Facebook Restaurant Apps: Cafe World and Restaurant City

While these two are not the only apps like them, they are the two I have come across and explored the most. The content herein is only up-to-date as of the writing of this article. Note: This article is rather lengthy - I like to be thorough. I debated whether I should publish this as two separate articles or as one, and decided a side-to-side comparative review was the format I wanted - so here is the one article.

I first came across this game in ads while playing Farmville. I put off trying it for some time, as I didn't want to get addicted to another app. But I eventually gave in and gave it a try. From the start, it was familiar, the mechanics of it being similar to other apps I've played, specifically Farmville and Yoville (rightly so, as both are Zynga apps). It's ease of use got me hooked from the start, just as I had feared. Now Farmville and Cafe World are the two apps I play on a near-daily basis.

You have an avatar that represents you, which you can customize at any time, as much as you want. You get to choose your starting look for free, and you get a basic chef outfit; you have to pay for future changes. You also start with being able to hire any one friend of your choice to work as a server. You can't customize your employees' clothing, but their avatars will show any customizing they have done if they also play the game. Otherwise, it gives them the basic chef outfit and a randomly generated look (which can sometimes be quite entertaining). You also start with a certain number of the most basic stoves, counters, tables and chairs (how many exactly, I'm not certain) as well as default wall styles and flooring. To begin with you only have a certain number of recipes available, but as you level up you unlock more. You also unlock the ability to have more stoves, counters, and servers as you level up.

Click on a stove to start making a dish. The cookbook menu will come up, showing all the recipes in the game. Ones available at higher levels will be locked, and will only show the name, picture, and at what level it is unlocked. Any dish you can cook will have a green 'buy' button. Click on this for the recipe you've chosen, and your avatar the chef will go to that stove, and gather the ingredients. Click on the stove for each of the next three preparation steps, and the dish will begin to cook. Cooking times range from 3 minutes to 2 days.

Make sure you are prompt with getting dishes off of the stoves, especially for the shorter times, as they will spoil. For the shortest cooking times, the dish will spoil in a matter of minutes. For the longest ones, it takes several hours. Each step in preparing the dish will earn you "Cafe Points" (experience points). You will also earn Cafe Points when the dish is finished and you serve it. You don't get any additional points if the dish spoils. When you've earned enough Cafe Points, you will gain a level, and whatever award comes with it. Leveling up will unlock the ability to have either another employee, another stove, or another counter; unlock a new recipe; or award a cash bonus.

Once a dish is served, it will appear on a serving counter. Your servers (employees) will pick up food here and take to waiting customers, who will pay once they have finished. When you remove a dish from the stove (or the dish spoils), you have to clean up the stove. When you have a clean empty stove, you can start a new dish. Be careful not to leave stoves or serving counters empty for long, because this will cause your buzz rating to drop.

Your buzz rating is how much your customers like your cafe. If they leave with a good experience, a green thumbs up will appear above their head and your buzz rating will increase; if they have a bad experience for any reason, it will drop. Pay attention to when this happens, so you know what is going on and you can fix it. The higher your buzz rating, the faster customers will come in - people are more likely to go to a five star cafe than a one star. Customer rate is also partially based upon size and/or level, from what I can tell. A bigger cafe run by a better chef is more likely to get more customers than a smaller cafe with an unknown chef, regardless how many stars either have.

That's all there is to playing the game. As you gain coins from selling food, you can redecorate your cafe. There are a variety of Wall colors and styles, flooring, fancier tables and chairs, stoves and serving counters, doors and windows, and various decor to choose from. Coins will also buy you size upgrades, giving you more space for more tables and decor. You can also change the name of your cafe by clicking on the current name in the upper right corner.

You can visit your neighbors (friends that have agreed to have a cafe near you) once a day, and get a free taste test of their daily special. Not only is it free, but they pay you and you get Cafe Points. It's also neat to see how your friends are decorating their cafes and what kind of a layout is working for them. You can get a lot of good ideas for your own cafe this way, as well as see what a particular decoration looks like in a cafe before buying. This is especially good for wall and floor styles, which can be difficult to imagine from the buy menu alone.

Overall, I enjoy this game. It is user friendly for the beginner, and easy to play. It also has a more complex layer of tricks that you can figure out to really play the game well, and become rich and powerful quickly. Even though the size upgrades can be expensive, especially for the larger sizes, the coins are easy enough to get that it isn't too big of a deal, but still a marvelous thing when you finally afford it. It does require some saving of coins when going for the expensive decor or expansions, so it requires some patience. I think the game rewards are well worth the effort they require. There's a lot to figure out to really play well, between the finicky buzz rating and specific layouts, and how to keep food on the counters at all times. If you pay attention, it isn't too difficult. I'm a puzzle person, so this part of the game only makes it that much more appealing to me.

Like Cafe World, I first came to this app through ads on Facebook. I already played Cafe World, and didn't really want to play a second of the same kind of app. I thought I would check it out anyway, just to see what it was like. I didn't end up liking it as much because of its playability. It takes up too much time and effort to make a note worthy amount of coins or experience. All the same, I still play it on occasion.

You start with one stove, your own avatar, and one employee (a friend of your choice). You can choose who is chef and who is server, but you must have one of each. The chef cooks at the stove, made-to-order dishes, and the server takes the dish from the stove to the customer. Servers also clear plates when the customer is finished eating, but you can do this manually as well. All workers have an energy level that drops as they work, falling completely from 100% to 0% in three hours. They will need snacks or rest to regain their energy. Customers order from a menu that you choose.

You start out with 2 appetizers, an entree, and a dessert, and you can serve one of each at a time. There are also drinks you can serve, but you have to wait until level 15 to unlock these. There are more recipes you can learn, but you must collect the correct ingredients and then spend them to learn the recipes. You can also level up recipes with additional sets of the same ingredients. Higher level dishes sell for more coins. As you level up, you have the ability to choose more than one of each dish type, as long as you have more than one learned. Customers will only order one dish, not a complete meal (appetizer, entree, dessert).

Collecting ingredients is relatively easy but slow; collecting the right ingredients for particular dishes is more difficult. Every day you play, you get one random daily ingredient. You also get a Daily Food Quiz in your mailbox, which will grant you another random ingredient if you answer the question correctly. The first time you visit any of your friends' restaurants you will get a random ingredient. You can also trade ingredients with your friends. Starting at level 5 (I think), you can use your garden just outside of the restaurant to plant certain things and get some ingredients that way. This is also expensive, but slightly cheaper than buying the ingredients from the ingredient market. The ingredient market will have three different ingredients every day that you can buy, if you have the coins.

Decor and ingredients are expensive, but you can get more coins faster by levelling up your dishes. The problem is getting the right ingredients to do so. It might be smart to learn the dishes you have the most ingredients for, so that you can get them levelled up more quickly and get more coins faster. Once you have the coins to spend on planting in your garden or buying from the ingredient market on a regular basis, you can start buying and levelling up the recipes you actually want.

You'll get coins and "Gourmet Points" (experience points) for every customer you serve. You also have a popularity rating that will increase when customers leave happy, but decrease if customers leave upset. Toilets that need cleaning, broken arcades, trash on the floor, or lack of seating all can cause customers to leave unhappy. The more happy customers, the higher the popularity, the faster customers come in. Also, the more coins and points you get. When you level up, you receive certain rewards. Larger restaurant space, more employees, and cash bonuses are the most frequent ones. Level 5 grants access to your first garden plot, level 10 grants access to an outdoor fresco where you can seat and serve customers, and level 15 grants access to the drinks, so that you can learn and then serve them. Serving drinks does require you to purchase and have on hand a drink dispenser to get the drinks from. Further levels will unlock more garden plots.

There's a bit more to customize here. You can decorate the outside of your restaurant as well as the inside, and you can change the outfits of your employees (not looks) as well as your own (you can change your own looks). You're given more variety in the types of objects you can buy, including entertainment for your customers, bathrooms, fountains, and more. There's also more interaction. You not only go to your friends' restaurant to help out, but you can also water plants if they have any in the garden, and pick up any trash. You can also go to "Random Street", which will have a listing of random players whose restaurants you can visit and rate, as well as pick up any trash.

Overall, I like the ingredient system, and I like that you get to show off your awards with the trophies. I also like the fact that you don't have to buy the upgrades - they come as you level up. Of course, you don't get to choose when you get a bigger restaurant, forcing you to meet the requirements of a larger space like toilets. The fact that your workers' energy drops in only three hours makes this game almost unplayable. Once the energy levels get low, trash starts to accumulate, and customers leave quicker. Once energy is out, customers aren't being served, and you earn no money and no experience. Unless you get on to play every three hours or sooner, you won't do particularly well. There may be some trick I haven't figured out yet, but it doesn't seem very easy to do well in this game.

While Restaurant City does have its charms, the fact that energy levels drop so quickly makes it difficult to play. Either money you receive gets dumped into snacks to get your employees back on the floor, or you always leave half your employees resting as standby, for a quick swap when the active employees have no energy left. Either way, if you don't go to play the app every 3 hours or so, you can't get a whole lot of coins or experience. Despite what I like about it, this major flaw does not leave me wanting to come back day after day. Cafe World, while less interactive on multiple levels, is easier to play well. As long as food is on the serving counters, customers are happy and paying. And all my experience is earned while I am playing, either through preparing and serving dishes or from visiting my neighbors. There's no surprises where there shouldn't be. For me, Cafe World's ease of use makes it a winner.