I suppose it was inevitable. There comes a point when you have reached a level of wealth in Farmville where you can buy anything (even the Villa). A point when you have enough experience that you can plant any crop.
It’s natural at that point for the eye to wander, seeking out the next great Zynga game. And for me, that happened a little over a week ago when I decided to take the plunge into Cafe World.
Cafe World has a number of elements that I had originally suggested for Farmville: animated sims, shorter time spans, more functional enhancements. It’s a much more complicated simulation, and as a result, it took me quite a bit longer to get the hang of it.
There are a few very interesting new aspects to the game that make modeling the economics difficult. Expect future posts from me on how to model “The Buzz Factor”, which affects the velocity that your food is consumed over time, and how to model “Spoilage”, which is similar to Farmville but more absolute.
A couple quick tips, for the fans out there:
- Your Buzz Rating drops by 1.0 for every customer who comes in and leaves without food. The minimum is 5.0, the maximum is 105.0. There are two ways to preserve it, however. First, when you run out of food, remove the doors on your restaurant. This will close the cafe, and keep your Buzz rating flat. Second, your buzz rating will not fall if you are not actually running the game. That means it’s safe to run out of food, as long as you aren’t watching…
- If you block your waiter(s) in, then they will serve the food infinitely fast. This is just like the Farmer trick from Farmville. I highly recommend doing this with the three serving stations against a corner. One warning – for this to work, you need to give the waiter/waitress *two* squares of freedom. With just one, it doesn’t seem to work.
To get things started, however, I thought I’d just run the simple numbers on profitability and experience for each recipe. I found elements of this information on various posts across the web. (Here is one from Cafe World Strategy. Here is another from Cyberanto. This one was the best, from Simple Think.) Unfortunately, no one seems to know the Café Points experience breakdown between preparing & serving the Impossible Quiche… I guess no one is at that level yet. (I had to guess in my table).
First, profitability. Each dish below is normalized as follows:
- All values are normalized for a 24 hours day
- A “cycle” is based on cooking time, but includes the cost & cafe points for cleaning the oven once
- I assume an infinitely fast player for cleaning/preparing/serving
| Dish | Profit / Day | Profit / Hour | Min Per Cycle |
| Bacon Cheeseburger | 6336.0 | 264.0 | 5.0 |
| Overstuffed Peppers | 5970.0 | 248.8 | 720.0 |
| Kung Pao Stir Fry | 5910.0 | 246.3 | 240.0 |
| Fiery Fish Tacos | 5880.0 | 245.0 | 120.0 |
| King Crab Bisque | 5370.0 | 223.8 | 1440.0 |
| Chips and Guacamole | 5280.0 | 220.0 | 3.0 |
| Impossible Quiche | 5092.5 | 212.2 | 2880.0 |
| Powdered French Toast | 4824.0 | 201.0 | 20.0 |
| Super Chunk Fruit Salad | 4800.0 | 200.0 | 15.0 |
| Tony’s Classic Pizza | 4248.0 | 177.0 | 300.0 |
| Chicken Gyro and Fries | 4032.0 | 168.0 | 10.0 |
| Voodoo Chicken Salad | 3920.0 | 163.3 | 720.0 |
| Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail | 3264.0 | 136.0 | 30.0 |
| Spaghetti and Meatballs | 3255.0 | 135.6 | 480.0 |
| Tikka Masala Kabobs | 3120.0 | 130.0 | 60.0 |
| Spitfire Roasted Chicken | 2585.0 | 107.7 | 1440.0 |
| French Onion Soup | 2550.0 | 106.3 | 240.0 |
| Triple Berry Cheesecake | 2470.0 | 102.9 | 720.0 |
| Caramel Apples | 2340.0 | 97.5 | 120.0 |
| Homestyle Pot Roast | 1967.5 | 82.0 | 2880.0 |
| Vampire Staked Steak | 1695.0 | 70.6 | 1440.0 |
| Pumpkin Pie | 1690.0 | 70.4 | 720.0 |
The next table shows the same information, but for Café Points instead of profit. This is more useful if your primary concern is “leveling up”.
| Dish | CP / Day | CP / Hour | Min Per Cycle |
| Bacon Cheeseburger | 2016.0 | 84.0 | 5.0 |
| Chicken Gyro and Fries | 2016.0 | 84.0 | 10.0 |
| Chips and Guacamole | 1920.0 | 80.0 | 3.0 |
| Powdered French Toast | 1512.0 | 63.0 | 20.0 |
| Super Chunk Fruit Salad | 1344.0 | 56.0 | 15.0 |
| Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail | 1008.0 | 42.0 | 30.0 |
| Fiery Fish Tacos | 588.0 | 24.5 | 120.0 |
| Tikka Masala Kabobs | 528.0 | 22.0 | 60.0 |
| Kung Pao Stir Fry | 450.0 | 18.8 | 240.0 |
| Caramel Apples | 420.0 | 17.5 | 120.0 |
| Overstuffed Peppers | 412.0 | 17.2 | 720.0 |
| French Onion Soup | 366.0 | 15.3 | 240.0 |
| Voodoo Chicken Salad | 336.0 | 14.0 | 720.0 |
| Tony’s Classic Pizza | 326.4 | 13.6 | 300.0 |
| Spaghetti and Meatballs | 300.0 | 12.5 | 480.0 |
| Triple Berry Cheesecake | 280.0 | 11.7 | 720.0 |
| King Crab Bisque | 252.0 | 10.5 | 1440.0 |
| Spitfire Roasted Chicken | 210.0 | 8.8 | 1440.0 |
| Impossible Quiche | 175.5 | 7.3 | 2880.0 |
| Pumpkin Pie | 152.0 | 6.3 | 720.0 |
| Homestyle Pot Roast | 139.5 | 5.8 | 2880.0 |
| Vampire Staked Steak | 113.0 | 4.7 | 1440.0 |
Two things seem clear to me from these tables:
- Overstuffed Peppers is the dish to beat. 12 hours cooking time means you don’t have to babysit the game endlessly. One of the most profitable, and does a fair job of building experience.
- Fast Food is King. If you have the patience and time, serving burgers can’t be beat. All the numbers are incredibly weighted towards the foods with short cycles. After all, when you can literally serve something 288 times in a single day, that’s a huge multiplier.
In future posts, I’ll try to rebalance these numbers across risk of spoilage and personal time value, to bring some sense to the madness. I can tell already, however, that the Overstuffed Peppers is going to be the best balance of time & profit. Of course, my cafe is still dawdling at Level 14…
Update: New Café World Economics posts are available:
Psychohistory 
Yo! Have you figured out which direction the openings of the counter must face when blocking in the waiters? I’m getting odd results. Sometimes, blocking in works like a charm. Sometimes, blocking in results in some or not all dishes being served. Haven’t figured out the right configuration yet ….
I had a similar problem when I blocked in the waiters with only one space. When I gave them two spaces, no issues. Always have the dishes facing the waiters (see my café).
Adam
Here are the “rules”
1) Have the openings in the counters facing your waiters
2) Don’t have any counter where the waiter can’t access the opening (no putting them in a “corner” area at the ends of two other counters)
3) Have a space available against one of the invisible walls.
I found that if I block off the invisible (lower) walls with counters then my servers don’t serve all the dishes or they’ll not serve certain tables.
A man after my own kind. I love numbers and statistics for maximizing my profits in these games.
Following is a link to some google spreadsheets I created. One of the issues I addressed is the cleaning / prepping time difference. Any dish that takes 60 minutes or less to cycle I have added 3 minutes to. The reason for 3 minutes is that it takes 16-18 seconds per step, per stove to prepare the food. At 10 stoves that allows for 18 seconds per step. That puts into perspective the true advantages of the faster meals.
At the bottom you’ll find tabs for all the sheets. I have them sorted by straight profit per dish, profit per hour, xp per hour and also by how many of a dish (how many stoves) you would have to use to keep up with demand at maximum buzz (at 105 buzz you get 15 customers per minute average)
And then I go and forget to add the link…sigh…
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmGaE4UgipeWdHhaaHFJQXh1S196c09BYWhBZDNWRVE&hl=en
It’s not 18 seconds per step. it is about 14 seconds for the ENTIRE preperation, not step.
For those who care…I have run out of food twice now when I knew I shouldn’t. It used to be that the number of customers per minute at 105 buzz was 15. That meant 900 per hour so 2700 servings lasted 3 hours.
Since running out of food twice I decided to time it out and it appears that the number has been increased to 18 per minute at 105 buzz so that it now takes 1080 servings to last an hour. For those planning anything from a 12 hour to a 2 day meal that’s a huge difference in how many servings you need to have stored up.
Just take your door off …… if no people can get in, then your buzz won’t go down….. Cook more items, then open your door back up. Mine is the smallest restaurant and I do about 1000 servings an hour.
good luck !! 🙂
You dont need to remove the door, just block it w/ a chair or table
Yes, but you assume the next cheeseburger will be ready instantaneously, which it certainly is not.
You need to calculate a small room for time in-between dishes — say 30 seconds — so every 10 dishes of cheeseburger will take 55 minutes.
Then re-calculate the daily profit.
Agreed. For Farmville, I could ignore those effects. For a five minute cycle, 30 to 60 seconds of human time increases the cycle by 10-20%. Material impact to the numbers.
Fodder for another Café World post.
Adam
Running out of food is (no longer, at least) a problem. You can leave your café open as long as you leave the game. When you return to your empty counters, the buzz rating is still 105 and you can remove your door at that point.
The best xp (or cp) cycle for me, as a person who works on a computer 8h a day, is the following:
– 4 x Fiery Fish Tacos, 2h each, 8h total
– 1 x Kung Pao Stir Fry, 4h
– 1 x Overstuffed Peppers, 12h
The 2h per dish is manageable for me because I’m on my computer the whole time anyway. At the end of my work day, I cook a Kung Pao Stir Fry to give me 4h for driving home, cooking (for real), taking care of the household and just settling down. All I have to do at home, is to gather the Kung Pao and cook some Overstuffed Peppers.
This game is addictive =)
Level 43 here, going to level 44 very soon!
I want a spreadsheet that shows the best recipes if you want to just prep.. .and not wait for the cooking… i have heard the carmel apples are the best at that… so again.. just buy the receipe.. prepare it.. and then delete it… and then prep again.. i have heard that is the fastest way to level up.. with out waiting the time for the meals to cook…
More for your list Adam:
Shu Mai Dumplings:
Cost: 950
Servings: 580
4 coins per serving
Total coins: 2320
Clean Counter: 1cp
Shread Ginger: 20cp
Dice Mushrooms: 20cp
Chop Shrimp: 20cp
Time: 6 hours
Serving: 95cp
Delicious Chocolate Cake
Cost: 1300
Servings: 950
5 coins per serving
Total coins: 4750
Clean Counter: 1cp
Measuring: 21cp
Sifting: 21cp
Pour Dough: 21cp
Time: 14 hours
Serving: 200cp
Total cps: 264
Lamp Curry to follow ….
Lavish Lamb Curry
Cost: 13500
Servings: 825
4 coins per serving
Total coins: 3300
Clean Counter: 1cp
Mince Lamb: 18cp
Mix Spices: 18cp
Mix Yogurt: 18cp
Time: 8 hours
Serving #cps to follow …….
Edit: Cost: 1350 (not 13500 🙂 )
145 cps for serving
Total cps for Lamb Curry: 1+18+18+18+145=200
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is your chart already net of costs? thanks!
Yes, all data is net of costs.
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Don’t forget to indicate in the “Fast Food is king” that burgers don’t stack in the counters hehe
How come my buzz rating wont go up more than 5.8 or 6.1… It was up before almost to 9.0… what am i doing wrong???????
For your buzz rating to go up faster, you need to leave cafe open after you serve your dishes. Dont just serve and exit out of the application, or go to someone else cafe.
Server your dishes, click on mute, and leave the window open a couple hours.
Ive also noticed that when I first log in that all my tables will be full (my rating is 105); and while I begins serving my dishes customers will continually be entering, not finding a seat, and leaving. This causes my rating to drop to about 98 or so. I just leave it open a few minutes and with the Buzz will jump back up to 105 in no time.
Everyone seems to have the rose vine decorations but i cant find them anywhere and i really really want them. anyone know where i can get them?
The Savory stuffed Turkey CP points are in error in “Alien invasion” spreadsheet; forgot initial CP for prep; finish is only 200cp.
One tip. You can arrange the tables in a “U” pattern and that is one good way to minimize the walking distance the waitress/waiter has to walk to serve food and it maximizes the. distance the customer has to walk to be seated. That layout can help make the serving time consistent and efficient
Hey all, I was just googling around the blogosphere and came up with this website. I didn’t realize people already put tables together but I put together a pretty comprehensive Cafe World statistics at my blog 😀 CafeWorldInfo.com
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is this game really that fun?? I have never even thought about playing it, but it sure seems like there are some die hard fans out there who take it very seriously. WOW
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Why would you do all that when you can just make the smoked fish on the bbq grill for about $200,000 a day (3 times a day – once every 8 hours)???