Crazy Diner Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Serve Meals Quickly and Restore Every Restaurant in Town

Crazy Diner is one of the newer time management games in town, that’s available on iOS and Android. Developed by Smart Fun Casual Games, Crazy Diner is a classic restaurant tale where you’re invited to revive a series of food shops, learn new recipes and serve delicious food to your customers. 

The narrative is centered around an unnamed redhead protagonist who has been studying to become a chef. Once she finishes school she moves back to her hometown to help out her grandpa, who inspired her to become a chef, run the family business.

To her surprise, she arrives to find that her granddad is missing and his breakfast shop has been abandoned. With the help of new friends that she meets around town, she must work to restore the restaurant and get at the bottom of her grandfather’s disappearance.

Time management levels are at the center of Crazy Diner, as successfully clearing them will provide you with the materials – golden keys – needed to perform and restore food joints around town.

If you’ve played restaurant management games before you’ll have no problem getting into the action while in Crazy Diner. Even if you’re a newbie, the game offers quick tutorials every time you start work at a new restaurant, so you should be able to learn the gist pretty fast.

Time management games like these can get quite challenging as you progress, so if you’re already stumbled upon some levels that aren’t exactly easy to pass, you’ve come to the right place. We put together a detailed Crazy Diner beginner’s guide for you which contains some essential tips and tricks to help you move things along when it comes to solving levels.

1. Be Aware Of The Level’s Target

In every restaurant you unlock while playing Crazy Diner, your goal is to serve meals to your customers quickly. You’ll need to prep them fast and efficient so that hungry diners don’t get frustrated with waiting in line for their food.

While the general objective is quite straightforward, you’ll also have to pay attention to each level’s individual target if you wish to be successful at the end of each stage. Doing this allows you to tweak your strategy, so we suggest examining a level’s target carefully before actually pressing Play. 

At first, levels will require that you hit a single target in order to complete a level, which can be either one of these options:

• Serve a certain number of dishes;
• Collect a certain number of likes;
• Earn a certain amount of coins;

Later on, some restrictions are added to make things more difficult. These include:

• Maximum time on a level;
• Don’t throw away food;
• Don’t burn out food.
• Keep customers happy and don’t let anybody leave.

A level can have a target plus multiple restrictions. So for example, you might have to collect 14 likes in 60 seconds while making sure you don’t throw any food away.

It’s important to be aware of these level requirements as you play. For example, you might be good at serving dishes quickly, but if your level’s target is to collect likes, you’ll have to devise your strategy accordingly. Likes are handed out when you serve full orders without allowing your customers’ satisfaction level to drop below a certain point.

In this case, it’s a good idea to serve customers at least one item of their order to make sure their patience remains high. Once you’ve served an item, their happiness level will increase, and so will your chances of scoring a like.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to serve as many dishes as possible, it’s okay to focus less your customers’ satisfaction levels. It doesn’t matter if their super happy when you finally serve them their order, the goal is to get them their food.

2. Prepare Food In Advance

Always make sure you prepare the base ingredients in advance while playing Crazy Diner. Don’t wait for an actual customer to come and place their order before doing so. For example, in the Meet Chicken restaurant you’ll be working with two base items – corn dogs and fried chicken. You can add ketchup, chips or both as a side dish, while the second can be served alongside mayo, salad or both.

Well the idea is to always make sure to prepare the corn dogs and fried chickens in advance. In more intensive levels where customers won’t stop pouring through your restaurant’s door, it’s even recommended that you start cooking up a new batch as soon as soon as the fryers are free. The reason to do so is that you’ll run out of food items so fast, you can’t afford to wait additional seconds for a new batch to cook.

Be careful when playing levels with a “Don’t burn away food” restriction, though. Cooking food non-stop might come with the unwanted effect of overcooking some items, if they aren’t requested frequently enough. Therefore make sure you proceed with care. The safest way to go would be to cook in advance the exact number of items which you have free plates for. So if you just delivered 2 corn dogs, quickly start cooking another 2 and so on.

3. Aim For Combos

This trick is particular useful when you’re playing levels in which the goal is to collect a certain amount of coins. To ensure you get more money coming in, it’s important to aim to create combos. The streak meter is showed at the top of the display right in the middle.

As you serve food fast, the streak meter will fill up. A dish needs to be served within a few seconds after the previous one has been send out in order to maintain the streak. Your goal should be to create the largest chain possible, but depending on your customer influx this might or might not be possible. In more intensive levels, though, you should have no problem creating combos.

In Crazy Diner you should always aim to serve dishes as quick and efficiently as possible. It’s perhaps the most effective trick you need to master while playing a game like this. This strategy will not only allow you to create combos, but also help you work towards your level target.

4. Upgrade Your Kitchen Utensils And Food Items

In order to streamline the cooking process in your restaurants, it’s a good idea to start investing into upgrades as soon as you’re able. Beating each level comes with a reward in cash and so you’ll slowly start saving up. Once you manage to put aside enough cash, you can go ahead and check the upgrade tab and see what’s available.

There are two types of upgrades there – for kitchen utensils and food items. The first ones will add more cookers, as well as plates to your restaurant (the maximum is 3 for each) and will also make them produce food faster. Once you reach the more intensive levels, it’s imperative that you’ve upgraded these kitchen utensils to the max, or else you won’t be able to complete these challenges.

As for the food items upgrades, they also come quite in handy, as they can boost the value of your foodstuffs. This plays a big part during levels whose target is to collect a certain sum of coins. You can hit the objective by serving increasingly expensive dishes.

There’s a little trick you can use to ensure you never lack the funds to perform these upgrades. At the end of each successfully completed session make sure to tap on the “Double Coins” button. You’ll need to watch an ad, but you’ll get a lot more cash too. Before we say anything, keep in mind that you’ll get access to a limited amount of ad offers like these each day.

Once you run out, you’ll have to wait until the next day to be able to take advantage of the following round. We know it sounds super annoying, but try your best to get through them. You’ll be happy you did so later, once you unlock a new restaurant and are able to update your kitchen utensils so that you can cook and place 3 items at the same time.

5. How To Get Extra Cash

If you ever find that you lack the necessary cash to pay for an upgrade, don’t worry. In Crazy Diner, each level has three separate stages, and each comes with its own rewards. Sometimes, engaging in a level’s extra stages (2 and 3) is a must, as some will yield Keys, a resource which unlocks new renovations around town.

But even when taking Keys out of the equation, going back and playing leftover stages is a good idea if you want to beef up your cash reserve. This way you can make sure you’re heading into more advanced levels with all the appropriate upgrades, so as to ensure positive outcomes.

6. Watch Your Daily Dose Of Ads And More Ways To Get Extra Gems

In Crazy Diner you require Gems to pay for upgrades. Interestingly enough you can’t acquire Gems by playing common time management levels, so how do you get access to them? The answer is through rewards.

Daily rewards are a thing in Crazy Diner, so if you log in each day you can acquire various goodies including bundles of Gems. Even if you don’t have time to engage in a few levels, it’s still worth visiting Crazy Diner once a day to redeem these gifts. The resources will keep piling up and will come in handy when you do decide to start playing.

Moreover, you can grab even more precious stones during special events such as the “Golden Autumn Harvest Festival”. This is a seasonal event which lasts for over a month. During this time, you’ll also receive Corn as an additional reward for playing restaurant levels. Once you have enough, you can unlock additional goodies including Gems, Boosters, Cash and unlimited lives.

Don’t worry, about the lives though. It’s a rare occurrence to run out of them in Crazy Diner, at least during the initial phase. And even if you find yourself in need of extra ones, the rewards you get through playing will provide regular access to enough fuel to keep you going.

Make sure you keep an eye out for other events currently available, as well. Check the main screen and tap on each new icon that pops up. There might be hiding some free Gems. To give you an example, during Beginner’s Aid, you can redeem various rewards just for playing certain levels. The event spans throughout several days, so you have plenty of time to play and grab the gifts.

Anyway, perhaps the easiest way to get your hands on some extra Gems is by watching the bundle of 6 daily ads. Just press on the TV icon on the right side of the display to get started. Once you’ve exhausted them all, you’ll be able to get away with a nice stash of Gems.

While ad watching is incredibly annoying, the payout in this case is pretty great, so we suggest you find a way to pull through it. Especially since the 6 ads are a one-time thing each day, as the next round will be available once the clock hits 12PM.

As you continue beating levels, you’ll get to unlock some nice progress rewards. These usually consist of Gems and Boosters, so they can increase your resource reserve. The only problem is that they become available quite sparingly.

Now, if you happen to need some Gems ASAP, you can always go to Facebook and like Crazy Diner’s page and the game will reward you with a nice 50 Gem package. But if you’d like to keep you gaming session separate from social media, it’s not really a problem either.

If you follow the tips we shared above, you’ll always have enough Gems to fund your upgrades. To give you a concrete example, upgrading the Salad Maker once in the Pasta Kingdom costs 900 coins and 8 Gems. Performing a second upgrade will take you back with 1800 coins and 15 Gems and at that point in time our Gem stash was already at 905 Gems, so we had no problem paying for it. We managed to collect all that simply by doing what we advised you above.  

7. Replay Levels

In our experience so far with this game, you won’t have to do this often because most levels are solvable from the first try. However, there will still be instances where you won’t be able to win so easily. Our recommendation is not to turn to Boosters for help immediately.

Retry playing the level a few times, even at the cost of losing some lives. In most cases this will solve your problem. If you still can’t get past the challenge, then try watching a quick ad at the end of the level. More on that in our next section.

8. When Things Get Rough Throw In A Few Boosters

Crazy Diner is one of the rare restaurant games that’s not too easy, but not too hard either. You can go through levels in most of these diners without having to be overly reliant on Boosters. Which is a nice change from similar games in the category which can get quite exasperating in that sense.

Nevertheless, some levels can still pose a bit of a challenge, but do not despair. The game obviously puts at your disposal a few tools to help you win. Like we explained above, the first thing you need to try if a level is giving you a hard time is to replay it a few times. Attempt to do so before giving up, but if nothing you do seems to work, you can always turn to Boosters for help.

Like with any time management game, there are a few types you can take advantage of. First off, we have the pre-level Boosters which you can equip before starting a level. This kind of Booster is recommended after you’ve tried a few times to play a level, but you didn’t manage to complete it on your own.

Since you’ve already attempted to play the level a few times, you would be already familiar with how the stage develops. Hence you’ll be able to pick the most appropriate Booster without problem. There are four option to choose from including:

• Ultra Cooker – food won’t get overcooked anymore and you can keep it on the stoves/fryers for as long as you want without worrying that it will be burned to a crisp.
  
• Double Price – doubles the coins you’ve earned by playing a level.
  
• Instant Cook – cooks dishes instantly so they can be served immediately to hungry customers.
  
• Auto Server – automatically serves base dishes which don’t require additional ingredients to be added. For example, it can serve simple Pancakes, but not Pancakes with chocolate sauce.

It’s important that you choose your Boosters wisely, as not to waste them. You’ll need to make the decision based on the level objective and the influx of customers coming in your restaurant at that time. Let’s say you’re playing a level where you need to serve a number of dishes until time runs out to pass, but there’s also a restriction involved where you’re not allow to burn any food.

In this case, you’ll be in a big hurry to serve as many dishes as possible, and it might be tempting to apply the strategy where you start cooking another batch as soon as the previous one gets done. The problem with this approach is that some dishes might end up staying on the stove for too long and eventually burn.

In our scenario, burning food will cause you to automatically fail the level, so in order to prevent that from happening you should use an Ultra Cooker. This way you can play in a more relaxed fashion, knowing that your food won’t burn no matter what you do.

As far as we can tell, you won’t need to rely on pre-level Boosters all that often in Crazy Diner. Most levels can be completed on your own, but that won’t be always the case. You can win Boosters by redeeming the rewards the game puts at your disposal, so you won’t lack for them, most of the times.

Anyway, there are other types of power-ups you can employ from time to time. While playing the level, you can use Candy or Lollipops to prevent customers from getting annoyed when they have to wait a bit longer to get their order. These Boosters can be extremely useful during levels that task you with collecting Likes.

Once customer satisfaction falls below a certain point, you won’t be able to get a Like out of them, but if you use Candy (for individuals) or Lollipops (for everyone in the shop) their happiness level will return to normal. And so you’ll still have a chance to get their Likes.

The last type of Booster shows up when you fail a level. Before restarting the challenge, the game will ask you if you wish to add more seconds or customers. If you are certain that you can complete the level, go ahead and use the Boosters you have available.

Although, you might want to take advantage of the option to skip using the Boosters and instead watch a quick ad to get extra seconds in the game. These ad offers appear only after a handful of failed levels. Once you run out, you’ll need to wait for the next day to be able to take advantage of more.

In case you progress takes you deep into the game, and you find yourself running out of aids and facing a more difficult level than usual, take a break. We encourage you to step away from the game until the next day when you can get access to more ad offers that can prologue your gaming sessions as needed. This way you won’t have to spend precious resources on acquiring new Boosters.

Players can win all the types of Boosters we’ve detailed so far by playing the game, taking part in events, watching ads or simply logging into Crazy Diner on a daily basis. If you follow all these steps, you’ll be get enough aids so you can beat the toughest challenges without having to pay a cent.

With this last tip we conclude our Crazy Diner beginner’s guide. We hope our post will help you get all the restaurants around town up and running in no time. Remember you need to develop fast serving skills as quickly as possible in order to succeed, but also make sure you also go through our list of suggestions so you can boost your strategy even further. If you’ve been playing Crazy Diner yourself and have knowledge of any strategy that hasn’t been included in this guide, don’t hesitate to let us know by sharing it with the community in the comment section below!