Chef Archive
Thread: Overwhelmed Master Chef seeks guidance
I suggest that stock up some good quality flora, reactive gas, meat such resource first before really start out the business. You can make 5 crate of Fishak to sell and then when the customer come back to you and ask if anymore you can make. You tell him nah, happen few more times the customer may give up to ask again and change to another chef and you couldnt build up your business for long term.
I have seen many of this happened on my svr. Many new Master Chef auctioning want to buy good quality resource to make good quality stuff to sell at good price. Yes thosesmart food users all want good qualityproductsregardless the price. Smat and qualitywise customers are always there but good quality resource not always there.
I start my chef char since game start and I started harvesting/gathering all good quality resources and stock them up for preparation. When I got my resources stock up over 1000K I opened my shop and restock both my stock andvendor everyday. Yes restock the vendor, ppl like to visit a shop with goods on vendor. And hate to visit a shop and found it has nothing or only crap itemon itall the time.Yousucceed thefirst step when your customerswilling tokeep you shop waypointin their database.
Second, customer service. Learn our Chef stuff and think about what the best use for our customer. Many of our food users have no idea how to use our product in the best way or what the best food/drink combo for them. Answer them nicely and they will remember you. It helps a lot to keep you shop waypoint on their database as well.
Thorsen wrote:
Seriously, besides the FAQ's, this is probably the best post I've seen on any profession forum.
You know what I fully agree with you. I really like this profession cause I get to do SO MUCH more than just sell droids. Don't get me wrong I love building droids but well droids are broke><0r in the bad way. I'm a RP'er so I get to do a lot of that with this profession. Last night I did a run of 68 different foods for a party in a neighboring town. When I was finished I realized something, I HAD FUN!
So thats the best advice I can give to an aspiring Chef or well any other Master of any other Profession:
HAVE FUN!!!! Thats what this game is about. Don'tlet the grind get you down.
Dinging on master chef isn't the same experience that it was a couple months ago.
About 6 months ago, the chefs were a huge minority and I think chefs felt an obligation to help other novices. Business was light because getting resources for foods was hard and convincing people that food was better than spice was even harder.
When I started it was a slow grind because I simply couldn't pull the materials fast enough, and because I was exploring smuggler/tka/pistoleer. The only thing worth selling was sunburns, and since starshine quality didn't matter, all you needed was really good reactive gas to make it in the business. We were crafting by hand, so resource/overhead wasn't a concern either. And during the great food depression (bugged stacks/poison food), you were better off not making anything.
Now it's easier to make master, the demand is huge, and the range of sellable products is much larger. I think it is a big shock to a new chef, and most of my server's old guard simply isn't cooking anymore. That's a big loss of early knowledge, and the newer chefs are also a lot more cutthroat. I've actually recieved "Boo-Yah I'm so much better than you" emails from other chefs proclaiming their products superior/cheaper. Competition is nice, but not on a L33t level.
I guess my message to new chefs is to go slow, look before you leap, and remember the biggest part: It is only food, the most consumable craftable item in the game. Make relationships with other chefs, and network your deficiencies (resource gathering/meat hunter/merchant skills) to round out the person/company that you want to run.
Naturner wrote:
Now it's easier to make master, the demand is huge, and the range of sellable products is much larger. I think it is a big shock to a new chef, and most of my server's old guard simply isn't cooking anymore. That's a big loss of early knowledge, and the newer chefs are also a lot more cutthroat. I've actually recieved "Boo-Yah I'm so much better than you" emails from other chefs proclaiming their products superior/cheaper. Competition is nice, but not on a L33t level.
I guess my message to new chefs is to go slow, look before you leap, and remember the biggest part: It is only food, the most consumable craftable item in the game. Make relationships with other chefs, and network your deficiencies (resource gathering/meat hunter/merchant skills) to round out the person/company that you want to run.
About the cutthroat problem by new Chef or even old Chef, we are very lucky that our Chef product is consumable item unless weapon, armor, harvester, clothes, droid and house those can be maintenance. This means the material use very fast along with you sell a lot. Its very busy to keep restock good resource and keep 8 factory running for mass production.
If he sell the good cheap, more customer switch buy from him due to the cheap price =empty his vendor faster and his production still cannot handle such sale rate and also the resource cannot recove so fast. One day his resource gone and his vendor has nothing on it all the time. Customers will come back again.
We all know how annoying when visit a resource shop but found nothing in it.
Its been mentioned before, but Im going to stress it again 
. MAKE FRIENDS WITH FELLOW CHEFS. Its very important and will relieve alot of stress. Currently a few of the chefs on my server get together and survey different planets and just share the information. Its very handy and allows us to get the best possible resources, relieveing lots of stress. We also compare stats on our products and get a range of prices to sell our products. Good luck and congrats.
Thanks for all the input guys, you're the greatest ... here's what I've done so far:
First,I took off the Master Chef title. Sad, but it's not time yet. Then, I spent 2 whole nights grinding missions to bring my capital up from the <20k range to over 300k. At the end of the 2nd night, the water havestors I had going had a good crop, and I put that on the bazaar for some added income (about half of it has already sold). With my new capital, I was able to buy some upgraded harvestors, mostly medium BER 9.0's. There's some really good resources on Lowca right now, so I was able to place all my harvestors and even borrowed a few from a guildy so that none of my lots are unused atm. I'm getting some good reactive gas and mineral ... soon I hope to find some good corn or wheat so that I can start mass producing some Tatooine sunburn. By then, I should have a steady flow of income to move on to the bigger stuff ... I hope.
I hit a stroke of luck by running into a chef in a neighboring city. He used to be a master, but gave it up for a holo grind. But now he's finished and trying to grind his way back up to Master again. I've been training him, and he's been giving me pointers. I alsotraded him all my old grinding resources for some power, so I won't have to take up lots with solars or wind generators or the like.
Thanks again guys, you really are a helpful bunch. 
I think the previous posters information on pre-planning is spectacular. While my pre-planning experience was a little bit different, the idea is the same.
My main character is part of a guild. The guild had chatted for weeks on how nice a chef would be to add. So, I bought another account and started up chef (I had previous intrigue on this profession so it wasn't an impulsive decision). I was lucky; my main character had about 1.5M credits to pump into my chef's grind. But, the most important part of my pre-lanning was:
I already knew what items were in demand!
Because of this, I only made that 1 item. I sold them in the bazaar for 3K each with some marketing about my vendor. Then, on my vendor, I started with only this 1 simple item (crates and singles, but only 1 item). I can tell you I went from having to borrow 50K credits from a friend to now over 3M credits and growing daily. The only limit in moneymaking is my play style; I'm a casual player. Credits are not hard to come by once you get started in this profession!
I never really had a problem with money on the chef -- although I have to admit, my guildmembers helped a ton because in the beginning they were the only ones buying my stuff... my suggestion to any up-and-comers would prolly be to build a shop in a well known player city (if they will let you). If they don't already have a chef, I'm sure they wouldn't mind a chef in their town selling stuff so close to their homes.
Personally, My master chef is also a master politician. Our city is located on dantooine, and My vendor is in a tent right across from the shuttleport. I can't stress enough how important that particular location is for my business.
1) Very Populated planet (lots of good XP on dant)
2) Only well stocked vendor on planet.
3) 20 other vendors in immediate vicinity of mine (Love being in a great guild with lotsa crafters).
4) I'm cheaper than most chefs on my server
I think the "cheaper" thing has spread like my name around like wildfire. That and you gotta have your vendor stocked at all times. And stock it with good stuff that nobody makes (Flameout and Firestew sell maybe 2-5 crates a week, but its there for my customers when they need it, as well as Ice blaster, Veghash, etc.. )
The last bit of advice is to get a server trade for 10 lots, and those 10 lots you trade will prolly go something like this: (2) houses that take 2 lots a piece, 6 factories -- the reason I've done it up that way is because house 1 is completely filled with resources.. No room for anything else.. House 2 is filled up with crates of food. Nothing else. Also, I think I would go insane if I had to deal with any more factories... I have access to a couple more from guildies, but I only use that when I'm doing my monthly "guild fishak" run, which requires a week to do and a whole hella-ton of aludiums..
Lots of other stuff in here... but I think the reason I did well on chef is because I play a combat character also, and I know what I need, so i knew what to make. Also, advertise in the name of a food that can be eaten 2 at a time, that gets em sold fast, and also makes things like veghash (+180 to the tertiary stats) look mush more appealing..