Chef RPG is a restaurant management simulation game where you get to try your hand at crafting culinary delights. Running a restaurant isn't all about cooking though, so you'll be hiring, and maybe even firing, staff while striving to ensure your patrons are well-fed. The dining experience involves many factors.
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PostsIt's your job to make sure you have a variety of ingredients available. Each day you open your restaurant, you'll select what you can make for your patrons and employ enough staff to serve them. So much in-game freedom can lead to challenges, but here are tips to garner success.
Chef RPG is a restaurant management game in early access, and it may be subject to change. We will update this article as needed.
Choose Your Beginning Season Wisely
While you can choose any season to begin your Chef RPG journey, winter will be the most challenging. You'll have to rely on a lot of hunting, fishing, and selling extras to purchase the fruits and vegetables you'll need to open and run your restaurant.
You won't have access to a greenhouse right away, and you won't have the benefit of foraging most of your required ingredients. If you are familiar with farming games and want the challenge, you can give it a try.
There are multiple save files, so you can always start another one in a different season to see which you prefer. You'll get the most benefit by choosing a traditional spring season beginning, allowing you to forage throughout the year and stock up for winter.
This also provides ample time to befriend shop owners, and earn skill points, which are used to unlock the greenhouse and other beneficial attributes. The game does provide summaries for each season, and ultimately, there are always ways to earn the in-game coin currency.
Progress is possible in winter, but you should plan on a relatively slow start where coins are concerned. You may also not acquire skill points as easily or frequently, since foraging is a great way to earn them.
Collect As Many Recipes As Possible
While it goes without saying that you'll need recipes in a cooking simulation game, this matters more than it does in some games. You should check all shops frequently for recipes.
Recipes are mostly random, and some ingredients are more difficult to acquire at first because they must be purchased instead of foraged. If you have unfortunate luck, you could end up with plenty of recipes that are costly to manage at the beginning, when your restaurant serves two people at a time.
You have the chance to acquire recipes as random rewards from completing certain bulletin board quests, as well as a chance to find them in library books. You can also learn the skill Hands-On Approach to learn more recipes while you're cooking.
To find recipes in library books, you'll need to learn the Bookworm skill once you have enough skill points. You can then peruse the library frequently for the chance to learn new recipes.
Don't Ignore Decorating
Though your culinary creations ultimately take center stage in this game, you'll also be judged by your restaurant's ambiance. The decor you choose, as well as the food, can affect certain things in the game.
Decorations have categories in the description, such as rustic, modern, and industrial. You'll want to stay within a certain decor category, at least for certain in-game events.
There are multiple layouts possible, so you can have a coordinated one for in-game events containing all furniture from one particular decor category, and then you can switch back to a different layout you might prefer later.
If you're updating an existing layout, it's easiest to clear the layout save file first. It won't change how the layout appears in your restaurant, but after you make changes you can save the new layout in the same file spot with no issues.
If you don't clear it first, some of the changes you make may not be saved, and you'll have to redo the entire process.
Don't Rush Your Grand Opening
Making progress in games feels great, so it's natural when you get some grand opening quests to complete them in a hurry. There are some hidden requirements, however, that you won't find out about until you've accepted the last quest, and you're scheduled to go through the event at your next restaurant opening.
If you don't have enough coins, recipes, and hired staff, you won't be able to complete the event. You'll be stuck doing bulletin board quests until you have enough funds and items to meet the requirements.
You should plan on having at least three waiters, two to three chefs, and at least six recipes that you can put on the menu. You'll also need to be able to have a few decorations as well, and any appliances necessary for the menu you select.
Acquire Cooking Appliances As Soon As Possible
There are many different types of cooking appliances in Chef RPG. You won't unlock all of them right away, but you should plan on getting any available to you as soon as you can.
Each appliance has its own type of mini-game when you use it during cooking. How well you do on the mini-game determines the quality of your finished dish.
It's much better to have these appliances and be able to familiarize yourself with the different mini-games without the added pressure of a special restaurant visitor or event. You'll want to add any new appliances to your restaurant layout before opening your restaurant.
More appliances enable you to make a wider variety of recipes, which makes patrons happier. They appreciate variety, and it gives you more opportunities to control your menu and earnings.
You will not be able to enter build mode, leave the restaurant, or make tea for your employees once your restaurant is open.
Scale Up As You Progress In-Game
As you progress, you'll want to continue to improve your decor, expand your restaurant, and pay attention to the staff you've hired. You'll eventually be able to hire better quality staff and purchase fancier decor, if you choose so.
Additionally, patrons can become unhappy if they have to wait lengthy times for their food, and will even leave without eating if food prep takes too long. You'll want to ensure you have an adequate number of staff, but may also need to purchase multiples of certain appliances to help your kitchen run smoothly.
Hired chefs take priority when using appliances, meaning you could be perfectly ready and able to cook a dish, but you may find yourself waiting until another chef is done with the appliance you need. To avoid waiting for appliances, and angering customers, consider getting multiples of the most commonly-used appliances, such as Chef Counters and Kitchen Counters.
Plan Your Menus Strategically
Planning menus in Chef RPG is relatively straightforward. You can choose whatever recipe you want, as long as you have the required ingredients and appliances.
Recipes you are able to make will be brighter than other recipes when you're in the recipe selection menu. Ingredient management adds another layer of difficulty, especially at the beginning of the game, and during winter.
Vendors offer ingredients to help supplement your foraging, but their stock rotates and there is no guarantee you'll be able to replenish a certain ingredient when you need it. Adjusting your menu options to ensure that you don't have multiple recipes using up your cranberries, for example, can help you run your restaurant more effectively.
Planning your menus with your ingredients in mind will allow you more restaurant days and fewer foraging and shopping trips. It'll save you both time and money.
Once ingredients are not as much of a concern, you can consider how much each dish earns by checking the recipe, and can tailor your menus with that information in mind. If you offer only the least-expensive options during a restaurant day, your earnings will be diminished.
Talking to the townspeople can sometimes provide insight into how you can improve your restaurant menu. People may comment about your food variety and what they hope to see available in the future.
Plan For Weekends
If you plan to open your restaurant during the weekend, make sure you have all the ingredients you want before the weekend arrives. Most shops you'll need, such as Chop (meat), Greenstalk (vegetables), and Nabiha's Berries (fruits), are closed on weekends.
You can certainly forage for ingredients, but if you wait until the weekend to do your foraging, you may use up one of your weekend days instead of being able to run your restaurant the entire weekend. You could receive ingredient shipments on Fridays once you've gotten the Supply Chain skill to help alleviate some weekend worries.
Prepare For Winter
There are a host of things to consider when planning for winter. First, you'll want to try and gain access to the greenhouse.
Foraging will be nonexistent, except Sorghum and rarely Tea Leaves, so if you don't want to be at the whims of the shops, you'll want to invest in seeds when they're available. Even though seeds are offered randomly at shops, you'll have at least a few things to grow in the greenhouse during winter.
You'll still be able to fish and hunt, but vegetables and fruits will be lacking. You can acquire the skill Supply Chain and befriend the shop owners to help with regular access to produce, which is especially helpful during winter.
This will allow you to schedule shipments of many of the ingredients they offer, although you can only choose six types of items from each vendor. You can either plan your orders around the meals you want to offer, or plan your menu around what you have on hand.
If you have the ability, you can buy out the shops each day to stock up on ingredients before winter arrives. This is expensive, but if you can afford it, you'll have a great variety of ingredients to keep your winter menu interesting.
You will still be able to shop at stores directly during the weekdays even if you participate in scheduled deliveries.
Be Wary Of Using Autocook
If cooking mini-games aren't your style, you may be tempted to turn on the autocook feature. It's understandable, but it may lower your customer satisfaction and hinder reputation gains.
The autocook feature doesn't guarantee any sort of quality, even if you've done very well on the mini-games yourself. It's a random quality, and when you're trying to get your restaurant established, this may not be the best option.
Alternatively, since it's based on random quality, you may benefit from using autocook. You'll have to meet certain requirements first, however, to unlock the feature. If you're interested in the feature, it's a good idea to test it out and check your end-of-day summaries to see if it's mostly beneficial or if it's hindering your progress.
Dishes will take a similar amount of time to cook using the autocook feature, but will not require the mini-game interaction. Autocook seems a smidge faster, but both options take roughly ten in-game minutes.
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