Coffee Shop Tycoon News

Good morning everyone!

Today we come to make you a very special request. As you already know, Coffee Shop Tycoon has been on Steam for 6 years now as an Early Access game and its full version will be released next month. To make it a real success, we need as many visibility boosts as we can get before the game's launch — and certainly, competing in the Steam Awards 2022 would be a big help. For that reason, we're asking you to nominate us for the Labor of Love award.

[h2]↑↑↑ Submit your vote up there! ↑↑↑[/h2]

The Labor of Love category was created for all those games that were released in previous years but still receive new updates. Year after year, Riff Studios has worked very hard to add new content based on your expectations and concerns. In addition to this, we also committed ourselves to search for other ways to strengthen our relationship with our players. Now you can find on Steam guides on the most complex features of the game, and short stories about our favorite drink ever. Plus, we spend more time replying to your comments on every post!

And we did all this because we want you to stay with us as long as possible. Because we love the idea of people feeling Coffee Shop Tycoon as a safe space where they can relax and have fun as they enjoy a hot cup of joe. I hope we're on the right track to achieving it!

That said, we again ask you to please nominate us for the Steam Awards 2022 and tell your friends who played the game to do so. If we finally join the competition, you will be able to vote for us again when the Winter Sale starts — this is, after the full release of Coffee Shop Tycoon. Winners will be announced in January 2023.



Thank you very much for your continued support!
The Riff Studios team

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen:

After six years of hard work, we're finally entering the last stage of the early access period. We could say it started with the release of the October patch, but the news we just shared is the real turning point. Due to Valve's particular way of managing price changes, we decided to move forward by December and increase Coffee Shop Tycoon's to $9.99. This action will allow us to offer a release discount next month and extend it until the end of the Winter Sale.

The new price will become effective next Monday in the morning (PST), so this weekend you’ll have a last chance to get a copy at early access price ($7.99). Of course, you will enjoy all the updates developed until the present day just as the rest of players.

Next week we’ll be able to share further details on the release update of Coffee Shop Tycoon and the future of Riff Studios. In the meantime, it’d be amazing if you could help us reach new coffee lovers by talking about Coffee Shop Tycoon on social media. Share your best moments tagging our Twitter account (@RiffStudios) so we can join the conversation too. And, of course… don’t forget about wishlists — they’re super important for us!

See you next week, enjoy your coffee!
The Riff Studios Team

Good morning, coffee lovers:

Today we have decided to surprise you all by launching the new update you have been waiting for, so you can consider this entry as its respective patch notes. Coffee Shop Tycoon’s full launch is finally coming this December, so we wanted v0.9 to include a lot of relevant changes to help you manage your coffee business in a more complete and efficient way. You'll soon realize why we decided to release a simpler patch last time!

In our previous entry, we gave you a preview of the customer dashboard and the new fan-based progression system that will take over from the traditional levels starting today. But now, it’s time to go deeper into this matter and the other features left to introduce — featuring more screenshots and GIFs that will help you understand them better!




New leveling system
Until now, the progression system was exclusively driven by reputation points and it was limited to 11 levels despite all the new items, machines, and coffee types you were able to unlock through roasting challenges or rival company acquisitions. The new fan-based system allowed us to say goodbye to these limitations because your business growth has no limits.

Every item requires a certain amount of fans to be unlocked instead of reaching a level. On top of that, the reputation of your business will play an important role in the status of your follower counter. The more famous it becomes, the more demanding your customers will become. As you see, this new system makes the game more challenging than before!

Existing save files will be automatically updated, and your current level will be converted to an equivalent number of fans. For our next update, we’re planning to introduce new items that will be automatically unlocked if you have enough followers once the patch comes out. Additionally, there will be a new achievement for those players aiming to build a huge community of coffee enthusiasts.




Customer thoughts + Customer dashboard
Customers in Coffee Shop Tycoon care about many aspects of your store. We felt that sometimes this was not very clear, and you had to click on every customer to find out exactly what was important to them. You still have that option, but now essential thoughts are displayed over your customer's head; this includes things like "Good service," "No coffee," "Bad quality," and "Old food," among others.

All these thoughts are aggregated into a new summary screen that you can access from the manager menu. With this new information, you can cater to all your customer's needs and react promptly when there is a coffee crisis. With this change, we also decided to update the "I'm stuck" icon that popped over your customer's head, as many players were confused by the previous design.




Improvements to the store icons
New icons are now visible next to the requirements of each item to better communicate how to unlock it. Store items are unlocked by fans, roasting challenges, and buying rival companies.




Sugar tables are now functional
If you have condiment bars in your shop, you will notice that some clients will take a detour to pay a visit. This simple action will help you gain additional reputation points, so it’s strongly recommended to have one at every shop! A new animation for this interaction will come soon to the game.




Employees with custom names
This has been a highly requested feature and one we are happy to announce — you can finally rename your employees! You can click on any employee and edit their names in the "Employee Info" screen. Just think twice about firing an employee that has your name on it. We would not want you to start hating the world of coffee…




Additional pathfinding fixes
This is a very elusive bug that has frustrated you and us for months. There was a slight chance that customers would end up frozen in front of the cashier; the only way to fix this problem was to close and reopen your store. Well, we are happy to communicate that the bug has been zapped. While testing the update, we were able to reproduce the problem and add a fix that should prevent this from happening again, no more stuck customers!


And that’s all for now, we hope your verdict is good and you enjoy playing Coffee Shop Tycoon! As usual, we want to remind you that feedback is always welcome here, because it usually helps us identify new bugs or features you might like to see in a game like ours.

That said, remember that these last few months of development are very important to us and we would love for you to recommend Coffee Shop Tycoon to your friends. Every addition to your wishlists counts!

Have a great weekend,
The Riff Studios team

Hello there, coffee lovers!

We hope your autumn (or your spring!) it's been off to a great start. After a well-deserved vacation, we’re back to game dev with our batteries fully charged. In fact, it's been a few weeks since that but we decided to delay the new post until we could show you a preview of the next update. And, for your joy, it's happening today!

Today we’re focusing on two aspects of the upcoming patch that you’ll find most interesting — the fan base system and the customer info dashboard! But first, let’s quickly remind ourselves of the rest of the changes this Autumn update will bring.

• Important notifications such as the status of coffee or the lack of demanded services will appear above customers’ heads.
  
• Customer thoughts will turn into review tags that can be aggregated for a summary.
  
• Side tables with sweetener dispensers will be functional.
  
• The number of marketing campaigns you can active simultaneously will be limited.
  
• You will be able to rename your shop staff.
  

The first two points concern the customer information panel, so we'll start by breaking down this feature.

Keeping your consumers happy is vital for your business to attract new coffee fans over time. We are not talking about individual opinions, such as those that can already be read by clicking on each character, but about how this group of people who frequent your store perceives your products and services. To display this information simply, we have created an information dashboard that looks like this:



The more customers rate positively your drinks, your food, and what you offer to make their stay comfortable, the higher your average happiness rate will be. You will get an idea just by looking at the thinking clouds popping over clients' heads. As for the last review received, there’s not much new: the reviewer's opinion is worth the same as that of any other customer, but it creates positive or negative trends that increase or reduce the number of customers you have for a limited time.

Clients won’t show a preference regarding the bean variety or its roasting level — but they take quality very seriously, so you better start training your roasting skills and unlocking new machinery because some of them will expect you to serve coffee with a score higher than 80 or 85 points. If you constantly forget about satisfying that expectation, they’ll finally manifest a negative opinion of your shop and refuse to become your fans.



All this brings us to the new progress system we’re about to introduce. It’s planned to replace the current scale of 11 levels where reaching each of them unlocks a new feature or machine, so once you get to the last one there’s a crescent sensation of having reached the top of the game. The fan base system breaks with it since the number of brand adepts will constantly increase depending on your decisions and management style.

We will keep the aspect of unlocking new items as you achieve a certain amount of followers, but all the rest is entirely new. Every time a customer orders a coffee or a bun, the game evaluates different aspects of the products and services you offer. If the result meets the client's expectations, this person will become part of your fan base.

One more thing you have to bear in mind is that being popular doesn’t mean business growth is going to be quicker — the bigger your community is, the harder it will be to unlock new traits and machinery. We’d love to make it clear with another screenshot, but the IU for this feature is still in development and there’s not too much to see now. We will reveal it as soon as possible in a new post.


That’s all for today, dear coffee addicts! We are counting the days until you can enjoy this new content. This is the final stretch of Coffee Shop Tycoon’s development, which is planned to be fully released in December 2022, and we need more than ever that you help us to make it known. If you have friends who love management games and are curious about the world of coffee, please recommend them to try ours!

Have a great weekend,
The Riff Studios team

Hello, coffee lovers!

Today is the day! We are super excited to announce that, finally, the Economy Update is out! We are very happy with the result of these months hard work and we want to thank you for your patience and your support. Now it is your time to play it and let us know what you think about it.

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Remember that the Economy Update will let you set prices for food and beverages in your coffee shops. But not only that, as the reputation of your business will have a significant impact on how much you can charge for a cup of coffee. You can take a further look at everything that this update brings to the table in this link.

And now, let's brew some coffee!