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Cat Snack Bar Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Become a Restaurant Tycoon

Cat Snack Bar is an idle game developed by Treeplla where you play a cat running a variety of restaurants, taking orders, and serving them in exchange for cash. Use the money to upgrade your current restaurant until you have purchased all available upgrades, then establish a new branch to start the whole process again. Nothing could be simpler.

cat snack bar intro

Being an idle game, much of Cat Snack Bar will consist of waiting to earn enough cash for the next set of restaurant upgrades. Over time, you will unlock additional ways to improve monetary gain, such as merchandise to provide passive buffs and costumes to dress your cat with that provide more bonuses. These bonuses even carry over into events, which mix things up a bit and award extra goodies for completing certain tasks. Of course, you can just leave the game alone for a few hours and reap the rewards as needed.

cat snack bar filler a

Cat Snack Bar is easy to pick up, but it does put its twists on the idle game formula. We will discuss some of these gameplay elements and tips as we go through this guide. So, sit back, get an easy snack, and stay with us to learn what Cat Snack Bat has up its sleeves.

1. A Simple Food Stand

cat snack bar first steps

Cat Snack Bar starts you off by running a cookie stand, serving some freshly-baked cookies to passersby. Being an idle game first and foremost, your player cat will automatically take the orders of any customers and move to the relevant worktop, cooking the related food and serving it once it is done. At all levels (or “branches” as the game calls them), your kiosk or restaurant will start empty, and interacting with your first customer will let you purchase your first worktop.

Other than that, you earn money primarily by serving orders to customers. Your current restaurant or kiosk will also earn money while you are away from the game, up to a maximum of three hours’ worth of profit. Upon returning to the game, you have the option of collecting the earnings as is or watching an ad to double them before picking them up. The game may also periodically offer ads in exchange for extra money or doubling your earnings for five minutes, but you can ignore them if money is currently not an issue.

Money is naturally used to upgrade your current restaurant, either by purchasing new worktops, upgrading preexisting ones, or purchasing improvements via the aptly-named Upgrades menu, accessible via the lower right corner. When upgrading a worktop, the selected worktop displays the following:

cat snack bar worktop
  • Several stars depicting how many upgrade milestones a worktop can reach before being considered fully upgraded;
  • A progress bar denoting the number of upgrades needed to reach the next star;
  • The amount of money earned by serving an order and the time it takes to prepare it; and
  • The amount of money needed to upgrade the worktop, which naturally increases as more upgrades are purchased.

Upgrading a worktop simply increases the amount of money its related order earns, and upon reaching an Upgrade milestone, the worktop doubles the amount of money the current food item will earn. Certain milestones will add a worktop for cats to use along with the income multiplier, which comes in handy as you attract more customers. Once all upgrade milestones are reached, the worktop will no longer accept any upgrades. While this might sound like early-game food items will fall behind in terms of revenue, upgrades from the Upgrades menu can help them catch up.

cat snack bar upgrade menu

The Upgrades menu consists of various improvements to your restaurant as a whole. The most relevant upgrades here are the number of customers that come in at any given time, and additional employees who can help you out. Employees are initially limited to part-timers who can take orders, cook meals, and deliver them to customers.

As you unlock more complicated restaurants, part-timers get relegated to waiter duty while your cat stays in the kitchen along with dedicated chef cats. Improvements to your products also exist here, particularly additional price multipliers and reductions to cooking time. There can be several price multipliers for your offerings, and a handful of those multipliers are even “global” modifiers that affect all food items in the given restaurant. Finally, some upgrades simply increase the movement speed of your employees, allowing them to complete orders sooner.

cat snack bar business growth

Both worktop upgrades and menu upgrades contribute to a progress meter at the bottom of the screen. Once both sets of upgrades are purchased, you can leave the current restaurant to establish a new branch, serving as the “reset” function common to other idle games. There are seven branches per “chapter” and completing all branches lets you move on to the next chapter.

After completing the cookie stand, your next branch should be a donut stand which is slightly more complex as you can serve both donuts and coffee. Completing the donut stand unlocks the food truck, and will begin unlocking more of the game mechanics as you go on.

cat snack bar branches

2. Gems for Gewgaws

cat snack bar food trucks

Beginning with the food truck, which serves soda, hot dogs, and pretzels, Cat Snack Bar introduces Gems, its premium currency. Gems are earned primarily by reaching worktop milestones, which earn two Gems each time. In addition, the Upgrade menus of later restaurants add 10 Gems to a “Kitty Bank.” This can be opened once there are 400 or 700 Gems stockpiled via microtransactions. Gems are used mainly to purchase and upgrade Merchandise, indicated by the yarn ball icon at the lower left corner of the screen.

All nine Merchandise items act as the “meta-upgrades” of Cat Snack Bar, as they confer bonuses that persist even as you move to new branches. Merchandise items can be upgraded and purchasing new Merchandise unlocks the next one in line. All the Merchandise items are themed after cat toys. Below are the first four Merchandise items and what they can do:

cat snack bar merch
  • Tip Jar: The only Merchandise item not based on a cat toy, the Tip Jar gives a 12% chance of customers giving a tip when an order is received, even if the order has not been completed yet. Tips have to be manually collected, which can get a bit daunting as you upgrade the restaurant to handle more customers. Upgrading the Tip Jar increases the chance by an additional 2% each time.
  • Fish Bowl: This item gives a 10% chance to replace the flat sum of cash from watching an optional ad with 10 Gems instead, serving as a better source of Gems outside of upgrading worktops. Upgrading the Fish Bowl adds a 2% chance each time.
  • Scratching Post: The first of several scratching posts you will encounter in the Merchandise Menu, this Scratching Post adds a flat 20% increase to the ad-obtained money multiplier each time it is upgraded.
  • Cat Bed: This adds a multiplier to your offline earnings, starting at 1.15 and getting a flat 15% increase with each upgrade.

As you can guess, Merchandise can improve your earnings, both in terms of money and Gems.

Another mechanic you unlock as you continue progressing is Costumes, which provide an initially small revenue buff, but can be upgraded with duplicate costumes to unlock perks. There are three slots for Costumes: the Head, the Suit, and the Prop. Each costume provides a small revenue buff that affects how much money food can earn, and it applies to both you and any part-timers or chefs working alongside you.

Costumes come in six rarities and are found in Suitcases that serve as loot boxes. Any collected Costumes can be previewed and swapped around via the t-shirt icon between the Merchandise and Upgrade buttons. There are three Suitcase “tiers” available, and you can access them by pressing the store icon just below the money counter:

cat snack bar suitcases
  • The first is the Travel Suitcase which can be claimed for free every four hours and comes in three “stages.” The first two stages are guaranteed to give you a common-rarity costume. The last stage gives you a small chance of being rewarded an uncommon-rarity costume but you will have to watch an ad to claim it. After that, the stages reset.
  • The second is the Vintage Suitcase which has a greater chance of rewarding an uncommon costume. However, it can only be opened in two ways: by spending 80 Gems or by completing the current restaurant, which also awards some keys.
  • Rounding out the Suitcases is the Luxurious Suitcase, which can drop Uncommon, Rare, or Epic costumes. However, it requires a whopping 300 Gems to open. Furthermore, keys are awarded mainly by completing all restaurants in a given chapter. Opening five Luxurious Suitcases guarantees the next Luxurious Suitcase will drop an Epic costume, and the cycle resets.

The revenue buffs from each costume can stack and can be upgraded by spending gems. But a more cost-effective way of increasing their revenue buffs is by merging them with duplicates. You need three identical costume pieces with the same rarity to initiate a merge, and merging an item increases it to the next rarity tier.

Additionally, every Rare or Epic Costume piece gets an additional passive buff and the more buffs are unlocked the rarer it becomes. These buffs can include buffs to movement speed or food production, either just for you or for any part-timers.

cat snack bar costumes

The last buff unlocked simply doubles the costume’s revenue bonus. However, by that point the revenue bonus will be very high even without Gems spent to increase it. While costume items come in sets that match one another, there does not seem to be a “set bonus” that rewards you for wearing all items in a set, so feel free to mix and match. If a better costume item comes along and you spent some Gems on one of your older costumes, any Gems spent can be refunded at no extra cost.

Lastly, you gain the ability to promote a certain item on your menu for five minutes, making customers more likely to select that item while the promotion is active. While this can be used strategically, mainly by picking your most valuable menu item to make lots of cash, you must remember that your worktops can only accommodate so many chefs, leaving most of your kitchen idle until you get different orders. If you do activate a promotion and its duration expires, the game will put it on a cooldown until you can promote another menu item again.

cat snack bar promotions

3. Open for Business, Even Across the Seas

cat snack bar event map

Cat Snack Bar has its events, which consist of manning a separate store away from the mainland. Events last for four days and have a three-day cooldown period between event periods. Events have their products to sell and upgrades to purchase, but any buffs from Merchandise and Costumes will carry over. The maximum level for upgrading worktops is much higher compared to a regular restaurant, and similarly, upgrade costs tend to be higher.

Aside from hiring part-timers to assist you, the event also offers the assistance of a Diligent Worker, who moves significantly faster than regular part-timers. You can temporarily hire one Worker at a time by watching an ad, and he will remain in your employ for five minutes. You can also choose to spend money to purchase up to five Workers. These temporary Diligent Workers will vanish as soon as their five-minute timer is up, but they will at least complete their current order before vanishing.

cat snack bar event store

The first event setting that all players unlock is the adventurer’s guild, where you sell typical fantasy items instead of food. Things such as swords, potions, and magic staves are the order of the day, and part-timers who work here are called blacksmiths.

All events have a season pass that gives you rewards for competing for certain objectives and come in two parts: a “free” pass that everyone can obtain, and a “premium” pass that can only be accessed via microtransactions and offers more lucrative rewards. Rewards from both season passes include gems, keys for Suitcases, and high-rarity Costumes.

Regardless of what season pass there is, completing all the listed objectives lets you move on to the next setting for future events. Once the event wraps up, any incomplete progress is wiped both in terms of shop upgrades and season pass progress, allowing for an even playing field for the next event.

cat snack bar season pass

4. Some Advice from Me-ow

Now that we have the basics of Cat Snack Bar aside, we can start sharing tips on how to maximize your profits:

cat snack bar filler b
  • There is no need to follow the order of upgrades in the upgrade menu. If you need a few extra hands but the next upgrade is a price increase, you can skip the next upgrade and go for something more relevant to your current needs, provided you have the money to purchase it. This can also serve as a sort of challenge for some people; try buying every upgrade of a certain food item first before buying anything else at your next restaurant.
  • Mix and match those clothes. Since there is no bonus for wearing all matching costume items in a set, feel free to choose what clothes you fancy. We do recommend choosing the best costume items you have if only to maximize profits via revenue buffs. Conversely, while you can boost the revenue buffs via Gems that can be freely refunded, we do not recommend it, as Gems are better spent elsewhere.
cat snack bar filler c
  • Speaking of Gems, one of the best items of Merchandise you can unlock is the sixth item on the list: a scratching post that increases the maximum time the game can collect money while you are away. This greatly helps with events, as it lets you leave the event shop alone for longer while managing your restaurants. It also pairs well with the fourth Merchandise item, which multiplies the money you receive while you are away.
  • Finally, if you do plan on using Promotions, we recommend choosing earlier menu items. Early menu items do not take that much time to prepare as is, and upgrades and costume buffs can reduce that further. If customers order something that is not being promoted, it gives idle chefs something to do. If by chance you have two menu items that take the same time to cook, simply choose the more valuable one.
cat snack bar outro

And that concludes our guide to Cat Snack Bar. We hope you have as much fun as we had. If you have any tips and tricks you would like to share, you can write them down in the comment section. Have fun, and game on!

Kate

Saturday 6th of May 2023

It would be good to add a whole cummercial centre or atleast a small one to the gqme so u can run multiple shops. it would avoid repeating the same thing over and over..maybe add the cinemas too. would be something new

Alee

Friday 5th of May 2023

Would I need to buy diligent worker only once and it will be there for every future event or will I need to buy it again and again for every new event?

Maria

Sunday 16th of April 2023

I'm in the fish market but i can't complete it, it will be saved my progress for the next event?

Alisa

Tuesday 11th of April 2023

Hey i am interested to know what software did you use to develop this game. I was amaze with the game. Dont worry it just for my personal education purposes.

Heather Koziel

Monday 20th of February 2023

Any tips to beat the adventurs guild ?

Missy Kender

Tuesday 4th of April 2023

@Heather Koziel, I finally had a strategy, promoting my top-tier item, which not only guaranteed maximum sales but the highest ad-based revenue, but they just did an update prior to the Event last week and REMOVED PROMOTIONS! I am stumped and frustrated!