Dear Players,
Missed our first devlog? You can discover the Menu du Jour system here: Devlog #1 — Menu du Jour
Welcome to our second devlog dedicated to the next major update for Parisian Bistro Simulator. Over the coming weeks, we will continue introducing the new systems we are developing to add more depth, decision-making, and variety to the management of your bistro. Today, we will be taking a closer look at employees, skills, specialties, personality traits, and training.
👥 Giving Employees More Identity
In the current version of the game, employee management remains relatively simple. Employees can be unlocked and recruited immediately, with no differences between candidates and limited opportunities to develop or manage them over time. With the next major update, recruitment will become a much more important part of managing your restaurant. A new selection of candidates will be available and refreshed every day. Each candidate will have a name, an individual profile, and different strengths and weaknesses. Every employee will now be defined by three main elements:
- Skills
- Specialties
- Personality traits
These elements will determine how effectively they perform their tasks, which actions they are capable of completing, and how much they can improve through training.
📈 Skills and Employee Potential
Skills represent an employee's performance in different areas of their job. They can be improved over time through training, but every employee will also have individual potential limits. This means that some candidates will never be able to reach the maximum level in every skill, regardless of how much training they receive. Choosing the right candidate will therefore be important, especially when recruiting employees for highly specialized roles. Some examples of skills include:
- Cooking Speed for chefs
- Movement Speed for waiters
- Service Care for waiters
Service Care is a passive skill that represents how much attention a waiter gives to their tables. A waiter with a higher level of Service Care will have a more positive influence on customer satisfaction. More experienced and capable candidates will generally require a higher recruitment cost and a larger salary. However, an employee's salary will not increase after they have been recruited, even as their skills improve. Recruiting a less experienced candidate at a lower salary and investing in their training may therefore become a valuable long-term strategy.
🍳 Employee Specialties
Specialties determine which advanced tasks an employee is qualified to perform. Unlocking a new dish will no longer always mean that it can immediately be prepared in your restaurant. You will also need to employ a chef with the appropriate specialty. For example, preparing the Seafood Platter will require a chef with the Seafood specialty. This means that expanding your menu will also require you to consider the composition and qualifications of your kitchen team.
Specialties will also apply to other employee roles. Waiters with the Food Trolley specialty will be able to use the new food trolley to transport and serve several dishes more efficiently. Waiters without this specialty will not be able to use it. Similarly, bartenders will need the Cocktail specialty before they can prepare cocktails. These requirements will make employee selection and training an important part of planning how your restaurant operates.
🧠 Personality Traits
Employees will also have personality traits that can positively or negatively affect their performance, their learning ability, and the quality of their work. Some employees may be Meticulous, improving the care they bring to their tasks. Others may be Fast Learners, making them easier to develop through training. However, candidates may also have negative traits such as Slow Learner or Anxious. These traits may affect areas such as:
- The quality of prepared dishes
- The quality of customer service
- The employee's ability to learn
- Their effectiveness in specific tasks
A candidate with excellent skills may therefore still have a disadvantage that needs to be considered, while a less experienced employee may have traits that make them a better long-term investment.
🎓 Training Your Team
Employees will no longer remain exactly as they were when recruited. Through the new training system, you will be able to invest in their development and gradually shape your team around the needs of your bistro. Training can be used to:
- Improve an employee's skills up to their individual potential limits
- Teach them new specialties
- Add certain positive personality traits
- Remove certain negative personality traits
Training will not always be guaranteed to succeed. Its success rate may vary depending on the employee's profile, skills, and personality traits. This creates several possible recruitment strategies. You may decide to hire an experienced candidate who can immediately perform an important role, despite their higher salary. Alternatively, you may recruit a cheaper and less experienced employee, then invest in their training over time. You may even decide to recruit an employee with a negative trait and attempt to remove it through dedicated training.
⚙️ A New Layer of Restaurant Management
The goal of this system is to introduce a genuine layer of staff management and long-term optimization. Employees will no longer be interchangeable workers recruited only to automate tasks. Their skills, specialties, traits, potential, salary, and training will all need to be considered when building your team. Combined with the Menu du Jour system presented in our previous devlog, this will give you many more ways to influence the efficiency and profitability of your restaurant. A well-designed Menu du Jour can improve stock management, customer satisfaction, kitchen speed, and table turnover. A properly trained team with the right specialties and an effective distribution of tasks will allow you to take full advantage of those benefits. Finding the right balance between recruitment costs, salaries, employee productivity, training investments, and restaurant revenue will become an important part of developing a successful bistro.
❤️ Conclusion
Employees and Skills are the second major system we are presenting as part of the new direction for Parisian Bistro Simulator. Our objective is to make every recruitment decision more meaningful and give you more control over how your team develops throughout your playthrough. Thank you for reading this second devlog. Feel free to react, share the post, and tell us what you think about the new employee management and training systems. We will be back soon with another devlog introducing more features from the next major update. In the meantime, you can join our Discord or our QQ group to discuss the game with the community. Discord
https://discord.gg/BcDbU6dgF9 QQ Group
QQ 982613648 We look forward to showing you more.