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Most people consider grocery shopping an errand to endure on a Sunday afternoon. After all, you have to make a list, drive to the supermarket, navigate around hundreds of other shoppers, find everything on your list, and wait on a long checkout line until you’re able to finally leave. That’s a lot of stress.Supermarket Together, a game by DeadDevsTellNoLies, attempts to make supermarkets fun or at least more exciting.
If managing a supermarket with friends sounds like an enjoyable pastime, then we think you’ll like Supermarket Together. However, there is a slight learning curve to endure as you begin your new business venture. We had to restart our campaign several times to get the hang of this compelling business sim. Fortunately, like any good boss, we’ll train you with all the lessons we’ve learned.
Spend Your Start-Up Money Frugally To Avoid Going Broke
You’llbegin your supermarket journeywith astart-up fund of $5,000. If your first thought was, “Wow, that’s not much,” you’re right. Every dollar counts in Supermarket Together, anddeveloping a significant profit will take at least a week. Therefore, you must stretch out those $5,000 for as long as possible.
You’ll struggle to maintain and restock your supermarket if you spend too much money at the beginning of your campaign. We made this mistake in our first playthrough. Fortunately, we bought smarter in our second playthrough, resulting in more success.
How Should I Spend My Start-Up Money?
We don’t expect you to follow our strategy verbatim. However, we recommend spending your start-up money on these items before opening your supermarket on day one.
Equipment and Storage
Product Shelf x 2
$500 ($250 per shelf)
Storage Shelf x 1
$300
Checkout x 1
$1,000
Pasta Penne x 2
$81 ($40.50 per box)
Water Bottle x 2
$53.40 ($26.70 per box)
Honey Cereals x 2
$100 ($50 per box)
Rice x 2
$87 ($43.50 per box)
Salt x 2
$45 ($22.50 per box)
Sugar x 2
$119.20 ($59.60 per box)
Lights x 8
$240 ($30 per light fixture)
$2,525.60
Funds Left Over
$2,474.40
As you may see, thebare essentials will cost over half of your start-up funds. That leaves you with a safety net of less than $2,500 to cover future restocks and other expenses.
You Can Accidentally Give Customers Too Much Change
Anyone who works in retail knows the dread of giving back incorrect changeafterclosing your register. At this point, a manager needs to log in to open the register again. Or, if it’s a busy day, you’ll need to let that extra dollar go and move on. Neither solution feels suitable for anyone involved.
Unfortunately, you can make the same mistake while playing Supermarket Together. You won’t be able to give customers backlessthan their allotted change. However, if you surpass the required change,you’ll be forced to give it to the customer. There’s no way to switch out that $10 bill for the dollar you meant to take.
What’s worse is that this error will affect your transaction profit. Of course, that isn’t a big deal for one sale, but those losses add up if you repeat the same mistake. That’s why you must pay close attention when making cash transactions while cashiering.
Empty Boxes Can Transfer Products
Suppose you want to reorganize your product shelves. How would you do so? All you need isan empty box. Here is how:
Install Storage Shelves To Stowaway Excess Products
Supermarket Together’s tutorial does not spend much time addressing your grocery store’s Back of House (BoH) operations. However, these functions are equally essential to what goes on in the Front of House (FoH).
A well-organized storage room is critical to efficiently restocking your products without stalling your supermarket’s business. That’s why we listed a Storage Shelf in our start-up budget at the beginning of this guide. One shelf canstore up to ten productsand includeslabels for each product you store on it.
Imagine if you threw all your excess stock in the backroom all willy-nilly or tried stacking each box manually. You’d either have a labyrinth of boxes or a Jenga tower ready to fall. That’s not helpful at all. So, take our advice andinvest in a storage shelf!
You Can Assign Employees Different Jobs Throughout The Day
If you’re like us, one misconception you may have when hiring your first employee is that once you assign them to a job, that’s it for the day. Fortunately, that’s not the case.You can change your employees' job assignmentsthroughout the day.
Reassigning jobs is an excellent way to meet the needs of your store. For instance, suppose your only employee on shift is cashiering, but you notice a customer complaining about a missing product. In that case, you canvisit the employee blackboard and reassign the employee to restockwhile you overtake cashiering duties.
How To Use The Employee Blackboard
The employee blackboard is straightforward to use. Assuming you have one employee, the layout looks like this:
1
Storage
Think of the employees like skill points. Yourtotal amount of employees is at the topof the board. Then, you’lluse the arrows to assign your employees to one of three jobs. You must reduce the number of employees working one job first before moving them to another.
Therefore, if you wanted to assign your employee to restocking duties, the Blackboard would look like this:
Then, if you wanted to reassign your employee to cashiering duties, the Blackboard would look like this:
Your employee ison the clock before the store opens.Therefore, you can utilize them to provide a helping hand while you store new products and stock the sales shelves at the start of the day.
Wait To Spend Franchise Points Until You’re Ready
You’ll earn experience at the end of every business day, which levels up your supermarket. Every time you level up your supermarket, you’ll receive aFranchise Point (FP). You can exchange FPs for various perks, includingnew products, employees, and store amenities that willattract more customers.
The Franchise Point Blackboard resembles a skill tree you would see in an RPG. Naturally, this setup may compel you to spend your FPs immediately. However, that decision is not wise, especially when spending FPs on launching new products.
Once you unlock new products with FPs, your customers expect them on the sales floor. That means you’ll have to purchase these products in addition to restocking the rest of your store. Installing new shelving for these products is another necessary expense. Overall, that’s a lot of dough; we don’t mean bread.
Ensure you haveenough money to consistently stock and shelve new productsbefore unlocking a new Franchise Perk. Otherwise, you’ll go broke racing to keep up with new expenses you cannot afford.
You Cannot Close Your Supermarket Before 10:30 PM (22:30)
We wish owning a supermarket meant you get to set the hours. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. We learned this sad fact on our first day when we kept pressing the red “CLOSE” button at 8:00 PM (20:00), and nothing happened.
Each business day in Supermarket Together lastsfrom 8:00 AM (8:00) to 10:30 PM (22:30). You’ll know it’s time to close once the game’s clock stops and all your remaining customers checkout. Then, when you press the red button, you’ll see an overview of the day before beginning the next morning.
View Your Blackboard To Check Your Inventory
After a week of business, you’ll notice thatsome products move faster than others. In our experience, once we unlocked pet food, we couldn’t keep it off the shelves. On the other hand, we could fill a shelf with salt and not have to restock it for several days. It would be best if you observed these patterns to make thoughtful purchases.
Fortunately, you can check your inventory by opening theProduct Order menu on your Manager Blackboard. Use this information to decide what products you need to buy before the start of each business day. If a product is well-stocked with additional units in storage, you can skip purchasing that product and save some money.
Product Order Menu Key
There arethree colored boxes adjacent to each productin the Product Order menu. Each box contains a number value. Here is what each value means:
