Tips, tricks and other neat stuff

Not cheats, just things we've figured out. Not all of them are about catering!

General tips

• Pay careful attention to what a mission asks you to do. If it says to "cook" an item, you are being asked to put that menu item on your stove. Go through all the steps until it is cooking. You will see from the notified in the upper left corner of Café World that you have received credit for it. Now you can throw that item away if you want to. You do not need to finish cooking it. If a mission tells you to "serve" an item, the item must somehow be placed on your serving counters. You can cook it and then serve it, of course, or you can serve it from your gift box or (presumably) your refrigerator.
• If your restaurant is not as popular as you'd like it to be, add another door. Keep your serving counters full at all times, and brew coffee and make drinks even if you won't be there to serve them.

Catering tips

• If you haven't already, get your coffee maker and drink station ready and working. Those items don't normally show up in catering jobs, but they frequently appear in missions that get you recipes for menu items you need for the catering job. 
• If you haven't already, get your deep fryer going! Fried items are starting to show up in catering jobs, and they especially are hard to get a lot of since each person can only make one at a time
• If the catering job includes a new menu item that you can't cook yet, visit your neighbors and do the "eat" missions. The new items seem to be more prevalently given out when they're needed. (Not important for most of what we do, only for the very latest job added by Zynga.)
  
• Anything you have on a serving unit can be sold to WholeSale Dale. You are told that all the food wouldn't fit in his van so there's some left over, and asked if you want to send it to your friends. If the item is needed for a catering job, be sure to send it to some of the people helping you. One order of chocolate cake from your gift box or from a single stove can be multiplied into a lot of servings that way. Serve it, sell it to WholeSale Dale, and send the leftovers on.
  

Working in a group tips

• Spice your neighbors stoves! You'll get spices, and you might save something from spoiling that they can then serve to help you with your catering job.
• Not everyone winds up on everyone's catering crew. There just aren't enough slots.
  
• Remember that you don't have to officially start your own catering job to be part of a neighbor's crew for it. You might want to concentrate on getting your salad bar together instead of tracking down packs of salt and pepper, but have plenty of time to help someone cook and serve. It's also a great time to complete the Upgrade Your Catering Business order, which has you cooking an easily managed number of Belgian waffles but asking for a lot of items.

Ask tips

• Asks — the things you have to have your neighbors send you to accompany each catering job — won't be nearly as complicated once you friend everyone in this group. However, there are a few things to keep in mind. Café World only allows 24 requests to neighbors per day. That includes requests for items from them and gifts to them. So guard those requests carefully! 
• After you accept everything in your Zynga Message Center, think twice about sending any "thank you" gifts. It might be better to wait and send that person a food item, or you may need to ask them for a picnic basket. The number of asks you can send does not reset at any specific time; rather, if you send 5 out at 10:45 p.m. today, you will be able to send 5 more at 10:46 p.m. tomorrow. 
• There is also a limit to the numbers of requests/gifts/in-game messages you can send from all the games you play on Facebook. Facebook can change their policy about this frequently, and games that handle these message a specific way from inside the game don't count. It's very confusing, just be aware that it's there. Zynga has more about it, but it seems from their explanation that gifts accepted and sent using the Zynga Message Center may not count in the Facebook total.

Gifting and gift box tips

• Since items served from your gift box count, hang on to gifted items that show up in any catering job, even ones you don't need to redo. One of your friends probably does need them! We've sometimes filled the entire order from our gift boxes.
• Don't send a lot of non-requested gifts or Thank You gifts! Café World only allows 24 requests to neighbors per day. That includes requests for items from them and gifts sent to them. (Responding to a request doesn't count against you.) You might want to break that rule, however, to use WholeSale Dale. There's more about WholeSale Dale on our FAQ page.
• The number of gifts or asks you can send does not reset at any specific time; rather, if you sent 5 out at 10:45 today, you would be able to send 5 more at 10:46 tomorrow.

• Remember, when you need an item to go with a catering order, your neighbors cannot send it to you unless you send a request to them from the catering menu. 
• There is another new feature on the catering menu, although we haven't really found a great way to use it. One dish for each catering order has an "ask" button beside it. You can ask your neighbors for that dish, just as you would for a party favor.