How to keep your staff happy

Hello there, coffee lovers!

Welcome back to Coffee Shop Tycoon’s development blog. Today, we’ll be sharing new tips that will take your business one step closer to the top of the worldwide coffee shop industry. This time, the lesson revolves around staff management.

For those of you who have just arrived at Coffee Shop Tycoon, each new store will demand three job roles to be covered: the cashier, the barista, and the roaster. However, opening a new shop is pretty expensive and you probably will look for the cheapest way to move forward, which sometimes results in low salaries and multitasking.

It's a secret to no one that the hospitality industry tends to reproduce these bad practices toward its workers. We wanted this as a feature in the game as well as to be as realistic as possible. That’s why, on one hand, ignoring their needs has a negative impact on their productivity and may lead to them quitting their jobs. On the other hand, we linked their happiness to certain performance and creativity boosts that will help to increase the reputation of the shop.

Considering what we’ve just exposed, here’s a list of facts and suggestions that may help you to manage your staff correctly.

Each time your employees level up, the game will require you to decide whether or not to give them a raise. The current wage will always be under each worker’s salary expectations, so we strongly recommend you adhere to it to avoid carrying with it a performance debuff until the next time you can readjust the amount.
Each extra dollar you pay to them increases their efficiency by 0.03%, with a maximum boost of 20% extra productivity. In the same way, there will also be a -0.03% performance for every dollar you decide to save by dropping their salary below the expected amount. Plus, the penalty can reach -30%.
In case you exceed the salary expectations, you will have to choose a value from the recommended range based on your employees’ mastery of the four benchmark areas of the game (Barista, Service, Roaster, Speed). In other words, the more you train them, the higher their wages will be.
Make sure that no one does more than their share. The more different roles they play (e.g: Cashier + Barista), the worse the result will be in all of them.

At this point in development, job quitting has no consequences beyond the loss of time and money that training a new worker entails. However, we've been kicking around the idea that it affects the reputation of the shop for a limited time. Also, how would you think about implementing a salary boost when a shop raises its reputation (i.e. after obtaining the Golden Bean)? Let us know what you think in the comments section.

Thank you for spending another Friday with us. Leave your questions or doubts in the comments section so that we can answer them whenever possible. Alternatively, you can use our Discord server to discuss anything related to the game — or just chat with us about your favourite coffee variety, that’s something we usually do there!

Your next coffee is on us, enjoy the weekend!
The Riff Studios team