Part 3: I need a mortgage to buy this cookbook

Episode 2: I need a mortgage to buy this cookbook



Good going, Armand! You're catching on fast!

Just doing my best to meet your expectations, uncle. So, how did I do? Can I keep Treize à Table?

Weeeeeell, not quite just yet. You did very well, but there's still more to do before you pass the test…

What would you have me do now?

Set up the top floor of the restaurant, Armand. It's completely empty upstairs, but it's valuable real estate that you can accommodate to attract more diners.

Sure thing, uncle! As long as I still have a chance at the restaurant!

Of course, Armand! I'm not one to back out on my words. If you manage this simple task, consider the restaurant yours.

Armand, are you sure you are ready for the next task? There are some things I think you should be aware of…

Such as?

Well, I haven't explained to you about the Dumb Waiters yet!

Why would I ever want to hire obtuse waiters anyway?



They're elevators, Armand. And they can help you minimize the food delivery time. Care to learn about that?

I'd like to know what strategies I can use to improve my food delivery time?

There are several strategies that you can use.

One of them is simply hiring good service – you know, the kind that does not engage in idle chit-chat all day. They usually deliver food in good time.

Your kitchen and table placement can greatly affect the delivery time as well. When setting up your restaurants, try to minimize walking distances.

Are there any quick-fix solutions to the food-delivery time conundrum?

Of course, the easiest way is to use the dumb waiter. These functional elevators actually *lift* the food right up to a waiting station upstairs, and voila – no more cold soup!

But these Dumb Waiters go for an arm and a leg these days. However, if you can afford it, this is the best long-term solution for your time-consuming food deliveries.

Thanks for sharing that with me, uncle…

Don't thank me. You're my favourite nephew, Armand. Just let me know whenever you need help…

Alright, then, I'll get on the ball.

Armand, if you can generate $40,000 in monthly revenue and have 50% of your customers served on time, the restaurant is yours. Since this is an easy task for you to accomplish, let's say that you only have three months to complete this task. Sounds fair?

No problem, uncle!

Right, then – let's get that ball rolling!

Uncle Michel gives us the harrowing task of generating $40,000 in monthly revenue and encourages us to set up the second floor of Treize à Table. Let's get to it!

…except, we won't be doing that. This is rather a mean trick that the game plays on you. In addition to the $40,000 revenue goal, the game requires you to serve 50% of your courses on time in order to pass the mission. The first time I played this game, I went to the second floor straight away and crammed in as many tables as I could, hoping to make huge profits from being able to seat three times as many customers as before. However, even in our little one-floor restaurant, Armand is already cooking constantly during lunchtime and dinner time. This means that even if I added more tables, Armand would not actually be able to cook anything for those tables in a timely manner. This would not help our revenue, and would be disastrous for our "courses served on time"-statistic. Therefore, I'm not going to even touch the second floor before we can get a sous chef. In fact, now that our menu includes a couple of very slow-to-cook recipes, I may have to cut back on the number of tables from the present ten if Armand can't keep up.

However! I have listened to all your requests for the décor for Treize à Table, and in accordance with the requests of the powerful "tacky as hell"-lobby, I've renovated the restaurant in accordance with the AAH-design:



Yikes.

I've also updated the menu to reflect everyone's requests. Thanks to the many goodposters among you, the menu includes all of the good starting recipes, which should make up for the few awful ones

This is the current menu of Treize à Table:

Breakfast

[nothing]

Appetizers

Fried duck liver with asparagus tips - $18.20
Poached salmon with truffles and shrimp - $17.60

Soups

Cream of asparagus soup - $5.60

Mains

Eggplant, zucchini, red pepper and parmesan torte - $16.00
Mixed casserole of pork - $19.20

Desserts

Chocolate tart - $6.00
French apple tart - $5.80
Strawberries jubilee - $5.60

Drinks

White wine - $15.40
Red wine - $11.25



As part of the tutorial at the start of this mission (which I skipped), we received a new dessert recipe, Crepes Marcie. At this stage of the game, it's an excellent recipe. It's the highest-rated dessert we have at 53%, has a tolerable gross profit and cooks pretty quickly. I would say that this is definitely a good recipe at this stage of the game, so I've put it on the menu.



The first few guests to enter the restaurant turn on their heels and leave, and I get a complaint message that I've never seen before, stating that they're refusing to eat because of a lack of "tasty dishes". However, this stops happening around lunchtime. I'm pretty sure this is because we have no breakfast recipes, and breakfast customers will refuse to eat any other kind of dishes. This is not a big deal, because breakfast dishes tend to have terrible profit margins, and the few breakfast customers you get won't normally order wine. The only thing we're losing out on is a bit of extra revenue, and since our revenue target is so low, this shouldn't be a problem. However, it'd be worth thinking about adding at least one breakfast dish.



One of our lunch guests calls us over, a Monsieur Elric Vicient, and he offers to sell us a super secret special recipe for the low low price of $11,880! This would be laughable, but since Armand has never heard of cookbooks, buying outrageously priced recipes off your customers is actually the main way to get new recipes in this game. Admiring his chutzpah, I take him up on his offer.



It's a dud. Although the recipe has a great profit margin, the quality rating is very low, and it has to be grilled, which will be inconvenient to set up in the kitchen. I'd say that this is a mediocre recipe.



Another customer comes along with a hideously overpriced recipe. It looks like the rumour of Armand being a total sucker has gotten around. Customers will also be trying to scam us in other ways, but we've been fortunate to get two recipe offers in a row. I pay him the $14,850 he's asking for.



Now this is just excellent. The recipe has a rating of 57%, making it our second-highest quality recipe, and it sells at a decent profit margin. The cooking time shows two clocks, but as we know, that could mean anything. Nevertheless, this appears to be a good recipe, and I add it to the menu immediately.



This guy apparently couldn't find a recipe to swindle us with, so instead he calls us over and tells us that we're making the poached salmon wrong. He offers to come into the kitchen to show us the proper way to prepare it for only $10,800. Paying for cooking skill increases is useless, because Armand's skill with individual recipes rises pretty quickly on its own, so I make a counter-proposal and offer to show the customer the door if he doesn't shut up.



It's dinner time, the restaurant is full and Armand is struggling. If you click your chef, the game shows you your cooking queue. Armand currently has a queue of 22 dishes that he has to prepare to fulfil our guests' orders. That's pretty bad on its own, but since some of the recipes on our menu cook very slowly, he's going to have a difficult time getting through the list before the guests get frustrated and leave. I expect we'll still be able to pass the mission, but if we had set up the second floor, it would have been nearly impossible to meet the requirement for 50% of dishes to be served on time. A devious trap set for us by the game!



It's the end of the day, and we've done very well. Our revenue has dipped to $70,000 per month, which is still very respectable, and 79% of the courses served on time is also quite good.




The game offers you surprisingly detailed financial and operational information if you want it. Our two starters plus the mixed casserole of pork make up a total of 65% of our profit from food, which shows how crucial just a couple of really good recipes are for your restaurant. Our biggest cash cow, however, is the wine, which is not only incredibly profitable but doesn't have to be prepared.

It's been a pretty easy ride so far, but watch out! Next mission, Restaurant Empire will be introducing an exciting new game mechanic that will push Armand's cooking ability to the limit, while simultaneously testing if he knows at least a quarter of the alphabet. Like the 125ml of oil in his mixed casserole of pork, will he rise to the top? We will see!