So you want to wake up early, make delicious donuts, and sell them to the fine Citizens of Paradise City? There's a few things you should know...



One thing to keep in mind you start with no sell-able products when you are starting out, so expect to lose some money for the first couple days as you build your inventory. You'll also sell a lot of product that needs to be replaced, so expect to constantly have Workers in your kitchen. You may even consider not opening your first day to build your stocks up.

Not a lot actually. Some initial franchises in Paradise city were coming in at under $200 per day. With some tuning this can likely be increased. It all depends on how many customers can be driven to the store, which looks something like the below, however it's been proving difficult to nail down the Star Rating and Max-Customers - more research is required on how Critics ratings work.

• 0 Star: 3? Max Customers
  
• 1 Star: 3? Max Customers
  
• 2 Star: 6 Max Customers (?)
  
• 3 Star: 8 Max Customers (?)
  
• 4 Star: 10 Max Customers
  
• 5 Star: (currently unknown - Max Products star is unknown how to get, but guessing 12-15?)

As of Early Access release v.0.3.22 - the Tier 1 Business License lies to you - it will let your Workers make part of donuts that can't actually finish the production cycle of - you actually only have the machines to make Plain Donuts. You can fix this by either filtering your Machines and Workers, or just upgrading your Business License.

A second common issue that appears to be fairly common is workers getting stuck picking up and dropping Donuts over and over again - This appears to be a pathfinding or AI issue with in at least v.0.3.22 . You can try moving your Food Chute a few squares away from it's present location - but if that doesn't work - try SAVEing and restarting your game. Unfortunately any contaminated product will need to be removed by clearing your Food Chute when it's placed inside (just pick it up and place it again), or just sell it to a customer and deal with the resulting mess.

What does it take to get started? You should jump straight to your Tier-3 Licensing, with a stiff entry fee of $20000 just for licensing!

• Business License Tier 1: $6000 - Make Plain Donuts, Drink Machine, and Small Fryer
  
• Business License Tier 2: $7000 - Make Chocolate & Glazed Donuts, and Medium Fryer
  
• Business License Tier 3: $7000 - Make Sprinkle donuts, Large Fryer, and better Chocolate Mixer & Glazing stations

This will let you make and sell every product your customer would want, and let you use the faster - but more expensive - machines to do it with.

Next you'll need a plot of land - be sure to pick one that is suitable for Donuts. In general, you will want to keep Laundromat spaces for those - but there's no rule that says you can't use them anyway...

• Church Lane, $3000. Laundromat or Donut Shop. Size: 24x24
  
• Center Lane, $3000. Laundromat or Donut Shop. Size: 12x24
  
• Oak Lane, $3000. Laundromat or Donut Shop. Size: 12x24
  
• Palm Drive, $3000. Laundromat or Donut Shop. Size 12x24
  
• Beach View, $5000. Donuts or Chicken. Size: 24x24
  
• Washington Avenue, $5000. Donuts or Chicken. Size: 24x24
  
• Bishops Boulevard, $7000, Donuts or Chicken. Size: 24x48

Before you place any equipment - and especially Fryers - you should hire and set a schedule for your Engineer. The reason for this is all your equipment degrades from 100% - 0% over the course of 24 hours... and when Fryers goto 0%, they explode and start a fire.
Having a regularly scheduled engineer stop by 2 or 3 times per day to keep everything in good repair will help prevent you from burning your building down, costing you valuable time and money.

Once you have that setup, you can go ahead and hire your regular staff. It's my suggestion to build schedules that divides the workday into 2 equal shifts, and send them home when not at your store. You can then easily apply that schedule to your main Worker staff, and your Cleaners to get your Cleaner All Business Hours review star.
Any staff you have working the Cash Register and serving Food and Drink, does not need any special equipment. Staff that will be working in the kitchen should be suitably equipped at a cost of $600 per Kitchen worker. The Chef Hat ($250, +20% Food Appliance Speed ) and Chef Jacket ($350, +30% Food Appliance Speed) are available without any tech-unlocks, so totally available to a Legitimate Businessperson.
Your Cleaners and Engineers do not require any equipment, and anything you may want is likely locked behind Tech unavailable to Legitimate Businesspersons... If you happen to find one, something to fight fires would not be unreasonable for your Engineer in the case one does break out.

There are only a couple considerations when building your shop:

• Include a Visitor Bathroom - a simple 3x3 room gets you an extra Review Rating star. Actually putting toilets and sinks in it makes customers happy which leads to earning tips.
  
• Placing your Drink Machine nearby your Cash Register means less walking to fill drinks for customers. You can place the Drink Machine in either the Dining Room with your Cash Register, or in the Kitchen.
  
• Food Chutes don't actually sit between Kitchen and Dining Room like you may see in real life. In Paradise City, apparently building codes require them to be entirely in the Kitchen. Placing them close to where your Cash Registers are will reduce time serving customers their order.
  
• Each Food Chute holds 12 donuts. A decently busy location can sell 30-40 donuts per day. Building 4 total Food Chutes - each one filtered to a specific donut type - can help make sure you have what the customers want, when they want it.

In the land of donuts, there is no 1-Star Quality!

No, seriously... you just can't make it happen. The Donut Cupboard will start at 1-Star Quality, but every other process in the chain is a 3-Star Quality - this will result in a 2-Star Quality by default for every product you make. You will find this true of other similar situations, like that Cloudy Meth that is plaguing our fair cities' streets!

The current system seems to be that if you are anywhere between the Minimum and Maximum Production Stars Achieved, you are 2-Star Quality of a product.

2-Star Quality Donuts sell for $2 less per unit, but otherwise take the same amount of time to produce.

Drinks will always be 3-Star quality... customers seem to ignore anything you do in the ice...

There does not appear to be any pricing impact for Contaminated donuts, although customers eating it will become sick all over your fine dining location, requiring your Cleaners to tidy up.

If you want all your Donuts to be 3-Star quality, you will need to setup a Humidifier near your Donut Cupboard so it receives the requires the required amount of Humidity.

The question remains, is the extra $2 per donut sold is worth the cost of running a small Humidifier at $96/day? That's a lot of donuts 48 of them actually to break even, and only the Highest Rated (5-star reviews) donut shops are likely to break a profit running it all day.
One option may be to manually turn it on or off during non-Kitchen hours - which is a lot of work for you, the High Level Executive, to do on a daily basis...

Of Note however, I've seen occasional glitches in Early Access version v.0.3.22 & v.0.3.24 that may cause the Humidity level of a tie to become stuck at it's rating - so changing the value may or may not work. Usually Save & reload will correct this issue if you encounter it.

So how much can you even sell your delicious cakey confections for? Individually, not a .. donut-hole.. lot.. but fear not - you can upsell every customer with a $6 drink, and with tips it can help add up.

Some guests will actually request a Combo - 2 donuts - you won't earn as much as selling them individually, but since you are limited to a certain amount of Customers at a time, it's still well worth the sale.. plus they will request a drink along with!

Making Donuts is more involved then those botanicals you may see in the alleys of Paradise City.. We're here to help your Franchise succeed by giving you the Recipes for Success!


There are 3 Easy steps for making Plain Donuts, and you can do so with the first level of Business License.

• Dough Cupboard -> Dough Station
  
• Dough Station -> Fryer
  
• Fryer -> Food Chute

A suitably attired chef with the proper equipment should be able to make dozen (12) from scratch in just under 4 hours of work.

4 Steps per Chocolate Donut. They require the Chocolate Mixer, unlocked with the Tier 2 Business License.

• Dough Cupboard -> Chocolate Mixer
  
• Chocolate Mixer -> Dough Station
  
• Dough Station -> Fryer
  
• Fryer -> Food Chute

A suitably attired chef with the proper equipment should be able to make around 8 Chocolate Donuts from scratch in just under 4 hours of work.


4 Steps per Glazed donut, and to do so successfully required the Glazer station unlocked with the Tier 2 Business License.

• Dough Cupboard -> Dough Station
  
• Dough Station -> Fryer
  
• Fryer -> Donut Glazer
  
• Donut Glazer -> Food Chute

A suitably attired chef with the proper equipment should be able to make around 6 to 7Glazed Donuts from scratch in just under 4 hours of work..


Sprinkled Donuts are the longest Donut chain, with 5 steps. They require a Tier-3 Business license to successfully make.

• Dough Cupboard -> Dough Station
  
• Dough Station -> Fryer
  
• Fryer -> Donut Glazer
  
• Donut Glazer -> Sprinkle Station
  
• Sprinkle Station -> Food Chute

A suitably attired chef with the proper equipment should be able to make around 6 Sprinkled Donuts from scratch in just under 4 hours of work..

Beyond the actual recipes, each Machine or hand-process takes time.. and with a long process tree, the longer it takes to output each finished product. You will want to try and cut down on how long each process step takes, and minimizing travel time between stations will help cut down on wasted time.

Manual/Hand Processes:
Manual processes are done by the working, using all of their attention to complete. Chef Hat & Jackets and other Food Preperation bonuses apply to these steps.


Automated Processes
Automated processes run by themselves, letting your worker attend to other tasks and come back when they are completed. Chef Hat & Jackets have no impact on the speed of these machines.

The Large Fryer, if you can afford them, is a hands-down Must Have for the aspiring Donut Tycoon.

Interestingly enough, if you have the income, a Chef Worker with Hat & Jacket is actually significantly faster at Glazing donuts. You can mitigate this by having multiple Automated Glazer stations, freeing your Workers to other tasks.

If you have the extra space and money, to prevent production backlogs from jamming up your products, you should also have 1 Dough Station and 1 Fryer filtered specifically for each product. If you use 'Auto' equipment like the Glazers or Chocolate Mixer, having multiple will help eliminate those at bottle-necks - we'll get with into the details.

• Avoid process bottlenecks so you always have product moving to customers
  
• Sell Drinks
  
• Keep your restaurant clean and quick-serving will earn you Cash Tips.
  
• Get your Stars Rating to encourage more Max Customers, which means more donuts & drinks sold! Although at this time the 'All Products' star rating is elusive for Donut shops.