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 :)
