Five top tips to start your business on a high
Definitely Not Fried Chicken is a deceptively deep simulation. From NPCs with complex needs to an intricate interlocking economy, there’s a lot to explore and experiment with. In order to do that you’ll need to quickly build a successful foundation for your narcotic empire, so here are five essential tips that will help you go from conquering the tutorial to being king of the city as efficiently as possible.
Look after your workers
This sounds obvious but is easy to overlook in the scramble to start pumping weed onto the streets. The tutorial shows you how to build a bathroom and break room for chicken shop employees, but don’t forget the same applies to ALL your workers. Yes, even the ones slaving away in your weed factories.And one of the biggest early game hurdles is ensuring you don’t keep losing staff. Here’s an easy way to help stop that happening.
Get in the habit of adding toilets, breakrooms, kitchens and bedrooms to everything you build. These don’t need to be fancy in terms of amenities- just the basics will do to start with - but having them on-site for every location you control will mean your workers are able to keep themselves fed and rested. And this means they’ll stick around, and you’ll have uninterrupted production.
Don’t fear the schedules
Look, we get it. Nobody gets into the drug trade because they love scheduling but - trust us - it’s the secret to a sustainable business, so don’t overlook this incredible tool. You see, the workers in the game are actually super dedicated. Psychotically so, in fact. Unless you tell them otherwise, they’ll keep on trying to do whatever they’ve been assigned until they’re literally ravenous with hunger or delirious from exhaustion. That’s when they get angry and quit, or - worst case scenario - they just drop dead on the floor.
Setting a schedule for each worker as soon as you hire them means you can not only stop that happening, but also gives you greater control over your business. It doesn’t take long to do - just tick or untick the box for each hour of the day. Giving them regular breaks every four hours or so means they can take advantage of the food and recreation spaces you’ve built. Setting up overlapping shifts for multiple workers means you’re always open 24-7, even while your day staff take a well-earned sleep.
Tackle one delivery at a time
So you’ve got your first little weed factory up and running, and boxes of pungent green are filling up your storeroom. Then the calls start coming in. Customers! Fantastic - time to start making that fortune! Tag them all on the map and let your delivery rider get to work! Right?
Wrong. You need to prioritize your deliveries. Some customers only want two boxes. Some want eight, or even more. You won’t get paid until you’ve delivered everything they asked for, and if your driver is having to split their attention between multiple active customers, that just means it’ll be even longer until any of them hand over the cheddar.
So, at the start of your career, accept each order - they won’t have time limits to begin with, and will happily wait - but then only keep one active at a time on the map. Click on your garage on the map, then on the customer. This will ensure that the driver only delivers to that customer until they pay out. As you add more drivers, use this feature to make sure each one is servicing the most cost efficient orders.
Tackle the lower numbers first, the customers who’ll only need a couple of trips before they pay out. Then work through the higher orders (no pun intended). A little planning and patience at this stage will mean you gradually build up your bank balance rather than watching it diminish every day.
Expand your empire the smart way
Once you’ve got a nice tight little routine going on, with happy efficient workers piling up stock and methodical deliveries bringing in a steady flow of cash, it’s time to start expanding your horizons. There are two key ways of doing this.
First, buy the cheapest plots to build more drug factories. Be smart though - you don’t need to start building on that land right away. Each new chunk of land owned lets you hire two more workers for the shady side of your business, regardless of whether you build more factory buildings. Use that to your advantage and supercharge the business you’ve already got, hiring new workers and delivering to more existing customers faster. This will accelerate your financial growth, until you’re in a position to undertake the second stage of smart expansion.
Buying vacant commercial land, meanwhile, enables you to set up your first “front” business. To start with this will be a laundromat, so follow the tips above to create a location where workers will be fed, rested and happy. Make sure you add a stockroom, and start using your delivery drivers to move product through there as well as direct to your existing clients. Soon enough, these front businesses will be producing an even steadier cashflow, setting you up to really start growing your empire with new drug factories and more ambitious fronts.
Expand and acquire to accelerate progress
You’re not limited to just dealing to phone customers and selling through your fronts. You can also select fixed locations such as the university, gun shop and scrapyard as delivery spots and regularly shift product through those. Doing this will unlock new abilities and technology, as well as better weapons to keep your guards competitive as you attract more heat.
The Monuments tab at the top of the screen is worth investigating as well, once your cash reserves are healthy. As well as the Order Hotline you use to attract phone customers, there are lots of other perks you can invest in around the city. Buying the gym will toughen up your guards, while the construction site will lower the cost of any new building work - very useful as you construct more elaborate drug factories and large front businesses. You can even buy billboards to drive more customers through your legitimate businesses, which in turn means more drugs sold through them.
Experiment and have fun!
By this point you should be well established as both a purveyor of narcotics and an entrepreneur in the laundry and fast food industries. So now’s the time to take off those training wheels and see what you can really do. Try developing higher quality merchandise in your factories, make your chicken and lobster restaurants the talk of the town, or just keep growing your client base, accruing more and more of the ol’ folding green stuff. The world is yours!