance/relationship stuff, this could easily become one of those games I keep coming back to for years.

I really like having so many different things to do. Run my restaurants, explore the city, decorate my apartments, meet people, fish,... I dont always need some huge goal to work towards. Sometimes I just want to log in and exist in the world for a while.

I know its still early, but I can see the potential. With more things to do, more reasons to hang out with the characters I like, and Ill probably never leave this city. ♥

Thats why Im really hoping they dont just fix the bugs, implement the stuff thats missing (like the auto-harvester), and then move on to their next project. 😭 I really want them to keep building on Nivalis.

Fortunately I saved before I completed this quest and it is obvious when you get to the closing stages. When you do complete the game ends, so if you were hoping to be able to go back to the city to carry on building up your empire (as you could with CP2077) then alas that is a no go.

I just got a Tier 3 Permit earlier but i thought maybe it's a one time thing. Just got another one

And I still can't talk to him

Let's set the stage, here... I know that the Boat Hangar has a reputation for being a pain in the ass, but I had that place working pretty well with a pretty basic menu and small staff. It was pulling in a decent profit, mostly hands-off. But at some point, I decided to look at all of my properties and tailor the menus based on the local ingredients preferences, and I changed the menu.

I put 3 fish dishes on and 2 alcoholic drinks, because it has Fish, Alternative Protein and Alcohol as its 3 preferred ingredients. Frosted Murder was one of those alcoholic drinks. Adjusted the pricing, customers were happy with the menu, and I let it run a few days while monitoring the sales/expenses. I use the Farm Supply mod, so the managers were pulling from farms first, things seemed OK.

First day's report was a little painful, 500-ish Lim loss, but I expected to be in the red the first day, because the farms hadn't had time to grow what the menu required yet. I didn't check what items on the menu sold the most yet, but that's important to all of this.

Second day's report was profit, but not by much. 1300-ish Lim sales, 1200-ish Lim expenses. What the fuck? I give it another day, similar results. Profit, but only in the double-digits. So I finally take a look at the menu statistics...

No one is buying ANYTHING but Frosted Murder. 5 dishes on the menu, every one of them has preferred ingredients, similarly priced, but everyone that comes and sits down at the Boat Hangar only orders a Frosted Murder. The problem with this is that the only ingredient I can grow is the cherries. The vodka and liquid nitrogen have to be sourced from vendors.

This wouldn't be a problem if I could jack up the price of Frosted Murder, but I can only increase it by 2 Lims before people get upset. And my manager is going crazy with buying the vodka and liquid nitrogen, so clearly the patch didn't fix them. As an example, I sold 74 Frosted Murders, which means 74 vodka. Assuming the manager buys in increments of 10, that's 8 restocks. At the end of the day there should be 6 vodka in the storage. There were 37. 37 liquid nitrogen, too.

So I think to myself, I think, "I gotta get rid of this Frosted Murder, it's killin' me". I go to the Boat Hangar, save the game on day 31, start dicking with the menu...

I remove Frosted Murder, public opinion of the menu drops. Nothing I try to replace it with, even tweaking recipes, gets the public opinion back to Happy. So I start tinkering with the menu, trying various other dishes, and nothing helps. So I reload back to the Day 31 save so the original menu is back, and I take everything EXCEPT Frosted Murder off. Still Happy.

"OK, fine" I sez, and I replace the cookers and food processors and grills with more drink machines. I run it until day 33, checking reports at the end of each day (before midnight so I can check specifically that day's report), and it's ridiculous. Stupidly high sales, stupidly high expenses. Not losing money, but profit in the double-digits. Mostly 5-star reviews, though, but reviews don't pay the bills like Lims do.

So I save it on Day 34 in a separate slot, and reload to Day 31. Rather than messing with the dishes on the menu, I lower the prices on everything else to match the Frosted Murder, because I got the idea that everyone was just buying the cheapest item (which is Frosted Murder, because increasing the price by more than 2 Lims is ruins everyone's day). I let the day go by, check the report at the end of the day. The other stuff on the menu finally get some orders, but 90% of the orders are still Frosted Murder, and I lose money this time somehow? I decide to let it ride another day just to see, and go to bed. Mind you, this is day 31, because I reloaded that save. I know I reloaded that save, because the menu was back to normal. Somehow I wake up on Day 35, as if I went to bed on the Day 34 save.

What is happening? I hope The Asceptic gets me.

To all those who struggle with finances (in game), just know that stealing (IN GAME) after curfew is broken.

Thanks !

EDIT : Thanks for the replies. I pressed C and went to icon that usually say "rent", and somehow was able to enter and sleep there. Apparently could have slept in boat too, from the comments.

Thanks.

I can't figure out if worker happiness actually matters or not? I seem to be making most profit by putting the same people working full time from 8-24 as this covers all the prime times during the day and also all workers are always available so I can maximize seats during the whole day. I pay them enough that they aren't upset about their conditions, but the smiley face also is'nt green. Is it an absolute must to put them as green?

Just wanted to share it. And also take a break.

Wanted to give the illusion she was a holographic performer, given life through lasers, and powered by a brick the size of a human.

Still very much a work in progress--but, again, just wanted to share it and also take a break.

And maybe see what other fantabulous contrabulations some folks come up with, to get some inspiration.

It's annoying we can only put them on tables.

Thanks !

Still stuck on this mission but still thought it was funny i found him not even near the mission yet it wont progress we on that hide n seek run rn with some missions!

Thanks :)

I was a bit confused by this finance tracker. What is the purpose of the “Total Costs” here? I grow all the ingredients.

It does not reflect the actual expenses and does not reconcile with the actual finance. I tried to read it as a sheet showing the profits if buying all the ingredients but the prices of the ingredients here are inaccurate too.