Food grades are measured in stars, just like the restaurant quality. When the player acquires any food, it will be one star. Upgrades become available to the player as he/she progresses through the game.
The highest grade a specific food can reach is different. Some foods are not upgradeable, like pretzels; some others are upgradable to two stars, like beer; and the same happens for three, four and five stars. Foods that are upgradeable to four or five stars have related achievements for upgrading them to the maximum, and upgrading all two-star-max foods also gives an achievement, same with three-star-max foods.
Upgrade costs[]
Upgrading a product requires money, usually large amounts. On the other hand, upgrading a product will also increase its price. However, making easy calculations a player can realize it would be very difficult to get the investment from upgrading that particular food back.
Example: Fish[]
For instance, fish costs $1500 to buy, and it sells for $6. That means the player would have to sell two hundred and fifty fish before the player can see any profit from selling fish.
If the player then decides, while covering the cost of having bought the fish, to upgrade it to two star level, that would cost $1800 more, with an increase in price from $6 to $12. That means the proportional part of the fish that is paying for the upgrade is $6 (the increase in price), so while the base $6 are paying for the base fish, $6 would start paying for the upgrade. It would take 300 upgraded fish to be sold in order to cover the cost of that upgrade. However, after selling 250 fish total, the base fish would have been covered, so the remaining money to cover the upgrade would be 12$ per fish sold instead of $6. E.g. if the player bought the fish, then sold 50 fish and then did the upgrade, it would take 200 more fish to cover the base cost. After those 200 fish the base price is completely payed covered, and only $600 would remain to be paid to cover the upgrade. As now the full price covers the upgrade, only 50 more fish would be needed to cover the upgrade, so 300 fish sold in total would be required to cover the base fish plus upgrade.
But of course, there are more levels of upgrading. Let's review the example in case the player decides to buy the fish, and after selling 50 of them, decides to upgrade, sells 100 of them, decides to upgrade again, sells 50 and decides to upgrade to the maximum four-star level fish.
- After selling 50 fish: The player has covered $300 out of $1500 from buying fish.
- After selling 100 two-star fish: The player has covered $900 out of $1500 from buying fish, and $600 out of $1800 from the two-star upgrade.
- After selling 50 three-star fish: The player has covered $1200 out of $1500 from buying fish, $900 out of $1800 from the two-star upgrade and $150 out of $1800 from the three-star upgrade.
- Therefore, the player would need to cover the remaining $4650 ($1800 from the four-star upgrade + all that remains to be paid) selling four-star fish at $20 a piece, which would mean 233 fish need to be sold.
In the end of this example, the player would need to have sold 433 fish to cover the costs of buying and upgrading it.
Checklist[]
In order to prevent players from not upgrading at all, the game forces players to upgrade a certain number of foods before a new restaurant level is achieved. In the end, it's more beneficial to upgrade foods to the maximum before start serving them, as the amounts necessary to break even are less when goods start to be sold at maximum price from day one. In the previous example, if upgraded from the start, an initial investment of $6900 will be necessary but only 345 four-star fish would need to be sold in order to start making profits.
Difficulty[]
There is another factor involved in food upgrades: difficulty. Most upgrades bring more ingredients and new recipes, so preparing or serving that particular food gets more difficult.
The only foods that do not add more difficulty (ingredients or recipes) when upgraded are: chicken breast, fried chicken, coffee, beer and hash browns.