Pizza Tycoon - Tips (author unknown) To start a restaurant you need 1) chairs, tables, flooring, pizza recipies. rent a place. 2) create and transfer 3 or more recipies to the menu 3) hire chef, waiter 4) buy supplies (stock) 5) open the restaurant Using quickstart easy will do #1 for you. Borrow money from the bank or even the mafia to stock up. Look at customer taste, it shows thumbs pointing up and down to indicate how salty/fat/sweet/hot customer groups like their pizza. Click on the thumbs and it'll show you actual percentages. Note customer trends, shows which recipie items are trendy and which are not. Use these things to create pizzas to cater to different groups. Bananas are good to make things real sweet, chilies for hot, anchovies for hot/salt/fat, cheese for fat/salt, olives for salt, etc... You want percentages close to some demographic category, a decent calorie count, while keeping the price reasonable. (I go for over 700 calories and under $6). You can cut up recipie items using device in lower left corner for smaller portion additions. Be an artist! Seems to be good to cover most of the pizza (except maybe crust), and keep things balanced. You might get some ideas looking at the starting recipies that start in quickstart mode, or looking at what the computer comes up with when you lose in chef competitions. Transfer your recipies to the menu with the transfer button. I tend to price things around 10-16 dollars. Look at how things are selling to figure out how to price them. Dump untrendy items, increase prices if you're nearing max capacity, etc.. managers can change prices, but I only bother with managers when i get many restaurants and can't handle everything myself. I try to hire chefs/waiters with good cooking/serving skill. You get screwed if their trustworthyness is low, believe me. Don't hesitate to give them big raises to increase their output in pizzas per day. Competitors can steal your folks by offering them more money. I have noticed that later in the game it seems to be harder to get quality folks, and you can't hire back people you've fired. Might be good to grab the best folks as early as you can and keep em, give them raises, train them, etc.. Not sure yet. Managers should have good motivation, this affects how often they shop for stock food items. Note that the default attitude towards employees is tyranical or something like that, i usually set this down to moderate or strict. Right now I'm setting everything to "act yourself" and giving them the ability to set prices, etc.. Keep your restaurant well stocked with food items. I buy from 2 star places so far, 4 or 5 day stocks. Remember the amount you need to stock can change radically as customer demand changes. I haven't figured out contracts very well yet. You seem to get a discount for ordering a lot from a single supplier. Look at the "need" column, this tells you how much of a given ingredient you're using per day. Write this down for each item. Use this to make your contract. The problem is, a given ingredient may suddenly become much less popular and you'll be stuck with huge over-orders. You can toggle the contract to "according to contract" or "according to need", the latter seems to be a good idea. I use single orders until the restaurant has been around some time and order quantities get real big. You can use tab to switch between the restaurants you own, in any restaurant menu. Look at competitor restaurants for interior design ideas. I tend to use floor plants, candles, decorative walls.. different items are good for different demographic groups (kids, business men, old farts, whatever) I had really good luck starting out with two restaurants at once. Buying those super good ovens seems to be very worthwhile. Nice flooring too. i usually go for 3 star furniture. In the furniture menu you can click to see how customer groups like your interior decorating. The most important thing to keep track of is under the animated display menu, LOOK AT CAPACITY. it shows you where the bottlenecks are. It shows customer demand, furniture, stocks, ovens, chefs, waiters, output. Get more of whatever is the bottleneck. You can increase chef/waiter by hiring more or by increasing their salary (or eventually through training). You can cram lots of tables/chairs in the place. Mafia side jobs are good for extra money, but there is a chance of getting busted. In main display you can see map/district/control displays. Use "district" to courier places mentioned -- since it tells you which district the places are in. Use "location" pull down to narrow down search according to whether it is a bar/disco/hotel/whatever. Often the meeting time is before 9am, use character menu and click on down arrow to wake up before 9am. Click on location to make pickup/dropoff. Nailing competitors with lots of "joke items" (sabotage) such as rats, laxitives, smoke bombs... rapidly rises you in mafia ranks. I haven't figured out how to use real weapons yet -- they seem to get you busted for carrying them and I can't use them on competitor restaurants. Chef competitions are extremely frustrating, I always get 0's. Would love to see the docs... advertising is good for a week. Posters seem to be a good value. If you do a newspaper ad, try to form a complete sentence, though this is often tough. Buying max flyers is pretty cheap. Don't forget to do more advertising each week. Pay back loans when you can, this will up your credit rating so you can borrow much more later when you need it. To rent a place, click on it and call the corresponding real estate agent. Eventually the "palace" will let you make an appointment, and you can make political contributions to their account (through the bank). I'm not sure what this is good for, maybe a bribe for restaurant reviews where you get stars. Mafia info hasn't proved useful yet (drivel, commodity prices, more arms dealers), nor has insurance. Haven't figured out warehouses (depots), they seem to act as a backup supplier to restaurants, and for commodity trades (including weapons?) I'm really interested in how a restaurant can gain geographic "control" of the surrounding area. A competitor set up shop next to me and took ALL my customers, I couldn't get them back even after nailing him with a hundred laxatives/smoke bombs/rats/stinky cheese.