Business Guide (post-March)
While running a mixed general store to test as many Business mechanics as possible (selling goods + paid services + entry fees), I kept detailed notes so others can use them as a roadmap.
All core systems in one place: progression, money engines, staffing, pricing, top sellers, a realistic road to 5★, strategy, and current bugs/workarounds.
Settings: 96-minute day
1) 
Star progression (customer satisfaction milestones + unlocks)
| Star progress | Satisfaction needed | Title | Key unlocks | Subsidy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 → 1★ | 500 | Budding Shop | Promote interaction (self action ~5 min, no cooldown, raises Rhetoric) • neon signs (bakey/brew/coffee/round coffee) | -– |
| 1 → 2★ | 2000 | Settled Shop | Advertise Business (PC, 15 min, success/fail, cooldown 1 day) • neon signs (gym/yoga/flower) | 500 |
| 2 → 3★ | 5000 | Trending Shop | 2nd employee slot • neon signs (bar/nightclub/arcade) | 700 |
| 3 → 4★ | 20000 | Hotspot Shop | 3rd employee slot • Large stand (8 slots) • neon signs (butterfly/cat/wing) | 1000 |
| 4 → 5★ | 35000 | Local Landmark Shop | 4th employee slot • appreciation plaque (mailed to home inventory; value 250) | 1200 |
Big practical unlock: the 8-slot stand at 4★. This matters a lot post-March because of the current “portion-only selling” behavior (see Selling goods + Bugs).
2) 
The three income engines
You can treat income as three separate systems:
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Selling goods (food/baking/drinks/coffee/flowers)
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Paid services (Lectures, Massages)
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Entry / hourly fees (best for equipment-based shops: gym, arcade, cinema, internet café, club setup, etc.)
In practice, paid services are the most reliable money engine once you build around them.
3) 
Lectures (big money + relationship gain)
Two types:
-
Free lectures (great for raising employee skills)
-
Paid lectures (customers pay per participant)
Rules:
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You need Skill Level 5 in the taught skill.
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Up to 5 customers per lecture.
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10 min lecture + join time.
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Repeatable immediately.
-
Raises Rhetoric and massively boosts customer relationships.
Paid lecture payout per participant (after March patch)
| Star | Mew per participant |
|---|---|
| 0★ | 187 |
| 1★ | 225 |
| 2★ | 255 |
| 3★ | 269 |
| 4★ | 284 |
| 5★ | 300 |
Patch note: March reduced lecture income per participant drastically compared to earlier, but it’s still very strong money—especially if you chain lectures yourself back-to-back.
Throughput note: you can reach extreme profit spikes when you personally chain lectures. Employees can do lectures too, but they’re noticeably less efficient.
4) 
Massages (very good because no skill required)
-
No skill requirement → cheap staff can run it.
-
Equipment:
-
Foot/Hand/Scalp: massage chair (~20 min)
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Aroma/Sports/Deep Tissue: massage bed (~30 min)
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Massage payouts by star
| Star | Foot/Hand/Scalp | Full body |
|---|---|---|
| 0★ | 125 | 250 |
| 1★ | 150 | 300 |
| 2★ | 170 | 340 |
| 3★ | 179 | 359 |
| 4★ | 189 | 379 |
| 5★ | 200 | 400 |
5) 
Operating hours, entry & hourly fees
Entry/hourly is best when customers use equipment. For pure “sell goods” shops, it’s optional.
Average (100%) by star rating:
| Star | Entry fee | Hourly fee |
|---|---|---|
| 0★ | 10 | 5 |
| 1★ | 20 | 7 |
| 2★ | 30 | 10 |
| 3★ | 40 | 12 |
| 4★ | 53 | 16 |
| 5★ | 64 | 18 |
Adjustable between 50% (cheap) and 150% (expensive).
Under Customer Settings, you can decide what customers are allowed to do in the shop and optionally limit the target clientele by age group.
6) 
Employees (hiring, tasks, uniforms, wages)
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You can hire only Zois you know, only if they don’t already have a job.
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You can assign tasks and uniforms; uniforms can be set in the Manage Employees tab.
Operator vs “Management Only” (important note)
In my testing it made a huge difference whether I run the shop as an Operator or select Management Only:
-
If I operate the business as Operator, the opening hours are scheduled as work time for my Zoi, I’m “present” as the owner, and the shop runs fine even if I mostly just talk to customers while employees do the actual tasks.
-
If I switch to Management Only, the opening hours are no longer added to my Zoi’s calendar, and I can’t really perform shop tasks anymore — I’m basically treated like a guest. In that mode, the business performance often drops massively: customer/service flow gets worse and I’ve seen my shop that normally run well turn into very low profit or even negative profit days.
My conclusion: the employee/customer AI seems noticeably weaker when you are not actively operating the shop. So if profit matters, I don’t recommend Management Only. A better “passive” approach is to let employees handle most tasks but still stay on-site as Operator.
Employee slots
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0★: 1 employee
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3★: 2 employees
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4★: 3 employees
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5★: 4 employees
Wage reality (quick contrast)
Wages scale with employee skillset and also with shop star level. The difference is huge:
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A very low-skill employee early on can be around 15 Mew/hour (Average salary).
-
High-skill employees at high star levels can reach ~70 Mew/hour at 4★ and up to ~90 Mew/hour at 5★ in my notes.
Takeaway: if you staff heavily with high-skill workers, selling goods alone rarely covers payroll—paid services help carry the business.
Coaching
If your skill is higher than theirs, you can select coaching options (e.g., “Coach Baking”).
7) 
Customer satisfaction drivers (what actually matters)
From in-game tips + what I saw:
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Pricing fairness (entry/hourly/menu pricing)
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Essential facilities (restrooms)
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Speed & accuracy (e.g. wait time)
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Product quality (Bad hurts satisfaction; Medium is okay; higher quality helps)
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Furniture/equipment quality (cheap items show red faces; excellent items help)
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Bonding with customers
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Cleanliness (clean floors and tables but beware the “clear everything” bug)
I also used “Search for customer satisfaction tips” (self/PC). It has about a 1-hour cooldown and mostly reinforces the same fundamentals.
Tips: some customers leave tips (more likely after good quality, but not guaranteed). Tips reset the next day if not distributed; “Serve customer kindly” gave me an 11 Mew tip immediately when it succeeded.
8) 
Advertise Business (what it does)
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PC action: 15 min, success/fail, cooldown 1 day.
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I couldn’t confirm whether success depends on a skill or is random.
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When it succeeds, it can create big customer spikes—but since it can fail, don’t plan a day around it as a guaranteed effect.
9) 
Selling goods (post-March reality)
Current “portion-only” behavior
Right now, whole/family items cannot be sold as a single item. They can only be sold per portion, meaning you effectively need multiple customer purchases to realize the full value (and this increases display pressure).
Star “value boost” (average per category)
From my logged numbers:
-
Cooking / Baking / Coffee / Drinks: often scale roughly 4★ ≈ ~3.7–3.8× base (rounded) and 5★ ≈ ~4× base (sometimes exact).
-
Flowers: the multiplier is lower—in my logs Perfect commonly lands around ~1.6× base at 5★. Flowers win mainly because their base is already massive.
10) 
Top sellers by category (cost → sell → profit)
A) Flower Arrangements (highest single-ticket items)
Craft fees: Bouquet 3, Basket 5.
If you craft without owning flowers, the game charges Pocket Market flower prices on top of the craft fee. Table below assumes that you own the needed flowers.
| Item | Stars | Quality | Sell | Craft fee | Profit per sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rose Flower Basket | 5★ | Perfect | 560 | 5 | 555 |
| Lily Flower Basket | 5★ | Perfect | 400 | 5 | 395 |
| Carnation Flower Basket | 5★ | Perfect | 320 | 5 | 315 |
| Chrysanthemum Flower Basket | 5★ | Perfect | 240 | 5 | 235 |
| Rose Bouquet | 5★ | Perfect | 280 | 3 | 277 |
Perfect baskets can give +3 Focused for 3 hours (“Inhale the fragrance”).
(For full base ladders + full flower arrangement list, I reference my updated Gardening guide 
here)
B) Cooking (strongest “normal menu” profit per sold serving)
Single-serving examples at 5★ from my logged per-portion prices:
| Dish (single) | Stars | Quality | Sell | Craft cost | Profit per sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salmon Steak | 5★ | Perfect | 320 | 10 | 310 |
| Salmon Steak | 5★ | Excellent | 240 | 10 | 230 |
| Fish & Chips | 5★ | Perfect | 208 | 20 | 188 |
| English Breakfast | 5★ | Perfect | 160 | 15 | 145 |
| Oyster Ceviche | 5★ | Perfect | 160 | 18 | 142 |
| Steamed Fish | 5★ | Perfect | 176 | 37 | 139 |
| Pork Cutlet | 5★ | Perfect | 144 | 16 | 128 |
(For full base ladders + full recipe list, I reference my Cooking guide here)
C) Baking (top tier items share the same value class)
Apple Pie / Cheesecake / Tiramisu / Pecan Pie are all in the same top baking tier (same best-in-class sell values).
Whole baked goods are 8 portions, so full profit assumes all 8 portions sell.
| Top baking tier (whole, 8 portions) | Stars | Quality | Sell per portion | Craft cost | Full revenue (×8) | Full profit (if all sell) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Pie / Cheesecake / Tiramisu / Pecan Pie | 5★ | Perfect | 120 | 35 | 960 | 925 |
| Apple Pie / Cheesecake / Tiramisu / Pecan Pie | 5★ | Excellent | 88 | 35 | 704 | 669 |
(For full base ladders + full recipe list, I reference my Baking guide here)
D) Coffee (5★, sorted by profit)
| Coffee (single) | Stars | Quality | Sell | Craft cost | Profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Double Chocolate Chip Crunch Shake | 5★ | Perfect | 144 | 13 | 131 |
| Feline Grace | 5★ | Perfect | 144 | 15 | 129 |
| Whisker Cream Brew / Blue Cat Tree | 5★ | Perfect | 128 | 14 | 114 |
| Caffè Mocha / Iced Vanilla Latte | 5★ | Perfect | 112 | 9 | 103 |
(For full base ladders + full coffe recipe list, I reference my Coffee Craft guide here)
E) Drinks (good filler, not strong in profit)
| Drink | Stars | Quality | Sell | Craft cost | Profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cocktail (cost 13 group) | 4★ | Perfect | 121 | 13 | 108 |
| Cocktail (cost 9 group) | 4★ | Perfect | 91 | 9 | 82 |
| Juice (single) | 4★ | Perfect | 60 | 5 | 55 |
Juice Jug is best on paper, but requires selling 8 glasses reliably.
(For full base ladders + full drink list, I reference my Drink Mixing guide here)
11) 
Road to 5★ (progression + average numbers)
Star milestones in my run
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1★: Day 3
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2★: Day 7
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3★: Day 10
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4★: Day 19
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5★: Day 27
What drives profit swings (most important context)
The large profit spikes were mainly because I personally chained lectures (high throughput).
Later, when daily profit stabilized around ~5k, I stopped doing lectures/massages myself and let employees run most services. Employees can do it, but they’re less efficient than a player chaining actions.
Segmented overview (from my logs)
| Segment | Days | Star range | Avg customers/day | Avg profit/day | Avg paid service/day | Avg menu sales/day | Avg wage/day | What drove results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Days 1–3 | 3 | 0★->1★ | 6.7 | -34 | 0 | 744 | 90 | Early setup + waste while leveling |
| Days 4–7 | 4 | 1★->2★ | 10.0 | 6,642 | 6,638 | 533 | 140 | Paid services become the core |
| Days 8–10 | 3 | 2★->3★ | 16.0 | 14,350 | 13,345 | 1,605 | 238 | Peak phase: chaining lectures myself |
| Days 11–19 | 9 | 3★->4★ | 23.0 | 5,208 | 5,570 | 1,459 | 649 | Employee-run services reduce peak efficiency |
| Days 20–27 | 8 | 4★->5★ | 24.8 | 5,891 | 5,964 | 1,942 | 1,638 | Higher wage load; steady service income |
| Day 28 | 1 | early 5★ | 29.0 | 5,839 | 4,600 | 2,548 | 2,106 | Early “steady-state” snapshot |
Successful advertise correlated with customer spikes, but spikes only translate into profit if paid service throughput scales with it.
12) 
Current major business bugs + workarounds (important)
Bugs
-
Employees overwrite goods in display cases even if these are already nearly full → items disappear (material cost is burned).
here -
“Clear everything” issue: this happens when you use “Clear everything” on a nearby table/counter (not when you use actions on the display case itself). Items in nearby display cases can get deleted / cleared as well.
here -
Portion-only selling bug: whole/family items currently cannot be sold as a whole item, only per portion.
here -
Display case mixing (cosmetic) : employees/zois sometimes place food/drinks into flower displays and flowers into refrigerated food displays. Looks messy, but didn’t change profit in my tests.
here -
Quality-loss bug (very annoying): sometimes an item loses its quality label inside a display case and sells at a lower quality price. I observed this mostly with baking and especially family dishes; not with drinks/coffee/flowers.
here
Workarounds (what actually helped)
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Consider single servings on the recipe list.
This helps multiple issues at once:-
The quality-loss bug happens mainly on family dishes, so single servings avoid it.
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Before 4★, the early setup effectively caps you at 4 display slots, so with an 8-portion item you’re effectively “missing” about 4 portions worth of potential sales until you unlock the 8-slot stand.
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It reduces clutter and lowers the chance employees overwrite existing goods.
-
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Don’t worry about “empty shelves” when using single servings: employees who are not supposed to cook/bake/coffee/drinks often do it anyway (bug), so shelves tend to stay filled regardless.
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Baking exception: you can’t fully avoid portion-style selling with baking, and baking is also more bug-prone. If profit is the goal, cooking tends to beat baking—so I would treat baking as optional unless roleplaying a bakery. If you want to run a bakery, getting the 8-slot stand at 4★ helps a lot.
13) 
Strategy (clearer choices)
A) If you want to print money (active play)
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Personally chain lectures (and optionally massages) back-to-back.
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Keep other offers minimal (a few top sellers as filler).
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With this approach and good lecture throughput, hitting ~20k per business day is realistic in my experience.
B) If you want to enjoy the shop (semi-passive)
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Hire employees for the tasks (including lectures/massages).
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Profit is lower because employees aren’t as efficient, but the gameplay is far less repetitive.
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This style can average around ~5k per business day with low effort in my experience.
C) If you want a low-maintenance equipment shop
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Rely on entry/hourly with equipment (gym/arcade/cinema/café style).
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Without paid services, income often sits more in the ~1–2k/day range, but with almost no effort.
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Adding just a few lectures per day (short time investment) can push that setup toward ~5k/day while still staying low-maintenance.
Practical notes
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Treat Advertise as a bonus (it can fail), not as a guaranteed lever.
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Staffing: Check needed and unnecessary skills when hiring for roles and watch wage scaling; high-skill employees at 4★/5★ can be extremely expensive.
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For selling goods: I strongly recommend single servings at the moment to avoid waste due to current bugs.
Key takeaways
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4★ is a major QoL milestone because of the 8-slot stand.
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If you want to print money, chain lectures yourself (employees can’t match throughput).
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If ~5k/day is enough, employees can run services.
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Post-March portion-only selling + display bugs make goods selling more management-heavy.
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Top single-ticket items: perfect flower baskets. Top “normal menu” profits: salmon steak and fish & chips.
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Single servings are a practical workaround that helps multiple current bugs at once.
