Coffee Shop Tycoon News

Hello there, coffee gourmets!

We are glad to have you on board with us one more week. Creating a tycoon video game requires some research into the subject matter, and this was no exception for Coffee Shop Tycoon. It wasn't a particularly hard task for us to get started as we've always been big fans of this delicious beverage but, indeed, we did have to analyze the most relevant aspects of managing a cafe and learn a lot of new concepts in no time. Today we're sharing this knowledge with you all in a short list of 5 things we learned from the coffee shop industry. Let's get started!

[h3]It takes a world to produce a good cup of coffee[/h3]
The production of coffee is a fascinating topic! It takes between 4 to 7 years for a coffee tree to reach maturity; at that point, it produces cherries that can be harvested by hand or through machinery. These cherries are then processed to remove the outer layers of the fruit, revealing the coffee beans we all know and love. Coffee roasters purchase these raw seeds to extract their best properties to produce high-quality coffee. The final tasting profile will depend both on the coffee's origin and the roaster's goals.

But we are not done yet; the barista takes the coffee to the finish line. There are many brewing practices, each producing an exciting outcome. If you take the same coffee and compare the flavor of espresso vs. a pour-over, you will immediately notice how different even the same coffee can taste.

So, as you can see, producing a good cup of joe is very complex. Next time you find yourself enjoying this glorious drink, think about all the work that went into it to give you that experience.




[h3]Light roasted and dark roasted coffee have the same amount of caffeine[/h3]
Contrary to popular belief, the process of roasting doesn't change the amount of caffeine in each coffee bean. The only thing that will affect the amount of caffeine in your drink is how many beans you use to brew it. Here is where it becomes interesting!

Depending on how you measure your coffee, you might end up with more caffeine or not. Dark roasted coffee beans are larger in volume since they have expanded with heat but weigh less. Consequently, if you measure your coffee by volume, dark roasted coffee will mean fewer coffee beans than light roasted coffee, hence producing a less caffeinated drink. But if you measure by weight, since each dark roasted coffee bean weighs less, you will end up with more coffee beans and, therefore, more caffeine than a light roasted coffee.




[h3]Good quality water is just as important as good quality coffee[/h3]
This might be obvious, but oftentimes you don't give it a second thought. If you want to taste a coffee flavor that is only driven by the coffee properties, try to filter your water. Tap water has chemicals to prevent the growth of bacteria. The smell and taste of these chemicals can ruin a wonderful cup of coffee.




[h3]Coffee can go extinct with climate change[/h3]
Coffee can only be produced in some parts of the world. It is susceptible to temperature, light, and humidity levels. It is estimated that rising temperatures due to climate change can reduce the areas suitable to produce coffee by 50%. This will not only affect the amount of coffee we produce but also the flavor. The soil, elevation, and conditions of each region give the coffee its distinct flavors and aromas. If the weather changes, coffee will need to be produced at different altitudes, changing its properties.




[h3]You have probably only tasted Arabica coffee[/h3]
There are two major types of coffee, Robusta, and Arabica. Depending on where you live, you might have only tasted Arabica coffee. Before arabica coffee started to be associated with quality, it was common to come across supermarket coffee that used Robusta as a filler. Nowadays, Arabica is considered the standard and a higher quality coffee, so it is hard to come by Robusta beans.




Some community members are familiar with these ideas since they have worked in cafes and restaurant businesses for many years, so we’d love to know their points of view. After all, tycoon games should be all about a balanced mix of expertise in the topic to address and lots of crazy ideas to turn the usual tasks and work routines into a super fun gaming experience. We think Riff Studios is on the right way when it comes to achieving this, but a little push never hurts!

With all that said, the only thing left is encouraging you both experts and fans to express your thoughts on this in the comments section, or maybe the DIscussions area. Also, there’s a wonderful community server on Discord that you can join today — this is the best time to do it because we are on the verge of many interesting changes in its structure!

Enjoy your coffees, we’ll see you in the next entry!
Riff Studios

Happy Friday, coffee lovers!

Here we are one more day to share with you the best-kept secrets of Coffee Shop Tycoon. Today, in response to a question made by Celticsungod, we’re revealing a very useful one about the custom drinks system. In the previous post of the #Tips&Tricks series, we reviewed the basic elements of this game feature, so now it's the perfect time to dive into a crucial aspect of it: how can you achieve the highest acceptance rate among the audience of your interest during the test round?

If you’re the kind of player who enjoys doing the math to optimize your results in tycoon games, the following explanation is going to be like a walk in an amusement park for you.

• In order to calculate each target customer’s reaction to your recipe, the game measures how Sweet, Bitter, and Sour your new drink is. These variables are related to the ingredients you choose and in what proportion you add them. Generally speaking, it could be said that teenagers love sweet drinks, experts prefer the bitter taste of traditional coffee and casuals have no clear preference.
  

• In Coffee Shop Tycoon, the taste is determined by a range of values associated with the flavors mentioned above. This range is different for Teenagers and Experts, while the Casual audience will value all three in the same way.
  
  1. Teens: Bitter (0 - 32), Sweet (60 - 100), Sour (0 - 60)
     
  2. Casuals: Bitter (0 - 50), Sweet (0 - 50), Sour (0 - 50)
     
  3. Experts: Bitter (50 - 90), Sweet (0 - 30), Sour (0 - 20)
     
  Based on this scale, the game will assign the drink a certain amount of points.
  

• These points will get multiplied by a fixed number to calculate the final score of the drink:
  
  1. Teens: Bitter (0.8), Sweet (1.4), Sour (0.8)
     
  2. Casuals: Bitter (1), Sweet (1), Sour (1)
     
  3. Experts: Bitter (1.4), Sweet (0.8), Sour (0.8)
     

If the result for Bitter, Sweet, and Sour falls within your target customer’s range of values, the drink will score well. Here is a practical example:

• Drink A has the following values: Bitter (24), Sweet (70), Sour (45).
  
• This is what we get after using the multipliers:
  
  
  1. Teens: Bitter (19.2), Sweet (98), Sour (36). Perfect for them!
     
  2. Casuals: Bitter (24), Sweet (70), Sour (45). Too sweet.
     
  3. Experts: Bitter (33.6), Sweet (56), Sour (36). Less bitter than it should be.
     

It is also important to mention that the customers having a coffee in your HQ will use the average number within their range to evaluate it. For example, taking the values we used first, we would find this:

• Teens: Bitter (16), Sweet (80), Sour (30)
  
• Casuals: Bitter (25), Sweet (25), Sour (25)
  
• Experts: Bitter (70), Sweet (15), Sour (10)
  

Mother of God, what a serious headache! Making a tycoon video game is no mean feat, and explaining the system to other people... can be even more so. Anyway, we hope it helps you create even more successful drinks in the near future. If there's any further detail you want to discuss, feel free to leave a comment here, open a Discussion thread or join our community server on Discord. We’ll always be happy to learn about you!

Enjoy your next coffee!
Riff Studios

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

Welcome back, coffee lovers:

A new, fascinating Monthly coffee appreciation post is here for your relish. Today we’ll be sharing some curious facts about the rarest coffee varieties in the world. Some of these exclusive coffee varieties have a very peculiar scatological origin you may have never imagined, so despite it being a pretty interesting topic we strongly recommend not to read the full article on a full stomach — you’ve been warned!



Let’s get down to business with a proven fact: if the “scatological origin” you’re thinking about consists of animals eating fresh coffee beans and defecating the seeds that will be later washed, dried, and roasted… your thoughts are accurate. This kind of coffee is pretty popular because the digestive process of some mammals and birds alters the chemistry of the seeds, which also changes the taste of this fine variety. that just a few privileged people can afford to taste. We just hope the washing is really, really thorough.

Among these varieties of defecated coffee, the most popular one is the kopi luwak made in Sumatra and other areas of Indonesia with the help of palm civets. These animals are not particularly selective about the type of cherries they eat, but those who feed them to produce kopi luwak usually provide them with Arabica coffee cherries because they are perceived to be of higher quality.

The same goes for the variety produced by elephants in the Thai province of Surin, named Black Ivory. The community of Ban Ta Klang village feeds these amazing pachyderms as they take profit from them as tourist attractions and coffee makers. It is surprising that it is still being produced today, given that, in the words of its creator Blake Dinkin, “it takes 33 kilograms of raw coffee cherries to produce 1 kilo of Black Ivory Coffee".



The resulting beverage has a smooth and less acidic taste than other coffee varieties, so it rarely needs any sweetener. Regarding the price, a cup of Black Ivory coffee usually costs more than $60, so it’s only served in luxury hotels and expensive gourmet restaurants. In the case of kopi luwak, you may expect a similar price.

Now, we have to talk about Kona Coffee grown on the volcanic slopes of Hawaii. Kona cherries are grown in very special weather with light winds, sunny mornings, and rainy or cloudy afternoons. They’re picked, dried, and roasted by hand, so it all gives the final product a sweet, fruity, and mildly acid flavor you can’t find anywhere else. Depending on where you order it, a cup of Kona Coffee may cost between $1 and $15.



Last but not least, there’s the famous Jamaica Blue Mountain, which is both a designation of its origin and bean variety. Its coffee tree is grown in the Blue Mountain region between Kingston and Port Antonio. The low acidity and sweet taste of the resulting drink, which might be compared to dark chocolate, make it very popular in Japan. Interestingly, 75% of its worldwide production ends up in the Japanese market, something that is visible even in other well-known games such as the Yakuza series and Persona 5. This variety is available in many coffee shops around the world, but prepare yourself to pay around $10 per cup.



That’s all for today! In our next Monthly appreciation coffee post, we’ll have an interesting conversation about 5 lessons we learned about the coffee shop industry that were pretty useful to creating Coffee Shop Tycoon. In the meantime, we invite you to keep enjoying your business adventures in the game, share your ideas in the comment section and join our Discord server to chat with us from time to time.

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

Hello there, coffee entrepreneurs!

Welcome to this new article in the #Tips&Tricks series, in which today we will cover the seasonal drinks system, its relationship to market trends and consumer expectations, and the consequences that a good or bad choice of ingredients will have on the reputation of your business. Soon you'll realize that, despite its complexity, this feature is quite easy to understand!



Seasonal drinks include products that people believe to be appropriate for each season of the year, like eggnog in Winter or flowers in Spring. Once the lab at your headquarters is unlocked, you’ll be able to create lots of them by mixing several types of base drinks, syrups, and toppings. Some ingredients of these categories will be suitable for all the year, but others will turn your creation into a seasonal drink. You’ll realize that after seeing the icon that will appear on the top right corner of the screen.



You'll notice up to four different icons there depending on the seasonal ingredients you've added to your drink, but keep in mind that you'll have to choose a prevailing season before finishing the process. Any seasonal effect the other ingredients may have will disappear. This is a feature of the game that you will have to master since customers may request the craziest combinations ever seen. And this is where trends come into play!



From a certain point in the game, you will be presented with challenges associated with ingredients that have become fashionable. You can let the opportunity go, but if your competitors get ahead of you, a reputation debuff will be applied and you will be visited by fewer consumers for a certain period of time. But if you take the chance to feature a new special beverage, there might come a day when a lot of people decide to visit your shop. It all depends on your capacity to hit the nail on the head!

Another factor to consider is the temperature expected for each drink. In both spring and summer, customers will prefer colder beverages; and in fall and winter, you'd better serve them warm and smoking!



But it doesn't end there! We still have to tell you about the pre-market testing of the new beverages. When your drink is ready to go, you will test it with a representative sample of each target audience: that is, young people, casual consumers, and coffee experts. The rating of each group will tell you who has liked it, and which people would rather drink sewage water than take another sip of your new idea.

It’s pretty usual to prioritize one target audience or another according to the type of clients you expect to come to your business — this is one of the aspects of your empire you’ll have to manage shop by shop to obtain the best result possible! And remember that if you want to take advantage of this to modify your user base, a paid marketing campaign will be the ideal complement.

And… that’s all for today, folks! However, if you have any questions in this regard, we are available to answer them. It may take a while, as we are busy preparing the new major update for June, which will bring options to set the individual price of drinks. You can learn more about this topic in the announcement we dedicated to Coffee Shop Tycoon’s roadmap.

Leave your comment here, or join our server on Discord to stay in touch with us!

Enjoy your next coffee,
Riff Studios