Now it's serious!

Well, it's been ages since I didn't post here. First I had to wait 4 days until neighbours showed up in the game. Until then I was unable to expand the cafe, or hire waiters. Then I had some seasonal stuff to attend to, and got lazy too. But don't worry, I kept on cooking, and took some pics for you.

 So I cooked and served a number of dishes, favoring those with a high point value in order to climb levels, gain more stoves, counters and waiters. As soon as the neighbours appeared, I hired the waiters and expanded the cafe a bit. Then it looked like this :

Note that the stoves are still turned with the front facing out, so the cook can't reach it, and doesn't have to run around.
I also closed the path between the kitchen and dining areas, so the waiters are forced to throw dishes at the patrons, allowing for instant service. Dirty tables are also instantly cleaned. This trick is called teleportation. This makes every customer satisfied, and buzz rating climbs very fast. Thus I had to rearrange the dining room to have more tables.

At level 15 we get 2 killer recipes : Apple crumble and Baklava. These two dishes used to be the rewards for the Astounding Expansion quest, but now they're available for everyone.
At 100 coins per serving, the crumble is the best cash cropper you'll get, as it gives a 93% net revenue. While still profitable, the Baklava is essentially a source of cafe points, with a point value around 1700. But at 35000 coins, it is is quite expensive to cook.

So I cooked a few batches of apple crumble to stockpile a good amount of money, that is around 500.000 coins. Depending on how often you log in, that takes between 1 and 3 days. Then I started to pump out bakalavas to zoom through levels.

Level 7 : Buzz and neighbours

Well, we've been playing on and off for less than 2 hours, and we're at level 7, with a 5th stove !

Some players have accepted our friend request. Let's use the "Neighbours" tab to ask them to be neighbours. New neighbours can take up to 4 days before they are visible in game. Just be patient !

Neighbours are needed for certain things, like expanding our cafe, or setting up some items, like the coffee machine. For now we need just 2, for our first expansion.
Having many neighbours gives no advantage that I can see. Eventually, 20 or 30 should be enough.
Some people will tend to frantically collect neighbours, which is pointless. Friends, on the other hand, are decisive. The more, the better. FB gives the possibility to have 5000, so use it! In my other account, I have some 900 in-game friends, and add a few every day. Later, we'll see the usefulness of friends (apart from having a drink together, of course).

Now note there's a thumbs up icon on top of screen, with a figure. This is the "Buzz rating". The higher the buzz is,  the more customers come to your cafe, the more successful you'll be. Buzz goes 0.1 point up when a customer is happy, and a full 1 point down when they're disapointed.

A customer will be unsatisfied if no seat is available, of if they wait so long for service, that they get up and leave. I noticed another source of disapointment, when they want a dish that the waiter cannot serve to them. So make sure that all counters are accessible.

On the other hand, satisfaction usually happens when they are served very quickly. To achieve this, always keep the path between counters and tables short and clear. Also make sure you have the maximum number of waiters. When climbing a level, a message says you can hire 1 more. Waiters are hired top right of screen, where the cafe name Is. It is a good idea to check sometimes if there's a free position that you missed.

I've seen it written several times that having several doors and many windows will increase buzz. This might have been true before, I dont know. But now it's meaningless. I know of very successful cafes with 1 door and few, if any windows.

Another common practice is to spend a lot on decoration to increase buzz. Again, this has *absolutely no incidence*. This is the kind of junk you find in several online CW tips and guides. I'll show that a cafe with no deco can get and keep a top buzz rating.

Buzz rating can be between 5.0 and 105.0 points. But don't worry if it stays low. Soon we'll see how to max it out, and keep it so. Definitely.

Level 3 : friends

A few dishes cooked, and we get to level 3. Higher levels mean more stoves, counters, waiters, and recipes. To climb levels, we must gain Cafe Points. Almost anything you do in CW produces points, but the main source is cooking and serving dishes, of course. Different dishes have different point value.

Now is time to find a few friends. To do this, we'll head to the official CW forums at http://forums.zynga.com/forumdisplay.php?f=157.
We'll go to the "add me" section, and ask some posters for adding us. No need to register.
Of course, if you have *real* friends to play with, it's more fun !

Level 2

So, we're at level 2 and bought a stove and some furniture :

8 tables will be more than enough, the biggest cafe doesn't  need more than 20. Just make sure that all incoming guests can find a free seat.
Note how I turned the stoves to face outside. I noticed that, if the cook can't reach the stove's front, he will use it from a distance, saving moves, hence precious time. I suppose this is a bug in the game, so why not use it ? We'll see more later.

Opening my new cafe

So, I've been playing Cafe World (CW for short) for about 85 days, And I thought, "What If I had to start over now, what would I do ?". Probably not the same mistakes twice, I guess. And how about doing it and taking pics and notes for a small blog ?

If you ask, CW is a social game played on the facebook network. In CW you run a cafe, cook dishes, serve customers, and try to make it the best cafe in town. The social aspect is that friends help each other progress. Actually, you can't really play without other friends also playing. Fortunately, there's ways to befriend other players.

So I registered a new FB account, and started a new cafe. This is how it looks :

So at level 1, we have 3 stoves, 3 counters and 1 waiter. In a matter of minutes we're at level 2 and can buy a 4th stove. We'll also get a few more tables and chairs, so every customer can have a seat. No need to have too many, though ! 8 will be enough. We'll buy the cheapest, and not worry for decoration for now.