Hello!

Welcome to another update for Coffee Shop Tycoon, this time we focused on three major areas: Addressing feedback, bringing the game to more players, and modernizing the game. With that, let's start with some changes to retirement.


We’ve heard your feedback loud and clear, "Employees are retiring too soon". Retirement is supposed to help balance the game to prevent having god employees that can single-handedly do everything after playing the game for a while. It is also a mechanic that tries to simulate employee rotation in real life and put some economic pressure to make the game a bit more challenging. For those reasons we are not fully getting rid of it yet, first we want to try something out. Starting from this update, any new employee that you hire will have a significantly longer retirement time, this retirement time depends on the level of the employee when you hire them. (Pro tip: Use the budget slider during the hiring process to scout for candidates with a higher level)

• For employees between level 1 and 2, retirement time will be up to 8 years
  
• For employees between level 3 and 5, retirement time will be up to 6 and a half years
  
• For employees level 6 and up, retirement time will be up to 5 and a half years

We hope this change lessens the burden of hiring new employees while keeping a fun and challenging balance.

As native Spanish speakers and with a studio crew that is originally from Mexico, we wanted to make the game available in our language. This work also helped us find some gaps in the localization tech and fix some controls and screens that were truncating text or formatting it incorrectly. With this change, Coffee Shop Tycoon is now available in Spanish, English, and Chinese. We also leveraged AI technology to help speed up the process and we plan to keep using it to bring the game to new languages. We know there will be some errors when we first roll out those new languages, but we are confident that these tools will help us get the game to more players with our limited resources.

When reviewing the graphical fidelity of the different shop locations, we felt like the first location was feeling outdated and rough. Naturally, that was the first location we added to the game. We wanted to keep the same layout and overall look while making it look more polished. Without any further ado, here is a before and after. We hope you like the result!



Finally, here is a list of other changes in this version.

• Fixed the materials of several plants that were rendering as opaque planes
  
• End of Trend notification ("The market has normalized") is now a popup and no longer pauses the game
  
• Localization fixes

We are still working on the following things:

Achievement Bug Fixes: It has come to our attention that some achievements are not working as expected, we will prioritize getting a fix ready to unlock anyone from achieving 100% completion.

Localization: Continue adding new languages to the game. We'll announce what those languages will be later this year and create new beta branches for people who want to test them out and provide feedback.

Steam Deck Verified: We are working to have CST appear as verified for the Steam Deck; we hope that this will help bring the joy of coffee to new homes.

64-bit support for macOS

Investigating gamepad support: We are testing out several approaches to support gamepads in the game. We are still far from achieving this, but we believe it will improve the game experience for those playing on mobile consoles like Steam Deck.

Thanks for your support, suggestions, and bug reports, please keep them coming. Enjoy your coffee!

Hello!

We are back with another update for Coffee Shop Tycoon! This time, we wanted to address some of the top requested features from the community, starting with roasting and the end-game loop.

We follow the reviews and comments very closely, and one thing that immediately jumped to the top of the list for us was that the end of the game feels grindy, and roasting stops being fun; for that reason, we made several significant changes.
First, we rebalanced all the roasting milestone challenges to reduce the roasting required to complete the milestone by half in most places; this still provides a challenge without feeling like a chore to complete. Secondly and most importantly, we added Auto-Roast when creating roasting profiles for employees with the "Roasting Expert" specialization. If your employee is level four or higher, you can specialize as a "Roasting Expert." Once you do that, you will have the option to auto-roast from the HQ.



The final grading of your roasting profile and the score of tasting notes is determined by the roasting skill of your employee. Higher-skilled roasters can create roasting profiles without negative notes and with a high grading score.



Another feedback we received was about the requirement of roasting points (RP) when roasting high-quality coffee varieties. We decided to change what varieties require RP, and now only Exceptional varieties require 100 RP (this number used to be 350 RP); the rest of the coffee beans can be roasted using money.

Another significant change we are making with this update is removing the employee level cap. Before, employees couldn't go past level 6; we did this to prevent the game balance from breaking once employees reached a very high skill. However, this has caused some confusion for players, and it can become very annoying if you try to level up an employee to create higher-quality beans. Therefore, we decided to remove the level cap and introduce a new game mechanic, "employee retirement." Each employee can now retire; the time depends on the employee level at the time you hire them. Higher-skilled employees will retire sooner than more junior employees. When an employee is close to retirement age, you will get notifications to help you prepare to hire a replacement; you can also click on your employee to see the time remaining until their retirement.








Another area we focused on for this update is UI. This update includes several bug fixes for tooltips and addresses some potential crashes. Additionally, we added new functionality that will make adjusting your store prices much easier. If you have played CST long enough, you have probably come across the message "Price is low" when checking your menu. Now, instead of raising or lowering each drink or food price individually, you can apply the new prices to all your menus!




We started working on CST many years ago, beginning with the first location you see on the game and progressively adding new locations throughout the years. Naturally, some of the first locations don't look as flashy as the rest. In this update, we started upscaling some textures and replacing some old models. The changes are notable on the start screen and the first location. We plan to continue doing this process while keeping the existing charm of the game.



Other bugs fixes

• Fixed the price of the training called "Roaster, you are our only hope."
  
• Fixed a bug where new drinks created in the HQ did not receive a bonus for the trending ingredient
  
• Fixed a bug where the preview of new custom drinks could be smaller depending on the resolution of the game

We are working on three major things:

Localization: Our plan is to finish the Spanish localization and use AI to generate some of the most requested languages. We'll announce what those languages will be later this year and create new beta branches for people who want to test them out and provide feedback.

Steam Deck Verified: We are working to have CST appear as verified for the Steam Deck; we hope that this will help bring the joy of coffee to new homes.

64-bit support for macOS

Investigating gamepad support: We are testing out several approaches to support gamepads in the game. We are still far from achieving this, but we believe it will improve the game experience for those playing on mobile consoles like Steam Deck.

Thanks for reading this far, and enjoy your coffee!

Hello everyone, we hope you are enjoying Summer in the northern hemisphere! To compliment your ice creams and cold brews, we are releasing update v1.2 Full Crew.
Towards the end of last year, we celebrated the full launch of Coffee Shop Tycoon, a game that started from a simple idea while I was beginning my journey as a game developer. Along the way, I was able to partner with great people to bring this idea to you. A couple of years ago, we founded Riff Studios, and now we are glad to announce a new member, Gaby, just joined the team! While we are working on cool new concepts and games, we still care deeply about Coffee Shop Tycoon, and we wanted to delight you with this new update.

If you have played Coffee Shop Tycoon, you might be familiar with the two faces behind the counter of your shop. We felt it was time to see some new faces, so we added four new character models for your employees. So without further due, say hello to your new crew!




We also updated the hiring screen to show icons for all the employees you are recruiting.



If you have already reached the Moon, congratulations! If not, you will have very disappointed interplanetary customers waiting for that mesmerizing aroma of fresh ground coffee. But even with that new cool moon base, you might have realized that there aren't any space-themed decorations. We are certainly aware of this so we decided to fix it. With v1.2, we are releasing several new items, including a new counter, condiment station, two new tables, four new chairs, and ten new decorations.



Finally, Coffee Shop Tycoon is 40% off! Take advantage of this opportunity, and start building your coffee empire one cup at a time.

As always, we are very grateful for the support you have given us over the years, and we are looking forward to building new experiences that you will love. Please share your feedback and any bugs that you encounter.

Enjoy your coffee.

Hello everyone! We hope the beginning of 2023 is turning out nicely for you. Here at Riff Studios, we have been working on two new updates for Coffee Shop Tycoon! With v1.1, we are addressing some of the top concerns and bugs you have encountered during your game play-through. We have been monitoring the forums and noticed some recurrent problems we wanted to fix.

Here is a list of the changes we are making:

• Customers now complain about specific missing services. The "wifi" icon is no longer used as the "services" icon for customer thoughts. This will clear some confusion about the customers' expectations.
  
  
  
• Adjustments to fix the problem of price volatility, old products now have a lower impact on price.
  
• The objective for the teen demographic mission in Akihabara doesn't show a percentage anymore; instead, it will only show a checkbox. This percentage was confusing because it showed the percentage towards the goal of achieving 70% teen demographic rather than showing the "teen market percentage."
  
• Fixed some crashes

Additionally, we also updated the Mac version as it was missing these two critical fixes from v1.0.1

• Fixed a problem where the moon remained locked in early access saves even after completing the "Emerald City" missions.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Best Roast of the year" award wasn't not updating correctly.

We also wanted to share some news about the next content update! We hope that by now, you have been able to visit the moon and expand your coffee empire to the stars. If you have done so, you might notice that you don't have many sci-fi-looking items in your store, and we want to fix that!

For the next update, we will be releasing new furniture and decoration for your store, including a circular working station that will make all your customers question the origin of the universe. Here are some early renders of the new models. We are still working on finishing the list and texturing them.









Thanks again for playing Coffee Shop Tycoon. We are looking forward to sharing more exciting renders with you. Until then, we hope you have a great week and enjoy your coffee.

-The Riff Studios team

Hi all,

As you may know, the year of Rabbit is around the corner! We'd like to send our best regards and wishes to everyone for the new year ahead!

Looking back on the past year, we'd like to thank all of our players for supporting “Coffee Shop Tycoon”. It has been quite a journey. We hope our game has brought you some fun time.

Happy New Year everyone!

Hello to all the coffee-shop-owner wannabe!

The Steam Winter Sale has kicked off and we are glad to announce that you can get your copy of Coffee Shop Tycoon with a 30% discount! Opening your own business has never been so profitable. And, between you and me, we are all in this game to make money, don’t we?

We're very happy with how things are going just two days after the full release of the game. And we want to thank all of you for your support during these years. Remember that the discount will last until January 5th!

Get a copy of Coffee Shop Tycoon if you want to:

• Create the most successful coffee shop.
  
• Make drinks that people actually love.
  
• Keep your staff happy.
  
• Play a game influenced by the real coffee industry.
  
• TAKE YOUR BUSINESS TO THE MOON (like, for real, we have added a new location on the Moon).

Happy Holidays!

Hello! Thanks everyone for all your interest in Coffee Shop Tycoon, we are very excited to see all the new players brewing and roasting exceptional beans. We have been monitoring the Steam forums and found out two bugs that we wanted to fix as soon as possible. Thank you for all your patience while we sorted this out.

v1.0.1 fixes the two following bugs:

• Fixed a problem where the moon remained locked in early access saves even after completing the "Emerald City" missions.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Best Roast of the year" award wasn't not updating correctly.

So far we haven't seen many problems but please feel free to reach out through the discussion forums and we'll try to get it fixed quickly.

Again thanks for playing and good luck reaching the moon!

Happy Monday, dear coffee lovers:

It looks like a good day to share with you a little surprise, don't you think?

It's our pleasure to announce that Coffee Shop Tycoon has officially become a complete game after six years of Early Access stage. Its full-release update is now live on Steam! This version features the Moon as the last unlockable location, a complete rework of the Du Latte Awards, several quality-of-life modifications, and the game credits. However, this is not a goodbye at all -- next month, we'll be sharing the last patch to include 10 sci-fi-themed items and the new employee models.

Here's a list of the most important changes that players will enjoy in the Full Release update:

Added the final location of the game, now you can take your magnificent roasted beans out of this world and start delighting more customers in our solar system.




The Du Latte awards have been completely recreated, from the looks to the functionality. Now you can participate in six awards categories:

• Barista of the year
  
• Cashier of the year
  
• Roaster of the year
  
• Fan-tastic coffee award
  
• Best roast of the year
  
• Most sold unique drinks

Every year will have two random awards that you can try to earn. Winning awards will give you money and a unique trophy you can showcase in your stores! Du Latte awards now happen every 12 months regardless of store location, so you can switch between different stores and still participate in the same categories. "Best roast of the year", and the "Most sold unique drinks" awards will become available when the respective features are unlocked in the story.

• New animations
  
• Roasting
  
• Condiment table
  
• Walking
  
• Du Latte Awards
  
• Pedestrians will now spawn in some locations
  
• Improved placing items in your store
  
• Added a new confirmation dialog when changing the resolution
  
• Adding full support to Chinese language
  
• Seasonal decorations in the Start Screen now change automatically
  
• Graphical improvements to some locations
  
• Some changes to stats and balancing
  
• Added a new achievement

• Fixed a problem where bankruptcy was not using the new price changes
  
• Fixed roasting challenges that were impossible due to "Roasting skill"

One last piece of news: Unfortunately, due to a recent policy change by Valve, we won't be launching with a discount, but you can expect a 30% discount during Winter Sale! If you love the concept of the game and you want to help keep the lights on and allow us to work on more exciting games for you, go ahead and grab a copy, add us to your wishlist, or send it as a gift to your friends who always loved management games.

Thank you for reading this far, and enjoy your coffee.

if you love Coffee Shop Tycoon, and want to get some cool new logos for your shop join our discord! We will be online answering any questions about the game!😊

There is an age-old question about what came first, the chicken or the egg. The origin of Coffee Shop Tycoon is a bit similar. You might wonder, what came first? The love for coffee or the game. Funny enough, the game came first.

My name is Hector, and I'm the designer behind Coffee Shop Tycoon and co-founder of Riff Studios. The idea behind the game has deep roots in classic tycoon games I played as a kid growing up. The one that comes first to my mind is Roller Coaster Tycoon. I remember thinking about how amazing it was to feel like you owned an amusement park and how fun it was to build only half of the roller coaster and see the cart fly out of the rails ( •̀ᴗ•́ ) [evil laugh]. Still, in all seriousness, I think that the first time I discovered this genre, I started viewing games and life in a completely different way.

The story for this game starts in 2013, that is around the time when all the rage about the famous mermaid coffee started in my birthplace, Mexico City. I found myself going to these nice coffee shops to study or hang out with friends. At that time, I was in college and studying computer science. The more I spent in these places, the more I started thinking about those classic tycoon games I loved when I was younger, I didn't love coffee at that time, but I loved the ambiance of a coffee shop, comfy chairs, nice stylish decoration, and the smell of coffee. That made me write the first concept of a Coffee Tycoon game in July 2013.



Let's jump forward to 2014; this is the official year I started working on the project. I only knew a little about making games then; I was fresh from college and had a couple of small game projects under my belt, but nothing as ambitious as a tycoon game. I was also getting married and moving to a new country. However, during that time, I had a couple of months free where I was able to create a small demo of my vision, enough to make a Steam Greenlight campaign, back when games had to be voted by the community before they could be published in the marketplace.

[Link for old crowdfunding campaign with very early screenshots]
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/coffee-shop-tycoon#/

I don't remember the exact date, but the Steam Greenlight campaign started during the first months of 2015, and after some months of silence, I received an email with the following headline: Your title, "Coffee Shop Tycoon", has been Greenlit! I can't really express how excited I was when reading that email and what it meant for me as a game designer trying to get some traction for my idea.



Almost a year and a half later, the first version of Coffee Shop Tycoon saw the light of day in December 2016. I was doing the role of designer, programmer, and artist while not having any real professional experience making games. Naturally, things took a while to get done, and I had to learn a lot about game development on the fly.

One of the most important aspects for me was building a tycoon that focused on coffee and the culture around it. I started reading more about this mystical bean and fell in love. What I considered "just coffee" opened a new world of flavors and aromas I had not experienced before and a passion for shiny, noisy machines and glass contraptions.

To keep up with the ambitious concept of the game, I had to start doing less of everything and find someone to help me build this idea. The first person that contributed to the game besides me was Gaby. She is a fantastic artist who started bringing way more life to the world of Coffee Shop Tycoon and filling it with new items to decorate your shop and new locations to explore. Later, Chris came along and composed original music for the game, putting more ambiance and vibe to your coffee shops.

I started realizing that if I wanted to finish the project for real, I needed a partner in crime. I had already been friends with Roberto for a while, and I knew he was passionate about games and looking for a way to start working in the industry, so I felt it was a perfect fit, and I am very grateful for that decision. Roberto joined as the first "full-time” contributor, I put this in quotes because we both have full-time jobs and build this game during any extra time we can squeeze out of the week, and together we officially founded Riff Studios LLC in December 2020.



Since then, another artist Britany has helped us build new achievement icons and assets for the roasting update, and more recently, Juan has been working on the new model for the last location of the game and other surprises we are preparing for you. So many other people have contributed in some way to the game and where we are at, and we can't be thankful enough for all their help.

It has been a long journey, filled with valuable learnings, exciting new experiences, and a lot of great work from many creative minds. We couldn't be here without all the support the community has given us over the years, and we hope that you have enjoyed riding along with us.

In the end, Coffee Shop Tycoon is not the most perfect, realistic game about coffee or business management, but it is a game built with love by people who care about making fun and lasting experiences for you.

Please join us to celebrate this last milestone and share the love and good vibes. Wherever you are, hot and cold, day or night, thank you for reading this far, and enjoy your coffee.

Good morning everyone!

Today we come to make you a very special request. As you already know, Coffee Shop Tycoon has been on Steam for 6 years now as an Early Access game and its full version will be released next month. To make it a real success, we need as many visibility boosts as we can get before the game's launch — and certainly, competing in the Steam Awards 2022 would be a big help. For that reason, we're asking you to nominate us for the Labor of Love award.


The Labor of Love category was created for all those games that were released in previous years but still receive new updates. Year after year, Riff Studios has worked very hard to add new content based on your expectations and concerns. In addition to this, we also committed ourselves to search for other ways to strengthen our relationship with our players. Now you can find on Steam guides on the most complex features of the game, and short stories about our favorite drink ever. Plus, we spend more time replying to your comments on every post!

And we did all this because we want you to stay with us as long as possible. Because we love the idea of people feeling Coffee Shop Tycoon as a safe space where they can relax and have fun as they enjoy a hot cup of joe. I hope we're on the right track to achieving it!

That said, we again ask you to please nominate us for the Steam Awards 2022 and tell your friends who played the game to do so. If we finally join the competition, you will be able to vote for us again when the Winter Sale starts — this is, after the full release of Coffee Shop Tycoon. Winners will be announced in January 2023.



Thank you very much for your continued support!
The Riff Studios team