Restaurant City Experiments

This game is strangely satisfying. I spent a couple hours playing it, and I carried out a series of experiments to see what effect my restaurant layout had on the rate of change of my thumbs-up total. Here are the results:

Game: Restaurant City on Facebook
Measurement: Thumbs Up
Date/Time: Monday, July 20, 2009, 2:00 AM
Restaurant Level: 7

Chairs near door:
30.9
31.3
—-
+0.4 in 2 minutes
+0.2 / minute

Chairs far from door:
31.3
32.1
—-
+0.8 in 2 minutes
+0.4 / minute

Making people walk to get to the tables:
32.5
32.1
—-
-0.4 in 2 minutes
-0.2 / minute

Tables close to door, but chairs far away and blocked off:
32.5
32.2
—-
-0.3 in 4 minutes
-0.075 / minute

Same as above, but chairs not blocked off:
32.0
33.2
—-
+1.2 in 5 minutes
+0.24 / minute

Same as above, but table chairs moved to be in groups of 3:
33.6
34.3
—-
+0.7 in 5 minutes
+0.14 / minute

Reverted to table chairs in groups of 2, 3, 2; moved window 1 space, moved wall hangings down 1 space:
34.4
36.3
—-
+1.9 in 6 minutes
+0.317 / minute

Add 3 chairs:
36.6
35.7
—-
-0.9 in 6 minutes
-0.15 / minute

Remove 3 chairs and shift them farther from the door:
35.7
35.4
—-
-0.3 in 6 minutes
-0.05 / minute

Remove all waiting chairs:
35.0
34.8
—-
-0.2 in 6 minutes
-0.03 / minute

Add 6 chairs at the top corner (*):
35.1
36.4
—-
+1.3 in 6 minutes
+0.217 / minute

Move chairs closer to the door by 1 space:
36.6
37.6
—-
+1 in 6 minutes
+0.167 / minute

Move chairs closer and flip them around:
37.5
36.9
—-
-0.6 in 6 minutes
-0.1 / minute

Move chairs back to the top corner (*):
32.9
34.8
—-
+1.9 in 6 minutes
+0.317 / minute
– Note that this wasn’t a very accurate test because employee happiness was bumped to 100% for this last experiment.