Crazy Cooking Chef Tips, Cheats & Strategies for Earning More Coins and Gems for Free

Xiao Jang Cheng’s Crazy Cooking Chef is an iOS game that has proven to be quite a good time-killer for us in recent days. To jog your memory on what we told you in the last game overview, this title puts you in charge of various shops and restaurants, which you unlock as you level up in the game. Like in other games of this kind, time management is the main focus of the in-game mechanics — your ability to multi-task and to perform tasks with speed and accuracy will be put to the test here. And while the game’s creators say there are some RPG mechanics included here, we’ll be honest with you here — this is more of a classic business/time management game, albeit with a few requisite twists that allow the game to stand out from the rest of the pack.

Now normally, we follow up our beginner’s guides with intermediate guides. This one, in a sense, can be considered an intermediate guide, as there are some tips geared toward anyone who’s at player level 6 to 10. However, most of these tips deal with the different ways in which you can earn coins (common currency) and gems (premium currency) in this game, so we’re going to stick with that for this new Crazy Cooking Chef strategy guide, which doubles as an intermediate players’ guide, as well as a collection of pointers for anyone looking to earn more currency without paying any real-life money.

1. Keep On Watching Ad Videos After Each Level

Unless you buy gem packs in Crazy Cooking Chef, you’re going to find it hard to have enough gems to keep up with all the upgrades, which, as they often do, become exponentially more expensive as you move one item from one tier to the next. And while you’ll only earn a measly two gems for watching, the ad videos at the end of each level allow you to earn a couple bonus gems, which could add up as you complete more levels. Just click on the lower left button with the flashing gems, and you’re set — after 30 seconds, you can claim your gems, though once again, it won’t be much if you just consider your earnings per level.

On the upper right of the main menu, you can also click on the TV button to watch ad videos, though there’s no guarantee you will earn free gems by watching the clip. More often than not, your reward will come in the form of coins. Furthermore, the TV button wouldn’t always be available, as the game, we would surmise, can only serve up so many videos!

2. Open The Red Envelopes

This is a limited-time offer since Crazy Cooking Chef is a new game, and certain parts of the world are celebrating Chinese New Year. But if you see customers in your shops wearing festive Chinese attire, you’ll want to tend to their orders faster than the others, as they give out red envelopes on top of the usual tips. These envelopes contain coins or gems, and in most cases, you can end up winning more coins and/or gems than you normally would by watching the ad videos we mentioned above. As this feature won’t be around forever, we certainly hope that Crazy Cooking Chef’s makers would have more special events in the future, where you can earn more freebies on top of your rather limited options.

3. Should You Play The Slot Machine?

On the far upper right of your screen on the main menu, you’ll see a slot machine icon with the word “Lucky” — click on this and you’ll pull up the slot machine mini-game. Normally, you’ll have to pay 1,000 coins for each spin of the slots, and since this is a game of chance, we might as well warn you in advance that you will not, in most cases, be able to recoup your bet. However, if you get lucky, you can win as many as 50 gems or as many as 5,000 coins — the key here, apparently, is to get three of a kind (with three 7’s getting you the aforementioned 50 gems), or two of a kind at the very least, in most cases. The only exceptions would be getting one Bar (50 coins), one 7 (100 coins), or a burger/cola/fries combo (1 token).

Slot machine tokens, unfortunately, are the only way you can play this mini-game for free, but at the moment, we don’t know of any other way to earn them, other than the burger/cola/fries combo on the slots. We only recommend playing the slots if you’ve got more than enough coins handy — otherwise, you’re better off using those coins on those all-important upgrades.

4. Claim Your Profit As Often As Possible

Depending on how far you’ve upgraded your food items, you can collect profit from your restaurants every 15 minutes. It won’t be worth too many coins, but if you’re aware of the 15-minute cool-down time for profit collection, this could be a good way to stockpile those coins. The profit collection option is available on the top left of the levels screen in each store — just click on it, and you can instantly add to your coin total!

5. Grinding Is An Option

As this Crazy Cooking Chef guide focuses on tips for earning more coins and gems, as well as some tips for intermediate players, we’re moving on with another financially-related pointer for anyone looking to have more resources for upgrades. The game allows you to replay levels you’ve already completed, and the good thing here is that you will still earn the same income and the same tips, and have the same option to earn gems by watching post-level ad videos. This also works if there are any levels which you had failed to complete with three stars — you can replay as often as needed, and even quit the game in the middle of a level if one mistake ends up leading to another. (Trust us, this does happen, even to the best of us.) The game doesn’t appear to penalize rage-quitters, as your only opponent in Crazy Cooking Chef is the timer; this isn’t like your average PvP title where you’re affecting your opponent’s stats by rage-quitting.

If you ever find things getting too difficult at the current level, feel free to grind — it’s a no-lose situation, even if you get two stars in a level you previously three-starred!

6. If Given A Choice, Focus On The Bigger Orders

Yes, we did mention in our beginner’s guide that you shouldn’t overlook the smaller orders — one cola, one fries, burger without any toppings, etc. But when it comes to those situations where you’re serving multiple customers, including one or two with particularly big and/or fancy orders (sometimes, up to three separate items per customer), you can go ahead and overlook the one customer who has a small order, if such a customer is present. This holds true especially in the later, more complicated levels, as your requirements for three stars become steeper and the difference in income between big and small orders becomes more evident. That said, you shouldn’t act slowly when it comes to the smaller orders — you’ll still get a good tip if you serve them up while the customer still has a big smile on their face!

7. Wipe Your Phone Screen And Don’t Play With Sweaty Hands

We admit this is a rather odd tip to mention. But unlike in fighting games, the effects of not being able to properly register your swipe on the screen is especially apparent in a game like Crazy Cooking Chef. All too often, we’ve experienced situations where customers would walk away, just because we couldn’t swipe their orders over to them on time. Just think how bad this could be if you’re swiping from one end of the screen to the next! (i.e. swiping a cola, as the cola machine is on the left side of the Burger Shop kitchen, over to a customer on the far right.)

To avoid this situation, we strongly advise you to wipe your screen and make sure you’re not playing while your hands are wet or sweaty for whatever reason. The last thing you want is an unsatisfied customer due to the “technical issues” caused by a wet smartphone or tablet screen.

8. Level Up Faster By Focusing On As Many Shops As Possible

As we mentioned in the beginner’s guide, Crazy Cooking Chef allows you to unlock more shops by leveling up, but at a certain point in the game, you’ll find out that gaining enough XP to make it to the next level isn’t half as easy as it used to be. Remember that completing levels does not earn you any XP — you have to perform upgrades and complete achievements! To this end, you shouldn’t, for instance, focus solely on the Burger Shop when you have the Ice Cream Shop already unlocked. In order to complete achievements related to the Ice Cream Shop (and there are a few), you’ll need to focus on that shop as much as you do focus on the Burger Shop. Likewise, you should get going on the Western Food Restaurant once you unlock it at player level 9, and not just complete the levels for the Burger and Ice Cream shops.