How to make drinks that people actually love

Happy Friday, coffee lovers!

Here we are one more day to share with you the best-kept secrets of Coffee Shop Tycoon. Today, in response to a question made by Celticsungod, we’re revealing a very useful one about the custom drinks system. In the previous post of the #Tips&Tricks series, we reviewed the basic elements of this game feature, so now it's the perfect time to dive into a crucial aspect of it: how can you achieve the highest acceptance rate among the audience of your interest during the test round?

If you’re the kind of player who enjoys doing the math to optimize your results in tycoon games, the following explanation is going to be like a walk in an amusement park for you.

• In order to calculate each target customer’s reaction to your recipe, the game measures how Sweet, Bitter, and Sour your new drink is. These variables are related to the ingredients you choose and in what proportion you add them. Generally speaking, it could be said that teenagers love sweet drinks, experts prefer the bitter taste of traditional coffee and casuals have no clear preference.

• In Coffee Shop Tycoon, the taste is determined by a range of values associated with the flavors mentioned above. This range is different for Teenagers and Experts, while the Casual audience will value all three in the same way.
  1. Teens: Bitter (0 - 32), Sweet (60 - 100), Sour (0 - 60)
  2. Casuals: Bitter (0 - 50), Sweet (0 - 50), Sour (0 - 50)
  3. Experts: Bitter (50 - 90), Sweet (0 - 30), Sour (0 - 20)
  Based on this scale, the game will assign the drink a certain amount of points.

• These points will get multiplied by a fixed number to calculate the final score of the drink:
  1. Teens: Bitter (0.8), Sweet (1.4), Sour (0.8)
  2. Casuals: Bitter (1), Sweet (1), Sour (1)
  3. Experts: Bitter (1.4), Sweet (0.8), Sour (0.8)

If the result for Bitter, Sweet, and Sour falls within your target customer’s range of values, the drink will score well. Here is a practical example:

• Drink A has the following values: Bitter (24), Sweet (70), Sour (45).
• This is what we get after using the multipliers:
  1. Teens: Bitter (19.2), Sweet (98), Sour (36). Perfect for them!
  2. Casuals: Bitter (24), Sweet (70), Sour (45). Too sweet.
  3. Experts: Bitter (33.6), Sweet (56), Sour (36). Less bitter than it should be.

It is also important to mention that the customers having a coffee in your HQ will use the average number within their range to evaluate it. For example, taking the values we used first, we would find this:

• Teens: Bitter (16), Sweet (80), Sour (30)
• Casuals: Bitter (25), Sweet (25), Sour (25)
• Experts: Bitter (70), Sweet (15), Sour (10)

Mother of God, what a serious headache! Making a tycoon video game is no mean feat, and explaining the system to other people... can be even more so. Anyway, we hope it helps you create even more successful drinks in the near future. If there's any further detail you want to discuss, feel free to leave a comment here, open a Discussion thread or join our community server on Discord. We’ll always be happy to learn about you!

Enjoy your next coffee!
Riff Studios