Getting Started

Welcome to Business Heroes!

This guide walks you through your first days running a food truck. Follow these steps and you'll be serving customers and earning revenue in no time.

Your First Day

You're starting with a Startup Burger Bike — one employee, a small storage capacity of just 8 units, and a staff training level of 0 (Burger Boss). That means your food quality and service speed are both capped at 40 points out of 100. Don't worry — everyone starts here.

Your first goal is simple: serve food, cover your costs, and start building a reputation.

Choosing Your First Location

Where you park your truck determines which customers you'll attract. Each district type has specific customer segments:

District	Customer Segments	Beginner-Friendly?
University Area	Students, Fit Ones	Yes — Students are very price-sensitive but forgiving on quality
Residential Area	Parents, Environmentalists	Yes — Parents want good value family food
Shopping Centre	Parents, Tourists, Influencers	Moderate — mixed crowd, some need bigger trucks
Business District	Staffs, Managers	Not yet — Managers demand top quality
Tourist Zone	Tourists, Foodies, Influencers	Not yet — Foodies need Mini Burger Trailer or better

Start in a University Area or Residential Area. Students and Parents are the most forgiving segments. They don't need gourmet food — they need affordable, filling meals. That's exactly what your Burger Boss can deliver.

Location Tip

Avoid the Business District early on. Managers have very low price sensitivity (they'll pay a lot), but they demand top quality that your Level 0 staff simply can't produce. You'll waste ingredients and tank your reputation.

Setting Your First Prices

Start with cost-plus pricing — it's the simplest strategy and it ensures you always cover your ingredient costs.

Here's how:

Calculate your ingredient cost per meal
Add a 50-80% markup
Check that the final price feels right for your target segment

For Students, keep prices low. They are very price-sensitive and will walk away from anything that feels expensive. It's better to sell 20 meals at a small margin than 5 meals at a big margin. Volume is your friend when you're starting out.

Quick Pricing Example

If your ingredients cost $3.00 per meal, a 60% markup means you charge $4.80. For a Student-heavy University Area, that's a good starting point. You can adjust up or down as you see what sells.

Creating Your First Recipe

Your recipes combine ingredients into a taste profile, and different customer segments prefer different profiles. But here's the key constraint: your staff's training level caps food quality.

At Level 0 (Burger Boss), your quality ceiling is 40 points. Buying premium ingredients won't help — your untrained staff can't make the most of them. So keep it simple:

Use affordable, basic ingredients
Aim for filling, cheap recipes that Students love
Save premium ingredients for later when your staff can actually use them
Focus on keeping ingredient costs low so your margins stay healthy

Your First Week

Managing Inventory

Your Startup Burger Bike holds only 8 units of storage. Every unit counts. Here's how to manage inventory without wasting money:

Order just enough for expected demand — guess conservatively at first
Ingredients expire! Anything unsold and unused will spoil, and that's money in the bin
Start with manual ordering so you learn your daily usage patterns
Track what sells vs. what expires — adjust your next order based on real data
Use FIFO (First In, First Out) — always use your oldest stock first

The Inventory Balancing Act

Order too much and ingredients expire. Order too little and you run out mid-service, turning away paying customers. Start small, track your numbers, and dial it in over a few days. A small buffer above expected demand is safer than a big surplus.

Training Your Staff

This is your number one priority after covering the basics. Training is the single highest-ROI investment in the game.

Here's why:

Training Level	Title	Quality Points	Speed Points
Level 0	Untrained (Burger Boss)	40	40
Level 1	Basic	50	50
Level 2	Developing	60	60
Level 3	Competent	70	70
Level 4	Proficient	80	80
Level 5	Advanced	90	90
Level 6	Expert (Michelin Maestro)	100	100

Each level adds 10 points to both quality AND speed. Going from Level 0 to Level 1 is cheap and gives you a 25% improvement in both dimensions. That's a massive return.

Staff training sets an absolute ceiling on food quality. Even the finest ingredients in the world can't overcome an untrained cook. Always invest in training before you invest in premium ingredients.

Reading Your Numbers

Check your financial statements daily. You don't need to be an accountant — just answer one question: are you making more than you spend each day?

Key numbers to watch:

Revenue — how much money came in from sales
Expenses — ingredients, staff wages, loan repayments, other costs
Cash balance — your total available cash (if this hits zero, you're in trouble)
COGS ratio — your Cost of Goods Sold (ingredients) as a percentage of your selling price

The 30-40% Rule

Aim to keep your ingredient costs (COGS) at 30-40% of your selling price. If you're spending $4 on ingredients for a $6 meal, that's 67% — way too high. Either raise your prices or find cheaper ingredients. At $3 ingredients and $8 selling price, you're at 37% — right in the sweet spot.

If you're losing money each day, don't panic. Check two things first:

Are your prices high enough to cover costs? (Check COGS ratio)
Are you wasting ingredients to spoilage? (Check inventory expiry)

Growing Your Business

When to Expand

Only expand after your first truck is consistently profitable. Signs you're ready:

Positive daily cash flow for several days running
Good reputation in your current location
Staff trained to at least Level 2-3
Cash reserves to fund the upgrade (or a smart loan plan)

Expanding too early is one of the most common mistakes. A second unprofitable truck doesn't fix a first unprofitable truck — it doubles the problem.

Upgrading Your Truck

Bigger business units unlock more storage capacity and access to premium customer segments:

Business Unit	Employees	Storage	Segments Unlocked
Startup Burger Bike	1	8 units	Students, Parents, Staffs (baseline)
Maxi Burger Wagon	1	16 units	+ Influencers, Environmentalists
Mini Burger Trailer	1	24 units	+ Foodies
Burger Master	1	32 units	All segments accessible
Happy Big Burger	2	48 units	Higher volume operations
Giant Burger	2	64 units	Maximum capacity

The Maxi Burger Wagon is often the best first upgrade. It doubles your storage to 16 units and unlocks Influencers (who have low price sensitivity and love trendy food) and Environmentalists. The Mini Burger Trailer further unlocks Foodies, who will pay well for outstanding recipes.

Taking Your First Loan

Loans in Business Heroes are 5-year term loans with a 5% processing fee upfront. Your interest rate depends on your debt-to-equity ratio plus the central bank rate. Lower debt relative to your equity means a better rate.

The golden rule: only borrow if the investment will generate more revenue than the total interest cost.

Good reasons to take a loan:

Upgrading to a bigger truck that will unlock profitable customer segments
Investing in equipment that boosts efficiency

Bad reasons to take a loan:

Covering daily operating losses (fix the root cause instead)
Expanding before your current operation is profitable

Loan Math

If you borrow $10,000, the 5% processing fee means you only receive $9,500 in cash but owe $10,000 plus interest. Make sure the investment you're funding will clearly pay back more than the total cost of the loan. If you can't make a strong case for the return, don't borrow.

Targeting Premium Customers

Once your staff reach Level 3-4+, you're ready to start targeting the premium segments. Foodies and Managers pay significantly more per meal, but they demand quality to match.

To succeed with premium customers:

Upgrade ingredients AND training together — one without the other doesn't work
Move to appropriate districts — Foodies appear in Tourist Zones, Managers in Business Districts
Use value-based pricing instead of cost-plus — charge what the food is worth to these segments
Upgrade your truck — Foodies need at least a Mini Burger Trailer; Influencers need at least a Maxi Burger Wagon

The economic cycle in Business Heroes compresses 10 real years into 1 game year. Premium customers are more resilient during downturns, making them a valuable long-term investment.

Common First-Week Mistakes

Avoid these traps that catch most new players:

Buying premium ingredients with untrained staff — quality is capped by training level, so expensive ingredients are wasted on a Level 0 cook
Over-ordering inventory — ingredients expire, and every spoiled unit is money thrown away
Setting prices too high for your district — Students in a University Area won't pay premium prices, no matter how good your food is
Ignoring training — this is the single biggest ROI investment in the game, and every day you delay it costs you
Expanding before your first truck is profitable — fix what you have before adding more trucks
Taking loans to cover losses instead of fixing the root cause — debt doesn't solve a broken business model, it just delays the reckoning
Neglecting your financial numbers — if you don't check your revenue, costs, and cash balance daily, problems sneak up on you

What to Learn Next

Now that you've got the basics, dive deeper into the topics that matter most for your strategy:

Quick Reference — all key tables and numbers on one page
Early-Game Strategy — detailed strategy for your first 10 days
Troubleshooting — "Why is my food truck losing money?"
Customer Segmentation — deep dive into the 9 customer types
Pricing — all pricing strategies explained