The Ins and Outs of Restaurant City

Playfish announced that they will be closing Restaurant City and the Gourmet Edition App permanently June 29, 2012.

Their reasons are lack of regular users and the necessity to focus on their more popular games. To read the official announcement, check out the game forum.

There are several petitions against the closure circulating (most are also in the game forum and there is a Facebook group). If you love the game and don't want to see it end, be sure to sign. Maybe EA and Playfish will change their minds about closing the game.

Restaurant City is an application created by Playfish for Facebook. You create a virtual restaurant and hire people from your friends list to work in the restaurant. There are variety of decoration themes from which to choose for both the inside and the outside of your restaurant. You can dress your avatar and your employees as you choose. As your gourmet points increase, your restaurant expands. Ingredients are collected to improve dishes and to change your menu.

• Your gourmet points and level increase more if the game is currently running and employees have energy.
• Currently, the maximum level is 90. Gourmet points will still continue to accrue after this point.
• You can open the restaurant for up to 24 hours. If you come back on time after the shift is over, you get bonus points. So if you did a 30 minute work shift, you must come back within 30 minutes of its end to get the bonus. If you did a 24 hour shift, you must come back within 24 hours of the shift end to get the bonus. The same idea applies for all the other shifts.
• If you are actively playing the game, do the free 30 minute work shifts. Then when you are logging off, pay for a longer shift to cover until you log back in so that your restaurant will keep making money and you will be able to get the bonus points.
• If you are late coming back to your restaurant, your employees will be sad. They will have bubbles over their head with red sad faces. You will have to feed them a treat to make them happy again.
• Sending your employees to rest is no longer an option due to the longer shift options.
• If you have a bed in your restaurant, your employees will work 0.5% faster than normal (1% faster with the gingerbread bed).
• One cook can handle three to four tables efficiently.
• The closer the stoves are to the tables, the better since less travel time is needed. The best arrangement for the tables is a semi-circle around the cooks.
• An arcade or waiting chairs can be used when you have more customers than you have tables. It keeps the customers occupied long enough for a table to become open.
• As each customer leaves, you will receive an approval rating. It will be thumbs up if the customer stayed long enough to eat the meal. The rating will be thumbs down if the wait was too long, the table was dirty, or there were no available seats. If toilets were dirty you will still receive money and gourmet points, but you will not receive a thumbs up.
• 88 is the highest popularity possible unless you buy special items for your restaurant. Maximum popularity possible increases with levels.
• Your customer flow increases as your popularity goes up.
• If you leave your restaurant and go to the street, when you reenter, there will not be any customers inside. It will take a few minutes for them to start filling the restaurant again and your approval rating will not be affected. This can be helpful if your employees are getting behind.
• The best ratio of employees is 5 cooks, 3 servers, and 1 cleaner. If you have fewer than 9 employees, alternating the one person between cleaning and waiting tables is a good way to maintain maximum approval rating.
• You unlock a 10th employee when your "Strawberry Heaven" drink reaches level 10. You can also receive another employee by completing the bowling alley.
• At level 80, an 11th employee unlocks.
  
• You get one free ingredient each day you log in. You get extra ingredients for logging in two or three days in a row.
• You get one free ingredient the first time you visit each of your friends.
• Each day there is a food quiz. It is multiple choice with three possible answers. If you answer correctly, you receive an ingredient.
• Three ingredients are available for purchase daily from the ingredient market located at the top right just outside of the restaurant.
• You can also grow ingredients in the garden at the top right of your restaurant. Seeds can be purchased for $2000 and take 48 hours to grow.
• Plants will stay watered for 9 hours. After that, they will stop growing until they are watered again.
• You can receive special ingredients as gifts from your friends.
• You receive a gift when your friends accept gifts you sent to them. Sometimes the bonus gift is money, sometimes ingredients, sometimes it is decorative items.
• Ingredients can also be traded with your friends. Unlocked ingredients may be traded immediately. You will have to request a trade for any ingredient that your friend has locked.
• The higher the level of your dish, the more gourmet points you receive.
• It is best to focus on leveling one dish in each category (Starter, Main, Dessert, Drink) before trying to level others.
• The price of dishes remains $2 regardless of the level of the dish.
• As the level of the dish increases, the color of the plates changes. Dishes start out as broken plates and eventually improve in quality until they reach level 10 when they become golden plates.
• You can collect money from arcades and game machines by clicking on them when they have a bag of money icon that says "Collect" flashing above them. You receive $30 every 15 minutes from arcade machines, $80 every hour from pinball machines, and between $500 and $850 for other game machines and the wishing well. You must click on them to collect your money.
• The sushi bar gives $400 every 4 hours. You must click on it to collect the money when the time is up and the money bag icon appears saying "Collect." The neon sushi bar earns $1500 every 4 hours.
• You can fix an arcade, clean a toilet, and clear plates by clicking on them. Hover over what you want to fix or clean with the mouse until a white line appears around it. Then click and a timer will appear. It will be fixed when the timer stops.
• You can click on more than one item to fix at a time. The timer on the second and following items won't begin, though, until the first is done.
• You can stop the timer on an item by clicking on it again.
• Earn extra coins by visiting your friends. You receive $500 the first two friend visits of the day. $250 for the next 3 friends, then $50 for each visit after that.
• You can also get extra coins by shaking (clicking on) the trees outside the restaurants. Cleaning up the trash in your restaurant and other people's restaurants will also give you extra coins. Each piece of trash is worth $5 and 5 Gourmet Points.
• Become a fan of Restaurant City and you will receive free items a few times a week. The gifts are coins, items, or ingredients.
• Check your news feed for any Restaurant City posts. You can click on some of your friends' posts to receive coins and other items. Especially look for posts from the Gourmet King.

• Toilets do not become functional until level 8.
• After 4 customers use a toilet it becomes dirty.
• Customers care more about quick service than they do about dirty bathrooms.
• If all of the toilets are dirty or there are no toilets available for customers who want to use one, you will not receive a thumbs up rating.
• One employee should be a janitor in order to keep the toilets clean.
• Sinks are not necessary and do not affect approval rating.

Are you missing out on daily ingredients? Are you getting the food quizzes wrong? Be prepared for your next food quiz by practicing the questions here:

Restaurant City Daily Food Quiz

Restaurant City Daily Food Quiz Practice II