Guide to Island Layouts

Introduction :

If you are looking to make your restaurant as efficient as possible, then read on! This guide covers "island" layouts, which are, in my opinion, the most efficient restaurant layouts you can build.

You can begin using island layouts when you have a total of 6 staff. If you have less staff,

**Disclaimer: island layouts are slightly buggy right now, so you will need to do a little bit of trial and error to get them right.**


What is an "island" layout ?

If you've ever seen a restaurant that has two or more separate sections, or "islands", with its own cooks and waiters, then you've seen an example of an island layout. Here's one, as an example:




What's so special about island layouts?

Island layouts are unique in that they are extremely efficient. You'll see that smaller restaurants (few cooks and tables) are always more efficient than bigger, bulkier restaurants. In a small restaurant, waiters don't have to walk as much to serve customers, while long walks are almost unavoidable for big restaurants.

The beauty of an island layout is that we can take that big, bulky restaurant and split it back down into those smaller, much more efficient chunks.

On Bugs and Problems

Unfortunately, island layouts are plagued with a host of problems. Without the right island set up, the game will get confused and repeatedly put all your waiters in one island or scatter them randomly. However, we can overcome all these problems.

**The next section will show you how to set up your island layout right so that it works correctly and consistently, without any of the problems.**

Island Building

Okay, so you're ready to go out and build your island layout! There is only one thing that you must do to get island layouts to work consistently. I don't know why it works, but if you do it right then you won't encounter any problems.

Check your waiters, swap your stoves

After you've completed your layout, go ahead and assign your waiters and cooks. The following two things can happen:

Possibility 1: Your waiters are in the right position :



Congratulations! Go ahead and Save & Close. If they're still in the right position when you reload the app, then you're done! Otherwise, please read on.

Possibility 2: Your waiters are in the wrong position:



Don't feel bad, this happens. What you need to do now is to go into the furniture view, and swap your stoves (I'm not kidding). Randomly take one of your stoves, and swap it with another one:



After each time, leave the furniture view and check to see if your waiters are now in the right positions. If not, keep going (this should only take 1-3 attempts). Otherwise, Save & Close, and if the waiters are still correct after you reload the app, then congratulations! You are done!

As long as you don't touch your stoves again, your waiters will always appear correctly and your restaurant will run at its peak efficiency.

Recommended Layouts

Here are recommended island layouts that have been tested and verified (I have confirmed that these are all 50 popularity layouts):

Note : The islands pictured here are deliberately placed far apart so that you can see them better. If you are lacking space, you can just squeeze the islands together without any problems. Click the "compact layout" link below each picture to get an idea of how it should look.

4 Cooks, 2 Waiters




[Avg. customers served per minute: 11.2]

5 Cooks, 2 Waiters



[Avg. customers served per minute: 14.6]

6 Cooks, 2 Waiters



[Avg. customers served per minute: 17.8]

Guide To Getting GOLD Awards!

SOCIALITE -- VISIT 10000 FRIENDS.

Choose a friend of yours who have low, or preferably 0 points.

(This is due to prevention of lagginess which will result in loading restaurants with a lot of decorations.)

Keep visiting his/her restaurant, return to street and visit the restaurant again.




GARBAGE GURU -- CLEAR 10000 PIECES OF TRASH.

Locate restaurants on your street that are really dirty -- MAX being having 15 garbages lying around.

Clear all the garbages in all the filty restaurants, save and reload the game.

Do the same thing over and over again.




SANTA CLAUS -- GIFT 5000 ITEMS.

Personally feel this as the most tiring award.

Get the cheapest tile in Restaurant City, and keep gifting it to your friend.

The best way is to gift them to one of the first 4 friends you see, so that you will not waste time having to scroll and find your other friends.

Alternatively, you can gift yourself as well, if it's not too much of a hassle.

It's a recommended way for people who wants to save up.


Note: This will create a lot of messages in their inboxes, so I suggest finding a friend who is inactive.





TRADING EXPERT - TRADE 5000 INGREDIENTS.

Similar to the SOCIALITE award, find a friend of yours who have low, or preferably 0 points.

(This is due to prevention of lagginess which will result in loading restaurants with a lot of decorations.)

Choose one ingredient of yours and one ingredient of his/her and trade.

Keep using the same ingredients to trade, repeat the trading process.


Note: This will create a lot of messages in their inboxes, so I suggest finding a friend who is inactive.





BIG SPENDER -- SPEND 200000 COINS.


Needless to describe this, just earn money and spend them.

This can be considered to also be a co-joint award that you can achieve together with SANTA CLAUS, INTERIOR DESIGNER, GRAND ARCHITECT, FASHION ICON.





INTERIOR DESIGNER -- BUY 2000 INDOOR ITEMS.

Buy the cheapest stuffs in store: Oak Chair, Simple Table, Basic Window, Green Stripes.

Each of them costs $150.

After buying them, sell them, and you can get back 1/3 of their price ($50), and you can keep buying and selling until you get the awards.

Minimum required coins:

$200000

($100 per indoor item)





GRAND ARCHITECT -- BUY 500 OUTDOOR ITEMS.

Buy the cheapest items in store: Starter Building Base, Grey Brick.

Each of them costs $100.

After buying them, sell them, and you can get back 1/3 of their price ($33), and you can keep buying and selling until you get the awards.

Minimum required coins:

$33500

($67 per indoor item)





FASHION ICON -- BUY 500 AVATAR ITEMS.


Buy the cheapest items in store: Stewardess Shirt, Cute Blue Skirt.

Each of them costs $100.

After buying them, sell them, and you can get back 1/3 of their price ($33), and you can keep buying and selling until you get the awards.

Minimum required coins:

$33500

($67 per avatar item)





GOURMET CHEF -- GET 20 DISHES TO LEVEL 10.


Co-joint award to be achieved together with TRADING EXPERT.

Get ingredients by

1. Daily ingredient.

2. Food quiz.

3. First friend visit.

4. Marketplace.

5. Planting seeds in your garden.

6. Gourmet King.

Trade with your friends for the ingredients that you need, and you can achieve the award fast!





RESTAURANT CRITIC -- RATE 10000 RESTAURANTS.


Quite interesting award, you can visit a lot of restaurants as you attain the award.

Go to Random Street, and rate the restaurants.

There are 10 restaurants per street.

Keep doing this until you get 10000 restaurants rated!


NOTE: Please do have a kind heart and give beautiful restaurants the ratings they deserve; do not give any ratings just because you want to get the awards quickly.


GLORIOUS GARDENER -- HARVEST 200 PLANTS.

No shortcut, just keep planting and harvesting the plants.

Minimum amount of money required: $400,000

Minimum amount of time required: 1104 hours, which is around 47 days.




WASHING MACHINE -- CLEAR 2000 PLATES MANUALLY.

Try to have as many tables as possible.

24 seems to be the optimum number for this award.

Open up your restaurant.

Just keep clearing the plates until you reach 2000.





DRAIN FAME -- FIX 1000 TOILETS MANUALLY.

Sometimes if you leave your restaurant and go back in, you will find toilets that need fixing.

Fix them.

The more toilets you have, the faster you can get the award.





MASTER MECHANIC -- REPAIR 1000 ITEMS MANUALLY.


When all your employees are resting, go out to friend's street then go back into your restaurant.

Some arcades/pinball machines will need fixing, so fix them.

The more arcades/pinball machines you have, the faster you will get the award.




AIDE OF HONOR -- HELP 1000 FRIENDS' RESTAURANT.

This award is easy to get if you have a lot of friends.

Everyday, just go to your friends' restaurant and click on the random stuffs like skunks, sleeping bears, penguins, pipes, fungus.

You can also earn money -- $500, $100, $50, $15.

The amount of money you receive will decrease as you help more friends.

You can only help a friend every 24 hours.

And there is a cap on how many friends you can help per day.

Should be around 300.

5. How do I trade ingredients? (How does it work?)

When visiting a friend’s restaurant select the Trade Ingredients icon:



Select the ingredient you would like from your friend’s available ingredients, and then choose an ingredient from your own ingredients that you would like to trade for it. Then select the tick button.

If you are trading unlocked ingredients where you are giving an ingredient of higher quality (more stars), the trade will go through as a normal unlocked trade. If you are trading with a locked ingredient, or trading an unlocked ingredient that is higher quality than what you are trading it for, it will send a secure trade request!

When sending a secure trade request, your friend will have to accept the trade for it to go through!

4. What is the advantage of levelling up a particular dish?

For each increase in level of a dish, you earn slightly more Gourmet Points when a customer has that dish. However, it is not one full point extra for each level, instead it is around an 0.2 Gourmet Point increase per level, so once you have a dish at level 2, most of the time you will still see just 1 Gourmet Point increase when serving it, but sometimes you will see a 2 Gourmet Point gain.

Also, the appearance of the dish being served improves as the dish is levelled up:

3. How do I hire employees and how do I fire them?

hire one of your friends look for an empty spot in your employee bar at the bottom of screen, you may need to use the arrow icons to scroll left or right through your current employees to find the empty spot. Click the empty spot and you should be shown a list of your Facebook friends from which to choose your next employee. Then just select the purple ‘Hire’ button of the friend you would like to hire!

To fire one of your friends, select that employee while in your restaurant view and then select the ‘Sack’ button. Note that you will be required to pay 200 coins as severance pay if you would like to sack a friend!

2. How do I earn more coins?

You earn coins from serving customers at your restaurant. However, you can also earn coins by picking up trash; and clicking on the trees around your restaurant and your friends’ restaurants to ‘bump’ them.

If you have Arcades or Slot Machines in your restaurant you will also a coin each time a customer uses one.

Also, each day you will have the chance to do a task when visiting each friend’s restaurant (such as helping with sleeping bears, skunks, or penguins, etc)! Completion of the task will earn you coins! If you water a friend’s dry garden you will also earn a coin!

1. How do I earn more ingredients?

You receive a free daily ingredient for your first log in to Restaurant City each GMT day.

You also earn an ingredient for each daily quiz you answer correctly!

You can purchase a select few ingredients each day from the Ingredient Market, the ingredients available for purchase change each day at midnight GMT. To locate the Ingredient Market, when inside your restaurant click and drag the screen so that you see outside above your restaurant. Here is what it looks like:



You can also buy any ingredient you like from the Market using Playfish Cash, simply click the “Cash Ingredients” button when viewing the Ingredient Market.

And, you earn one new ingredient for the first ever visit you make to each friend! (This is a once only ingredient per friend, not daily.)