Cat Cafe Manager is the kind of game where you can probably tell just by reading its name if it’s something you’ll enjoy or not. It’s the cats, it’s a cafe. You handle them. For some people, such a setup is as heavenly as the aroma of espresso in the morning. Still the game launches a lot information right away, and controls don’t always make as much sense as they should. That means you may soon find yourself drowning in kitty litter and coffee grounds. But with our guide to tips, you can turn your modest café into a panini-and-pet giant. Here are some essential tips for Cat Cafe Manager.

Invest in seating spaces first

Once you open your cafe, you’ll gain access to the Sanctuary, the physical representation of your skill tree, where you can work on projects that unlock new menu items, cat toys, and more. But the most important unlockable in the Sanctuary is the number of chair slots you have. More seating spaces means being able to accommodate more customers, which can increase revenue exponentially. Think of it like investing in better XP gains early on in an RPG; the sooner you do it, the more rewards you will get. This should be the first project you spend your time on.

Invest in staff second

Once you have finished the first chair slots project, but before you continue to unlock more, invest in being able to hire staff. It’s important to do this next instead of gaining even more chair slots because you’ll need a helping hand to manage the influx of customers once your place really starts to get busy. More chairs without co-workers means you’ll be in the weeds all day. Hire the right person for the job by checking the memo board in the center of town.

Work to get new unlocks constantly

After you finish those two very important projects, the rest is up to you and less important. The only important thing to keep in mind here is to make sure that you always, always, always work towards one goal or another. As long as a project is active, the hearts it earns, which are accumulated based on customer satisfaction, will go towards completing it. Having an active project means those hearts will directly contribute to finishing projects and unlocking new decor, more cat slots, and other goods and services that will make you the cat cafe tycoon you aspire to be.

Adapt your advertising to your needs

One of the most confusing parts of Cat Cafe Manager is the user interface and all of its different currencies that you are immediately greeted with. This system is really lovely once you get the hang of it. Here’s what you need to know: each customer “class” pays in a different currency (in addition to the universal hearts they give out). When you advertise, you’ll want to target your ads to the group that will pay in the currency you need.

Advertising seems to almost guarantee the kind of people that will visit your cafe, so putting flyers in front of the right faces is key to getting exactly what you need and nothing you don’t. For a quick introduction to who pays for what and what it’s used for, use our list below.

Badge	customer type	Spent on
hearts	Everyone	sanctuary projects
fabrics (green)	vagabonds	chairs and tables
Nectar (purple)	witches	recipes and ingredients
jewels (red)	artists	Furniture
Blue Fish)	fishermen	Cat food and cat toys
gold (gold)	Business people	Special items (rare furniture, rare cat toys, etc.)
Materials (brown)	punks	Construction materials

If you’re flush with materials and gold, but short on nectar and cloth, steer your advertising away from punks and businessmen and target bums and witches for a few business hours, if not several days. Just be sure to realign your ads with their needs on a regular basis. At times, I would forget to adapt and suddenly find myself short on supplies that I once had in abundance.

Train your staff, and cats, to meet different needs.

As you hire staff and bring in more stray cats, you’ll unlock skill points for everyone. For staff, these can be spent on upgrading skills such as cooking, cleaning, and serving. Meanwhile, cats can improve their bathing routine, independence, and even their compatibility with certain classes of clients. With that in mind, have a long-term goal for your cafe and tailor your workers and kitties to meet that goal. Do you want to serve the best food in town only to the less fortunate in your city? Make sure the staff are experts in the kitchen and that your cats love to snuggle up to the wanderers who walk in.

Whatever your plan, be sure to check those skill points as well. They stack up pretty quickly, but the game doesn’t really pay much attention to them. You’ll want to take a look at the star count in the top left corner of your screen, and when you have cat skill points or staff skill points to spend, do so as soon as possible to make your coffee even better.

Prepare for goodbyes

One of the hard lessons of Cat Cafe Manager is that your bistro should only be a temporary residence for your cats. As you level them up, eventually you are supposed to find them in their “Forever Homes”. To do this, check the bulletin board, the same one that introduces potential employees, and look for flyers left by townspeople who want to adopt cats.

Farewells are hard, and you’ll probably grow fond of your cats, but they’re not in short supply, and knowing they’ll be well taken care of is a sweet consolation prize. On the plus side, if you really want to gamify it, the higher the level of your adopted cat, the more rewards you will get from the adoptive family. With that in mind, it’s wise to pair your wiser cats with the right families, as it will help keep the rewards flowing and in turn keep the newer cats meowing out of the cafe.

Call your regular customers every day

Any worthwhile small-town coffee shop will have repeat customers, customers who come often and maybe even order the same thing every day. In Cat Cafe Manager, you have six regular customers, each representing one of the different types of customers. Every morning, you can call a regular customer and ask him to visit the cafe. They will always say yes, so you must decide who to call based on the level of friendship you have gained with each of them. Certain rewards in the Sanctuary will require you to have a set number of regulars at set levels. This means that you will want to have everyone on a rotating basis. Yeah, even Mateo, the town’s money traitor.

Gallery

You can also invite the same person multiple days in a row, which is good to keep in mind when trying to get to a particular level with any type of client. These regular customers speak for their classes, so improving things with them will also improve your standing with customers like them.

Tailor your menu to your supply

Sometimes you don’t want to serve everything on your menu. Maybe it’s herb-free or you prefer to keep your coffee dairy-free. You can customize what you’re serving at any time in the, uh, menu menu–I guess that’s what you would call it. However, it’s important to keep in mind what items each type of customer orders, because if you only advertise to certain customers but don’t have their favorites on the menu, they will leave unsatisfied. Fortunately, that information is clearly displayed when you customize your menu options.

Have a coffee theme in mind

A reasonable end goal is to have a decorative theme for your coffee shop in mind. The initial look of your cafe will be quite chaotic, with a mix of bar stools, modern counters and witch cutting boards, but over time you’ll have unlocked enough to focus on a singular style. You could even reinvent yourself over time, changing one theme for another. A theme is important as both clients and staff prefer certain environments. If you’re hiring staff who work best when in a magical-themed cafe, be sure to outfit the restaurant with cauldrons and pointy hats. This is not something you can do for a while, as you have to unlock all the options first. But once you do, you can really improve the aesthetics of your small business.