Popularity
A venue can be a favorite of one customer group and ignored by another, because it has a separate popularity for each group. When a customer picks where to eat, the venue's popularity with that customer's group is part of the weight the venue gets.1,2,3,4,11
The weight is popularity plus a small distance adjustment, and it is compared only among the venues the customer can choose from (open, with a menu and a free seat). A venue with higher popularity therefore gets a larger share of the customers who can choose it. See How customers choose what to order.5,6,9
The formula
popularity = owner factor × (0.6 × best² + 0.3 × review score² + 0.1 × menu variety + 0.01 × venue level + 0.1 × comfort)1,2,3,4,11
| Term | What it is | Most it adds |
|---|---|---|
| best | The group's highest satisfaction (0 to 1) among everything on the menu, dishes and drinks together, at your menu prices. Items count even when they are out of stock. | 0.6 |
| review score | A 0 to 1 score from recent reviews (below) | 0.3 |
| menu variety | How many items the menu has (below) | 0.1 |
| venue level | 1 to 5 | 0.05 |
| comfort | The popularity comfort, 0 to 1 (below) | 0.1 |
With the default owner factor of 1, popularity tops out at 1.15. The game recalculates it every in-game hour and whenever your menu or your reviews change.1,2,3,4,11
Example: one venue, one group
The numbers are made up for this example. The owner factor is the default 1.1,2,3,4,11
| Term | Value | Adds |
|---|---|---|
| best | 0.90 | 0.6 × 0.90² = 0.486 |
| review score | 0.75 | 0.3 × 0.75² = 0.169 |
| menu variety | 1.00 | 0.1 × 1.00 = 0.100 |
| venue level | 2 | 0.01 × 2 = 0.020 |
| comfort | 0.67 | 0.1 × 0.67 = 0.067 |
| popularity | 0.84 |
Here the best item alone gives more than half of the total.1,2,3,4,11
The best item, squared
The largest term uses only the group's single best item, and squares it:1,2,3,4,11
| Best item's satisfaction | 0.6 × best² |
|---|---|
| 70 | 0.29 |
| 80 | 0.38 |
| 90 | 0.49 |
| 100 | 0.60 |
Value, rarity and price together give at most 90 points; only local favorites take a score past 90. See Dish satisfaction and the price cliff.5,7,8
Menu variety
menu variety = number of menu items × 0.3, × 1.3 if the menu has both a dish and a drink, capped at 1.1
| Menu | Menu variety |
|---|---|
| 1 dish | 0.30 |
| 1 dish + 1 drink | 0.78 |
| 3 dishes, no drink | 0.90 |
| 3 drinks | 0.90 |
| 2 dishes + 1 drink | 1.00 |
| 4 dishes, no drink | 1.00 |
Three items including a dish and a drink already reach the cap. This is one term of popularity; it says nothing about how long a menu should be.1
Review score
The review score is a weighted average of your recent review stars: the newest review counts fully, each older one counts 0.93 times as much as the one after it, and only the newest 54 reviews are read. Then:2
review score = 0.5 + (1 − e^(−total reviews ÷ 20)) × (average stars − 3) ÷ 4
With no reviews it is 0.5. A new venue moves slowly: after 20 reviews only about 63% of the difference from 3 stars counts. With many reviews the score is close to (average − 1) ÷ 4: 3 stars give 0.5, 4 stars 0.75 and 5 stars 1.
Comfort
The comfort in this formula is the average of comfort ÷ 3 over the movable tables, chairs and decorations in the venue that have a comfort rating of 1 or more, capped at 1. Pieces with comfort 0 are left out and decorations add no bonus.3,12
This is not the comfort percentage in the game's venue panel. The panel shows the venue comfort used in reviews, which also counts comfort-0 pieces and adds a bonus for decorations. In one saved game the popularity comfort was 0.67 while the review venue comfort was 1.0. See How review stars are calculated.
Owner factor
Everything above is multiplied by the owner's popularity factor. For your venues it is a story value that starts at 100%. Some story choices and events raise or lower it by 5 or 10 points at a time, for all your venues at once, and the story undoes some of these changes later. Venues run by other owners have their own factor.1,4,10
On this site
- Check each district's customer groups and local favorites in the location wiki.
- Plan a menu for a district in the Planner.
- With a save loaded, My Save shows your best item for each group and your story popularity factor.
Sources
Each number in the text points to a source below. Tap a number to jump to it.
From the game code
- ↑How venue popularity is calculated
- ↑How recent review stars feed venue popularity
- ↑How venue comfort for popularity is calculated, and how it differs from the comfort shown in the venue panel
- ↑How the venue owner's story standing multiplies venue popularity
- ↑How a customer picks items from a venue's menu
- ↑When a venue accepts new customers and which seats rain-wary customers accept
- ↑How the game combines the parts of a dish score into one satisfaction value, and where it is used
- ↑How each customer group scores a dish: price, value, rarity, local favorites
From game data (build 25680465)
Read from the running game
- ↑Venue popularity read from the running game matches the formula
Checked in a save file
- ↑Venue comfort recomputed from the furniture in a saved game