🍽️ Devlog #1 — Menu du Jour

Dear Players,

It has been a little while since we last shared news about the game. We are currently hard at work on the next major update for Parisian Brasserie Simulator. Just as we did before the launch of Early Access, we would like to share several devlogs with you over the coming weeks. This upcoming update will be a major one, and these posts will allow us to introduce its new systems in greater detail while making the wait a little easier. For this first devlog, we will be talking about the Menu du Jour.

🇫🇷 What Is a Menu du Jour?

In French restaurants, as well as in many restaurants around the world, it is common to offer a special menu that changes every day. This menu may depend on the chef's choices, the ingredients available, the expected clientele, or simply the type of experience the restaurant wishes to offer that day. With the next major update, the Menu du Jour will become a new strategic tool for managing your brasserie.

📈 Making Your Decisions Matter

Throughout almost a year of Early Access, we have collected your feedback, studied your suggestions, and spent many hours watching how players interact with the game. One of the main conclusions we reached is that the current progression can sometimes feel too linear and lacks challenge. In the current version, you mainly play to earn hats, unlock new dishes, and immediately add them to your restaurant. There are very few constraints when unlocking a recipe, and not enough systems through which your decisions can significantly affect the efficiency or progression of your establishment. With the next major update, we want to give your choices more meaning. We are therefore introducing several interconnected systems designed to create more strategic decisions, more trade-offs, and more ways to improve the performance of your restaurant. The first of these systems is the Menu du Jour.

👥 Understanding Your Customers

Each day, different types of customers will be expected to visit your restaurant. These customers are divided into several profiles, including:

• Businesspeople

• Students

• Tourists

• Families

• And several other types of customers

Each profile has different expectations and intentions when choosing a restaurant. Some customers may want to discover traditional French cuisine, while others may prefer more refined dishes. Some will be looking for an affordable meal, while others will care less about the price but expect fast service. Certain customers may also be searching for something particularly filling. The expected clientele will also be different between the lunch and dinner services.

⚽ Events, Weather, and Daily Demand

The customers visiting your brasserie will not be determined by their profiles alone. Daily events will also influence the type of clientele expected in your restaurant. For example, a football match may attract more tourists and students to the area, changing the type of demand you should prepare for. The outdoor temperature will also affect your customers' mood and the kinds of dishes they may want to order. These different factors will make each day feel less predictable and encourage you to adapt your strategy before beginning a service.

🥬 Individual Preferences and Restrictions

In addition to their general profile, individual customers may also have their own dietary preferences or restrictions. For example, a customer may:

• Be vegetarian

• Be vegan

• Avoid fish

• Have other specific food preferences

These individual requirements will also influence whether a group is likely to select your Menu du Jour. You will therefore need to consider both the general customer forecast and the individual restrictions that may appear within each group.

📝 Creating Your Menu du Jour

Your full restaurant menu will remain available as usual. However, every day, you will also have the option to prepare two additional menus:

• A Menu du Jour for the lunch service

• A Menu du Jour for the dinner service

Using the information available about the expected clientele, you will need to select a combination of dishes that offers the best possible balance between profitability, customer appeal, and operational efficiency. Your objective will not simply be to choose the most expensive dishes. You will need to create a menu that remains profitable while also appealing to the largest possible percentage of the customers expected during that service.

🖨️ Promoting Your Menu du Jour

Creating an appealing Menu du Jour will not be the only way to encourage customers to choose it. You will also be able to print copies of your Menu du Jour and distribute them to people in the street. Doing so will increase the likelihood of attracting groups that are specifically interested in your Menu du Jour. These groups will be more likely to visit your brasserie with the intention of ordering it. This will give you another way to influence the clientele entering your restaurant and help you make the most of a carefully planned menu.

⚙️ The Benefits of a Successful Menu

When your Menu du Jour matches the expectations and dietary requirements of a group, that group will be more likely to choose it instead of ordering individual dishes from your regular menu. A successful Menu du Jour will provide several important advantages.

• More predictable stock consumption When several customers order the same menu, the same ingredients will be consumed more frequently. This makes it easier to anticipate demand and prepare your stock accordingly.

• A customer satisfaction bonus Groups that select a Menu du Jour suited to their expectations will receive an additional satisfaction bonus.

• 25% faster dish preparation When a group selects the Menu du Jour, the dishes included in that menu will be prepared 25% faster in the kitchen.

• Faster table turnover Faster preparation means faster service, allowing you to serve more customers during the same period and potentially generate more revenue.

These advantages will make menu planning an important part of your restaurant's overall performance. As you will discover in our upcoming devlogs, money and financial management will also have significantly more importance in the next major update than they currently do. Improving the efficiency and profitability of each service will therefore become increasingly valuable.

💡 Quality of Life Improvements

Alongside these new systems, we are also continuing to improve the overall quality of life of the game. As part of the changes related to menus and dish management, we have redesigned the way customer orders are displayed. Instead of showing a separate order indicator for every individual customer, orders will now be grouped into a single indicator for the entire table. This will make orders much easier to read and prevent you from having to walk around the table to check what every customer has ordered. Steam post image

❤️ Conclusion

The Menu du Jour is the first major system we are presenting as part of this new direction for Parisian Brasserie Simulator. It will introduce more advanced macro-management and add more challenge to the progression of your establishment by connecting customer forecasts, menu planning, promotion, stock management, kitchen efficiency, satisfaction, and profitability. Thank you for reading this first devlog. Feel free to react, share the post, and tell us what you think about the Menu du Jour system. We will be back very soon with another devlog introducing one of the other major systems coming with 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.