Resto Opening— Part 4.

In desperation, Yulia raised the prices of her mac and cheese from “Expensive” to “Ridiculously Expensive,” just to slow down demand. ‘I sure hope that reviewer doesn’t pick tonight to come back!,’ she grumbled.

Fortunately, for some reason, Komei went platinum soon after he entered a tent,

so was able to abandon his plans for a nap and instead use the Energizer.

He quickly restocked the display cases while Yulia handled the register.

Yulia decided that, with 4 employees asleep, it would not be wise to encourage customers to dine. So, Derek, Marisa, and Genya all turned out take-out food.

Shelby woke up and took over the register, and Yulia, who had spun a want to purchase another community lot, went to the phone to do some real estate transactions.

Because she was pretty short on cash,

she first sold the community lot she had bought the previous day, before buying the same lot back again.

Marisa earned another raise,

and Rodney woke up and went back to work as Server. Because there were no diners, his task was to clean up, and there were quite a few dirty counters after all the cooking that had been going on.

Despite being priced “Ridiculously Expensive,” the mac and cheese entrees were flying out of the display cases, and Komei had to restock constantly to keep up.

Also, Yulia’s inventory was still dwindling, albeit slowly,

so she reluctantly kept the high prices.

Potential diners started showing up (without being greeted, and without anyone trying to show them the menu),

so Yulia took over the podium and Derek (after another trip to the Energizer) resumed his chef duties.

Yevgenya needed a nap, and Yulia knew that Marisa (though she seemed not to be “in the weeds”) couldn’t sustain the take-out food production all by herself,

so Yulia reluctantly went to her backup plan—she took one of the mac and cheese display cases off sale, bought a new display case, and filled that one with elaborate cakes that she had ordered from a bakery. (That meant that her employees wouldn’t be “under the gun” to keep up with demand, but could just produce take-out at a leisurely pace and put it in the freezer.)

Bruce got up from his nap, and took over the register from Shelby,

who took over the podium from Yulia, so that the latter could Dazzle a few customers before the resto ran out of money and she wouldn’t be able to pay her employees (in which case, they’d most likely quit).

She came up with the approach of pricing 3 of the extravagant cakes at “Average,” and 1 of them at $9,999, and trying to sell the expensive cake only to customers she thought could afford it.

Komei finally earned his Gold badge in restocking!

Yulia knew she’d have to give Komei a raise sooner rather than later, so that meant she’d have to delay her Dazzling. Thinking quickly, she looked through her inventory and sold a couple of TVs she’d gotten from customers, just to keep her head above water financially. (“I can do that only once, though,’ she thought.)

So, she changed Komei’s wage, and started selling energetically.

Shelby earned a Silver badge in Sales,

but Yulia didn’t feel any pressure to change the young woman’s wage, since even with the additional badge, Shelby was still “Ridiculously Overpaid.”

Yulia managed to sell one expensive cake to Amin and was waiting for him to check out so she could get the $9,999 sales price but, since he had been distracted by the fight that had broken out between Christian and Ivy (as had everyone else)

and since Komei had to restock the cake before she did another Dazzle anyway, Yulia elected to take that opportunity to use the Energizer.

“I TOLD you to fire that guy,” Derek admonished as she walked past him.

Once things calmed down, Komei went off to sleep, Rodney took over restocking, and Shelby took over the register from Bruce and sent him to the podium. (Bruce had 4 badge points and needed a fifth in order to be promoted to Manager, and Yulia thought he might get a Bronze in Sales pretty quickly as Host).

Rodney got tired, and Yulia took over restocking while at the same time trying to sell an expensive cake every now and then. Troy and Genya were both turning out take-out food, as was Marisa, who was “in the zone” and therefore never seemed to get tired. Since all 3 stoves were in use, and there were no diners (Yulia was keeping things slow to allow Bruce to progress without a lot of pressure), Derek had nothing to do, so took over restocking.

Yulia could then concentrate exclusively on sales.

She got her cash up to $44,670 before having to get some sleep.

“Please wake me at the dinner rush, Derek,” she asked her husband.

____________________________

NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:

I have no idea what wish Komei had that got satisfied and put him into platinum! His wishes have seem glitched from the start—I locked “Customer Gains a Star” for quite a while. Though the resto kept advancing in rank, this want never got satisfied for Komei (though it did for Yulia).

The professional chef cooktop can also be used for “Make Many …” (not just for “Be Chef”, etc.).

There isn’t a huge risk in taking the chef and servers off duty if there are currently no diners, since it’s so much effort to get take-out customers to look at the menu. So, it doesn’t often happen that one of them will autonomously decide to dine. (Of course, that damned Benjamin Long did!) If they do (and if too many of the other employees are still asleep), you either have to raise the menu prices to discourage the diners or wake up enough employees who’re reasonably (if not fully) rested to handle to customers.

Christian is the weirdest employee—he will work for HOURS while in the orange, and never threaten to quit. At some point he just decides to take a nap without anyone having to tell him to take a break.

Marisa showed up as Underpaid, not when I opened the game for the day but after she’d turned out a bunch of mac and cheese. I guess her Cooking skill has risen, though I won’t boolprop to find out because boolprop completely screws up the employee interactions like nothing I’ve ever seen…. She’s not Level 10 yet, because the skill bar is still above her head.

Well, THIS makes no sense—Rodney is diligently cleaning, and I get messages that he’s gained not only a Cleaning point, but also a Cooking point (and that he has learned to make a new meal?)!

He’s a Manager, so I checked his skill chart, and he does NOT have any Cooking points.

There’s a trade-off between offering for sale high-priced items, which might annoy some customers (certainly if it’s a low-ranked venue), and low-priced items, which—if they’re items that have to be manufactured—may sell out so quickly that there are lots of red X’s, which will always annoy customers. Yulia’s coming to the conclusion that a highly ranked venue (hers is currently Rank 8) can better support “Ridiculously Expensive” prices than the risk of empty display cases.

I’ve started changing wages to “Overpaid” whenever an employee deserves a raise. That gives me a bit of a cushion between wage-change times. It’s a safer way to handle employee wage demands, as long as you have the cash to pay the employees (or—as is often the case with Yulia—if you DON’T have enough cash, you think you have time to Dazzle some $9,999 sales out of customers).

Apparently, the Host/Hostess gains Sales skill just from being on the phone at the podium, even if there is no one viewing menus or needing to be seated! Good to know if you have an employee who needs more badge points in order to be promoted to Manager—you can just put him at the podium during a slow time, and he’ll earn badge points with no pressure.

Selling an item priced at $9,999 may require either 1 or 2 Dazzles. You should queue up two Dazzles in a row, anyway, so that there’s no opportunity for the customer’s Buy Bar to decay between them. You can always quickly pause and cancel the 2nd Dazzle if the customer buys after the first one.