Chef Archive

Well, I have a new development in my town. I was the first and only master chef in my city for a while. I would charge "standard" prices (according to the template provided by this community) and stuff sold well (not 1 million credits a day well, but I'd pull that in over a week if I was lucky). I play for fun - about 10 hours a week - and only have 1 account (2 factories, 1 house, 6 harvesters). I sell through a friends' vendor.

Now, one of my customers - a super-power gamer with 5 accounts - has made a master chef. He grinded up in about 3 days (both him & his son grinding) and currently has the resources of those 5 accounts dedicated to harvesting for his chef. No kidding - he has about 10 factories, 30 harvesters and that's not even mentioning his houses, storage, vendor tents, and his alternates that are master-bio-engineers, master creature handlers, master merchant and so on. He is also a multi-multi millionair with (I'm guessing) over 50 million credits in the bank (he sold a skill attachment for 50 million a couple of months ago, so that's an absolute minimum he's got - plus the 5 million per week he was making selling BE enhanced pets before the nerf came in).

So far he's been concentrating on Fishak, and is selling it for about 175 credits per unit (crate = 40,000) which is close to half my price.

We are both friendly - I helped him out a bit with the chef grind (just recommending things to grind). But I'm worried about the post-patch (once everything cools down) situation. He can basically outproduce me by 5X, and is under the impression if he makes 5-10 cpu on something, then that's an ok margin. Money isn't even an issue for him. I have tried to talk "pricing" with him, and while he agrees that (for example) a 9-use fishak is at least 5X better than a 1-use Muon Gold, his pricing keeps it about 20% lower than that.

So what am I to do? Focus on only one thing? Move the vendor to a different planet? Go wholesale through other merchants? Has anyone else been in this situation?

That is an unfortunate situation. I would explore moving to another town perhaps. Each server is big enough that no one chef can truely corner the entire market of one server. People's laziness of not wanting to travel is a major reason.

If you are rebel, I suggest opening a shop perhaps near an area where more rebels will travel as a result of the crackdown. That may give you a short term boost.

Well, like any busines, you need to find you niche market and dominate it. Find something he does not supply and cater to it.

Then again, the masses will still go to his shop if the target you select is too small. Hmmm, perhaps reloacation is a good alternative. It depends how drastic you want to take things. Worst case, you might want to stay and just try to be competitive with his goods, perhaps make special sorts of foods or use your experimentation/ingrediants to create lower filling or long duration foods vs the generally accepted uber-buff level foods.

I think with some good advertisement, and loyal customers, people will shop your foods, even if the costs are higher. Sometimes people get into a lazyness (me especially as a fellow Master Chef) to just go to one shop because you know it's going to be there and untill somebody points out that I'm really getting ripped off, I don't care about the costs. Not to mention "Location Location Location!".

I price my foods to fit my own needs. If people buy it great, if not, go elsewhere. That's my opinion.

Hang in there Pal. You'll make it. We made it thru all the bugs and being broken and everything. You'll make it thru this.

I wouldn't move, however, I would scout out a place where you can open a second location probably though. Odds are, the guy will get tired of being a chef after awhile, or decide to play his combat character more, or whatever. But if not, then maybe you can do some outside marketing and such. There are a tremendous amount of mouths to feed out there. No way that one person can possibly corner the market. Build a better mouse trap and people will come banging down your door. Maybe he might make more volume than you, but maybe you can do it better than he.

Neni's idea about teaming up is also a good possibility, although it seems you might have some incompatible concepts on how to run the business.

I think you can alwasy find your niche.

I simply don't have the playing time to be Wal-Mart, so I be the Corner Korean (or Mon Cal) Grocery Store.

You can't be 100% sure what you'll find at my store, though you're likely to find your staples, and you can expect to overpay just a little- but the location is very convinient for many people. So, I get a lot of return business, and after some initial struggles have no money problems, at all. I can even take some time off from chef to go hunting and fishing.

best of luck ...

Hero

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