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Why full service restaurants on GTA World are very scarce
Blade replied to Blade's topic in General Discussions
I’d like to thank everybody for their different input so far and it’s definitely helpful. I’ve come to realize that I’m perhaps pursuing the avenue of realism too much and that I should actually make the process much easier by, for example, cutting the cooking rp and helping out front, which is fair. I was just always under the assumption that for a restaurant, you NEEDED to roleplay the cooking process per the rules. But seeing everybody’s thoughts about it, it makes total sense to cut it down and perhaps leave it to the openings where I’ll have enough staff to run the front. The topic isn’t necessarily a complaint, or a plead for different monetary means because I still don’t believe it’s the payment that’s really the issue, it’s mostly the mentality of people mostly willing to put in the least amount of effort for the highest reward when it comes to legal roleplay. Restaurant roleplay requires constant attention and can be fatiguing, especially if you’re understaffed and going for 3 hours, you barely catch a break. This is why I have these high wages of 12,5k per hour though, because I don’t want the players to feel undervalued in the slightest. It’s my way of rewarding all the effort put in. But regardless, it’s still a sector of roleplay that not a lot of people are interested in working. I’ve also seen comments about me picking the wrong type of restaurant to roleplay because I’m making it difficult for myself. You’re partially right, but there’s a reason why I picked this particular concept with full service over the more simplistic ones with counter staff. It’s a unique twist and I get a lot of support and heartwarming PMs in game and discord DMs after openings about how much they appreciate this kind of business and roleplay, and I’m glad I can provide something like this to the server. I don’t want to pick a different concept, I want to stick with this. There’s just the cons that with this particular concept I’m pursuing, that there’s not a lot of interest in the employee side and that’s what I wanted to address with this whole topic, and to see what other people think could be done differently without losing sight of this concept I’m pursuing. It’s definitely been helpful so far, so thank you! -
Why full service restaurants on GTA World are very scarce
Blade replied to Blade's topic in General Discussions
The openings we do have often go very smooth and the base of players I'm rping with enjoy the vibe, as well as the people coming in to eat. I love the rp, it's just not something that I can do too consistently unfortunately. I can't decide the same day if I want to open or not. -
Why full service restaurants on GTA World are very scarce
Blade replied to Blade's topic in General Discussions
This, this, this. You get it! It's extremely fatiguing to roleplay as a waiter, especially if you're understaffed and going for 3 hours. You NEED enough people to keep it fun for everybody, and the roleplay HAS to be rewarding otherwise people will not stick around long. -
Why full service restaurants on GTA World are very scarce
Blade replied to Blade's topic in General Discussions
If you took the time to read my entire post then you know what concept I'm talking about because I literally explained the roles at the restaurant. Plus, I've made it very clear that I'm not complaining about money, I'm saying that it's difficult to find enough people for this particular concept, no matter what you pay. -
Why full service restaurants on GTA World are very scarce
Blade replied to Blade's topic in General Discussions
Again, you have a very different concept in mind. I'm telling you, you CANNOT run a proper restaurant on this server with one waiter when you have 4-8 tables to tend to at a time, sometimes more, and requiring constant attention. It's not as simple as walking up to the counter to order food and sit down somewhere as a guest without needing anything else from the staff. You have to greet them, take orders for drinks, appetizers, mains and desserts, deliver all these separately, check up on them to refill drinks, check up on them to see how everything's going, handle potential issues and eventually handle the bill. You can't sit there and say you can pull it off with one waiter, because it's apparent you haven't roleplayed in a similar setting. -
Why full service restaurants on GTA World are very scarce
Blade replied to Blade's topic in General Discussions
All due respect but these are just two very different concepts entirely. One relying on quick counter service while the other relies on constant staff attention, engagement and service, which is exactly why you can't have an opening with simply 1 waiter. It's apples and oranges. Like I explained, I'm already struggling to find staff with my current wages, let alone the struggles when I go even lower. I do have a good base of people, and I've also stated that I've hired plenty of people in the past who stuck with me for a while, but it doesn't take away the fact that they can't always make it to openings because they have other things going on in their lives too, or that they're simply seeking other avenues of roleplay after a while too. It's just the struggle of needing enough people during an opening to stay sane. And to say that running nightclubs is 100x harder than running a restaurant is a very unfair statement considering the fact the entire nightlife in World is dominated by nightclubs and bars, with little to no alternatives. I'm not saying running a nightclub is easy, because I'm well aware it's not, but saying it's very easy to run a restaurant when we have two very different concepts in mind isn't fair in the slightest. -
So I’ve seen people wonder both IC and OOC why the amount of restaurants on the server is limited, despite the desire from consumers for this kind of RP. I’ve owned and ran a restaurant since July 2023 (Al Dente’s) which puts me in the position to elaborate on the difficulties of running such a business on the server, as well as give some insight in how engaging and how much fun it is to roleplay working in one. To give you some insight in how it all works behind the scenes with restaurant rp, I’ll give a brief runthrough. I was given my restaurant and after everything was mapped, the first thing I had to do was set up a small handbook for employees. This handbook explains the different roles in the restaurant and how these roles work together, shaping up into the kind of restaurant I wanted it to be. For my restaurant, I kept things simple so the front of the house is composed of solely hosts and waiters (these are servers too). Hosts welcome in the guests, assign tables and let the waiters know which tables need service. To keep things clear for everybody the host usually assigns guests to tables close to each other to keep the work area for the waiters small. I usually have one host per opening. Once the guests are seated the waiters come into play. They give out menus, take orders for drinks, appetizers, mains and eventually desserts and process everything to the kitchen. Since a restaurant script doesn’t exist on World, we are forced to rely on a discord text channel where we post the table number and order (you literally CAN’T work without this) and update the orders when more is ordered. Working as a waiter in a restaurant on World is a very time-consuming process, because front of house roleplay requires constant attention, engagement and being able to handle multiple tables at once. This is why you need at least two waiters, MINIMUM, but at least three is preferred for everybody to have fun and to keep everybody sane. Now the kitchen comes into play. In my restaurant, I usually operate the kitchen alone or with another line cook. Kitchen roleplay is different in the way that when it’s a busy opening, I can keep my roleplay simple and general so I can keep an eye on the rest of the opening too. When it’s not busy, I can go more in-depth with my roleplay because there’s less pressure on the front of house staff. All-in-all, for a ‘fun’ opening you will need AT LEAST 5 other players (1x host, 3x waiters, 1x line cook) and this is where the first struggles arise. Ever since I owned my restaurant there has been one major cloud over my roleplay, which is finding the suitable people to roleplay with. I started out by paying 8k per hour for staff, which at the time was competitive pay. This includes 4k startshift money so I paid 4k myself. I constantly pushed ads on Facebrowser (boosted) and advertised in game too. The response varied, there were days where people responded and there were days, sometimes weeks, where nobody seemed interested. Once I did think I found the suitable person, I interviewed them, ran them through the process of an opening and helped them set up. This process takes about an hour, hour and a half so you’re investing a lot of time in newcomers so they’re not overwhelmed by an opening and so it still seems interesting to them. And don’t get me wrong, I have had a lot of fun doing so and I’ve managed to meet a great deal of people who were genuinely interested in the roleplay and I’m very thankful to them, because when you can have a normal opening, restaurant roleplay is incredibly fun and engaging! However, the majority of people I interviewed either never showed up again, or they come to one opening and disappear. This can be very demotivating to look for people since you’re investing all this time and effort into them for them to simply stay away. And this is IF you manage to find somebody interested in the roleplay. The amount of people you need for a fun opening compared to the amount of response you get to the ads is very difficult. It also becomes more difficult when you have some people in your discord to roleplay with in the restaurant but you have to plan an opening. People have lives, people have other roleplay going on their characters or play on different characters, so people are not always available, which is understandable. If I try to plan an opening on Friday, person A or person B can’t make it and if I plan an opening on Sunday, person C or person D can’t make it. This makes planning openings with the limited amount of interested people extra challenging too, because you REALLY need players to run this type of business, you simply can’t NPC anything. Also take into consideration that when you finally picked a day and time to open, people might still not be able to make it due to real life getting in the way, or something else related to their characters. This happens a lot too, but is also very understandable because people simply have lives too. It just makes planning openings even more difficult. I’ve managed to have a lot of openings in my time of owning the restaurant and the majority of them were very fun and allowed my character and other characters to develop, but it is very time-consuming when you’re constantly looking for people and trying to pick the right day to open, because as invested as I am in World, I also have a fulltime job and (a bit of) a social life next to it. So what do I do to make things easier? First thing I’ve been doing is increasing the hourly pay to 12,5k per hour from 8k per hour, which is (slightly?) above competitive to make the roleplay attractive and rewarding for people. But even with 12,5k per hour, it’s extremely hard to find the right people. This also includes the 4k startshift money. However, when you take into consideration that you need at least 5 people for a good opening, this can become a very costly endeavor. Let’s say you have a three hour opening. The /openbusiness money you get is 40k, max, which you only get if openings are busy. I haven’t really had problems reaching this limit, so it’s not really the issue here. Other than that I get 12k startshift money from the 3 hour opening. This adds up to 52k script money. If I have a 3 hour opening, the following amount is what I need to be able to pay employees. 5 (employees) x 8500 (hourly pay) x 3 (opening hours) = $127,500. Or 4 (employees) x 8500 (hourly pay) x 3 (opening hours) = $102,000 So other than the 52k script money I get, I’ll need at least 50k if I have 4 people working and 75,5k if I have 5 people working. This is very hard to get by selling food items because let me tell you, if you charge more than $1,000 for a single food item, people are just not interested. They won’t order it or they’ll start taking things IC and complain about prices. And honestly, the latter always pisses me off because players are very impulsive when they blow a lot money on other things. My character has enough money, so money is not an issue for me. When I’m not roleplaying, I take mapping projects and map apartments and houses for players which earns me enough money to be able to afford my roleplay, because yes, every restaurant opening costs me money, and that’s when I have ENOUGH people to open with. But because I love the roleplay so much, and because it’s so unique and rewarding in terms of roleplay, I don’t care about the costs and I’d rather reward the players who choose to roleplay with me. My character also runs a bakery which doesn’t need as much staff, so the earnings I get from the bakery I can blow on the restaurant again. But not everybody is in the same position as I am. Not everybody has thousands of dollars to blow on restaurant openings and not everybody is willing to put in all the effort to look for people, which is exactly why there are only a limited amount of restaurants around, or why restaurants generally don’t last long and also why there are not really any consistent openings. I hope this clears things up for people and perhaps this gets the ball rolling for solutions. This topic is not a plead for anything. I just wanted to vent because I’ve seen people complain IC and OOC about there not being any restaurants or consistent openings. I know Property Management has funds for unique businesses but they are tied to consistent and regular openings. Money is not the issue for me at this time, it’s about finding the right people and staying motivated to do openings when everything’s so complicated and time-consuming. Because I believe constantly pushing up the hourly pay will not just hurt my business in the long run, but also the competition. It just makes restaurants less and less attractive to operate if the costs are becoming increasingly worse and not everybody who’s interested in starting up a restaurant has thousands of dollars to blow on making it operational. I try to open the restaurant at least once a week and mostly I manage, but sometimes I just can’t because of the reasons mentioned above. I’m still invested in running my restaurant after all this time but I won’t lie that it can also be frustrating at times. The main issue can be described in a single sentence. There’s a demand for restaurant roleplay on the consumer side, but the demand for restaurant roleplay on the employee side is very limited
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100%. My character has owned and ran a restaurant since July 2023 and it's an incredibly fun concept to roleplay, but also incredibly hard to do since it's hard to find employees interested in the roleplay. I'm consistently hitting the 40k mark during openings but to compete with other low-entry level business types in World I'm forced to up the hourly pay of employees by a lot which barely nets a profit for me, and sometimes I have to pay out of my own pocket too. I can tell why it's not a popular concept for people to run to earn money scriptwise. As it currently stands, proper restaurant roleplay isn't profitable in the slightest for owners and it's solely there for people who are genuinely interested in the roleplay itself and people who can afford to pay from their own pockets.
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dont leave my pastries at a crime scene
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Insider | Murder in Broad Daylight: Frank Cascone’s Final Moments
Blade replied to Degu's topic in Online News
Username: FromItalyWithLove Comment: He never had the makings of a varsity athlete. ** This comment's IP address traces to Naples ** -
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Non LEO Admins should be mintoring Teamspeak for instances of MG
Blade replied to tony genovese's topic in Archive
Teamspeak shouldn't be a thing on a text-based roleplay server to begin with.