Share your strategy of operating service firms
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David
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Share your strategy of operating service firms
Please share your strategy of operating service firms in this thread.
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Stylesjl
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Re: Share your strategy of operating service firms
What is the best way to be successful in services? Let's start by talking a bit about services and how they work:
First thing is that you have four service firms to choose from:
- Cake Shop
- Coffee Shop
- Fast Food Joint
- Pizzeria
Each have different ingredient requirements to make the products they sell.
Second thing is that services don't have brand ratings for individual products but for the service firm as a whole.
Third thing is that the barriers to entry are relatively low as service firms are cheap and non-capital intensive so expect heavy competition from rivals! Especially once the ingredients required start becoming abundant and widely available to everyone.
--
So how to start? In general my main strategy is not to start with service firms immediately but rather to build a successful food and probably also snack and beverage industry, although the latter two are not strictly needed. Food on the other hand is important. Why? Let's have a look at the products required:
- Cake Shop - needs Flour, Eggs, Sugar, Cocoa, Strawberry, Lemon. These are mainly snack related so having a snack industry beforehand is a good idea.
- Coffee Shop - needs milk, paper and you guessed it - Coffee Beans! If you must start a service firm without a Food, Snack or Beverage industry this is probably your best bet unless you have difficulty sourcing paper.
- Fast Food Joint - needs Burger Buns, Burger Patties, Flour, Tomato, Potatoes, Paper, Frozen Chicken - Most of these are food industry items!
- Pizzeria - needs Parma Ham, Tomato, Flour, Olives, Frozen Chicken, Frozen Beef - Most of these are also food industry items!
As you can see two out of four are Food Industry intensive. If you already have all of the food items being sold at your Supermarkets then you could easily open a Pizzeria as the only extra ingredient you won't have is Tomato. You should be able to easily afford a modestly sized farm for this if you are already successfully making money in food. In addition service firms can be a wonderful way to absorb the surplus agricultural products. For example do you have a surplus of olives due to the fact that you can only use them for Canned Olives (outside of services)? Well let the Pizzeria take care of that for you!
Where to put your Pizzeria? Basically any place with high traffic, street corners near other stores, inside of popular malls, you name it. These are very volume dependent firms so make sure you have a good customer base. In addition cluster your service firms together, they boost each other's traffic so don't be afraid to have a Fast Food, Pizzeria, Cake and Coffee Shop right next to each other or in the same mall. This will also boost traffic to your existing shops so win-win.
And of course have good quality products from R&D and training on the farms for high crop/livestock quality (an example, if you want high quality Parma Pizza, you need to R&D the Parma Pizza itself, R&D the Parma Ham/Flour and have good quality Frozen Pork, Tomato and Wheat that goes into those products).
You should also consider advertising for your service firms to encourage more traffic. Remember, only one firm needs the advertising as the brand applies to ALL service firms of the same type (i.e a brand for all Pizzerias).
If you are successful in Pizzas then the next logical step is Fast Food as by this point you will only need Paper and Potatoes as new ingredients. You should only need a medium sized Potato farm unless your service empire is very big. Paper requirements for services are modest and you could probably get paper from a rival or import it rather than producing your own paper from scratch as the service market won't ever be large enough to justify the expense of a Logging Camp + Paper Factory on it's own (if you produce paper for other industries however, then just use that).
Once you achieved success in those two areas I would suggest Coffee as the third firm to open as you now have access to paper and you should easily able to produce sufficient levels of Milk and Coffee Beans. The Cake Shop should be your last stop as this requires many different, mostly snack related ingredients that can be a bit hard to source if you don't have large amounts of capital or a thriving snack industry.
Some other notes as well:
- Services use a LOT of flour. I mean a lot. Even in a city of only 1 million people I had to open two large Flour factories just to keep up with demand (and a third just in case) so keep an eye on this resource and consider using a warehouse to manage things.
- I have noticed that AI players seem to be cautious and conservative when it comes to opening many service firms in relatively low traffic areas - this might be an advantage to you as you can more easily open service firms in places where the AI dares not to go.
--
Hope all of this helps in terms of understanding how services can make you money.
First thing is that you have four service firms to choose from:
- Cake Shop
- Coffee Shop
- Fast Food Joint
- Pizzeria
Each have different ingredient requirements to make the products they sell.
Second thing is that services don't have brand ratings for individual products but for the service firm as a whole.
Third thing is that the barriers to entry are relatively low as service firms are cheap and non-capital intensive so expect heavy competition from rivals! Especially once the ingredients required start becoming abundant and widely available to everyone.
--
So how to start? In general my main strategy is not to start with service firms immediately but rather to build a successful food and probably also snack and beverage industry, although the latter two are not strictly needed. Food on the other hand is important. Why? Let's have a look at the products required:
- Cake Shop - needs Flour, Eggs, Sugar, Cocoa, Strawberry, Lemon. These are mainly snack related so having a snack industry beforehand is a good idea.
- Coffee Shop - needs milk, paper and you guessed it - Coffee Beans! If you must start a service firm without a Food, Snack or Beverage industry this is probably your best bet unless you have difficulty sourcing paper.
- Fast Food Joint - needs Burger Buns, Burger Patties, Flour, Tomato, Potatoes, Paper, Frozen Chicken - Most of these are food industry items!
- Pizzeria - needs Parma Ham, Tomato, Flour, Olives, Frozen Chicken, Frozen Beef - Most of these are also food industry items!
As you can see two out of four are Food Industry intensive. If you already have all of the food items being sold at your Supermarkets then you could easily open a Pizzeria as the only extra ingredient you won't have is Tomato. You should be able to easily afford a modestly sized farm for this if you are already successfully making money in food. In addition service firms can be a wonderful way to absorb the surplus agricultural products. For example do you have a surplus of olives due to the fact that you can only use them for Canned Olives (outside of services)? Well let the Pizzeria take care of that for you!
Where to put your Pizzeria? Basically any place with high traffic, street corners near other stores, inside of popular malls, you name it. These are very volume dependent firms so make sure you have a good customer base. In addition cluster your service firms together, they boost each other's traffic so don't be afraid to have a Fast Food, Pizzeria, Cake and Coffee Shop right next to each other or in the same mall. This will also boost traffic to your existing shops so win-win.
And of course have good quality products from R&D and training on the farms for high crop/livestock quality (an example, if you want high quality Parma Pizza, you need to R&D the Parma Pizza itself, R&D the Parma Ham/Flour and have good quality Frozen Pork, Tomato and Wheat that goes into those products).
You should also consider advertising for your service firms to encourage more traffic. Remember, only one firm needs the advertising as the brand applies to ALL service firms of the same type (i.e a brand for all Pizzerias).
If you are successful in Pizzas then the next logical step is Fast Food as by this point you will only need Paper and Potatoes as new ingredients. You should only need a medium sized Potato farm unless your service empire is very big. Paper requirements for services are modest and you could probably get paper from a rival or import it rather than producing your own paper from scratch as the service market won't ever be large enough to justify the expense of a Logging Camp + Paper Factory on it's own (if you produce paper for other industries however, then just use that).
Once you achieved success in those two areas I would suggest Coffee as the third firm to open as you now have access to paper and you should easily able to produce sufficient levels of Milk and Coffee Beans. The Cake Shop should be your last stop as this requires many different, mostly snack related ingredients that can be a bit hard to source if you don't have large amounts of capital or a thriving snack industry.
Some other notes as well:
- Services use a LOT of flour. I mean a lot. Even in a city of only 1 million people I had to open two large Flour factories just to keep up with demand (and a third just in case) so keep an eye on this resource and consider using a warehouse to manage things.
- I have noticed that AI players seem to be cautious and conservative when it comes to opening many service firms in relatively low traffic areas - this might be an advantage to you as you can more easily open service firms in places where the AI dares not to go.
--
Hope all of this helps in terms of understanding how services can make you money.
Last edited by Stylesjl on Sat Apr 13, 2024 4:36 am, edited 1 time in total.