This guide is a small rundown on numbers. Aim of this guide is to demonstrate why early expansion and expansion by debt are not advisable.
Introduction
After having tried several approaches to quickstart the supermarket, I found out that the classic debt-driven expansion in the beginning yielded the worst results.
This made me start over for the n-th time but this time I wrote down some numbers into a excel sheet and suddenly everything made sense: Expansion by taking up loans – especially early in the game – is being slowed by a mix of several game mechanics i will introduce here.
The Numbers
Lets start with a very obvious number: the amount of items a typical customer is buying.
While in the first levels, customers tend to buy 1-2 items, with higher levels this amount rises gradually. The Items they buy are usually selected randomly so over a certain period of time each item category is bought.
So: early in the game: only few customers and each of them buys a small amount of goods.
Lets move on to the individual items. Here you see a price tag for Powdered Sugar Susu:
“Avg. Cost” is the price I paid per unit for it.
“Price” is the amount the customers will pay for it.
We take the ratio between “Price” and “Avg. Cost”: 5.56/1.32 ~= 4.212
So: For each Dollar spent on this Sugar I will get 4,21 Dollar back.
For the sake of simplicity: 25 customers, every customer buys 2 packs of sugar, means: 210.60$ profit.
Since we are not selling one product at License level 1 but 6 lets calculate all 6 ratios:
Over all six products of License level 1 the average ratio is around 3.51. Returning to our example above: 25 customers, each buying 2 items of this license level yield into approx: 175,50$ profit.
But what happens if we rush to License level 2 quickly by taking up a loan?
Lets take a look at the numbers:
Since the average ratio over the License-Level-2 Products is only 2.25, the total average ratio drops to 2.88, because the customers will choose between 12 products now instead of 6. So in our example our profit drops(!) to: 144$
This behavior continues until License Level 4, where the average makes a small jump up, but in all further License Levels the ratio continuously drops.
Since we have covered the Profit per unit of goods part, lets talk throughput: Cashiers
One Cashier moves one unit of goods approx. in approx. 1 second over the scanner. Then he needs around 2 seconds for the payment procedure.
If we take a typical customer you encounter around level 20 who buys 10 goods, our cashier needs
10*1+2 = 12 seconds to process one customer.
In addition the cashier costs 80$ per day.
Lets take a typical Snowpig (=me) working as cashier: He moves approx. 10~15 goods per second over the scanner (buttonmashing ftw!) and needs 2 seconds for the payment procedure when he is slow. So for the above customer the Snowpig needs: 2.6~3 seconds and he does not come with additional costs.
So you could hire a Snowpig or do cashier yourself and use those up to 400$ you would need for hiring, 320$ per day for paying for 4 cashiers and those 1500$ for three additional checkout counters better to improve your shop and buy some more licenses.
Conclusions
Lets go over the conclusions:
A) Expansion via taking a loan will inevitably slow you down compared to accumulating funds to payoff expansion directly
Q: If taking a loan is not advised for expansion, what is it for then?
A: You should take up a loan when (e.g. after buying furniture/expansions) your funds are not sufficient to replenish the goods you are selling. In this case take a loan to cover these costs, set the duration on “very short” (slider left) to reduce amount you have to repay in total.
Q: When should I expand then?
A: Always when – after restocking the shelves/fridges/coolers and your storage – you have money left before opening your shop in the morning
B) (this one is quite obvious) You earn more money the more customers you process per day. If you want to get the most customers, dont use the build-in cashiers and do the checkout-counter yourself
Q: How can i reach that speed at checkout?
A: I can write a guide for it going into the details if enough interested people ask. Lets just say here: The longer you do it, the quicker you will become.
