How the game works
In Boba Shop Diary, you open a small boba shop, run it for 7 days, and use the results to see how many months it would take to earn back your startup cost. A game takes about 5 minutes.
- Before opening, choose a country and city, how much money you have, a location, whether to hire a part-timer, and your menu prices. Then press "Open here"
- Each morning, check the forecast, decide how much boba to cook, and press "Open the shop"
- The day runs by itself from 10:00 to 19:00
- At night, the day's sales and profit are written up in your diary
- After the night of day 7, you get your business numbers and the time to pay back your startup cost
Before you open
Country and city
Pick one of 10 countries and regions (Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, the USA, Spain, and Mexico) and then a city there. The country that matches the page's language is selected at first (the USA on the English page), but if your browser is set to Singapore, the Philippines, or Malaysia, you start there instead. Currency, going rates, rent, wages, weather, and how price-sensitive customers are depend on the country; rent and foot traffic also depend on the city.
Your money
Choose "Tight", "Normal", or "Plenty". More money opens up more locations and leaves you more cushion after opening. You can't pick a location if you can't cover its startup cost plus the first day's rent and one batch of boba.
Location
| Location | What it's like |
|---|---|
| Station | The most foot traffic, but high startup cost and rent. People in a hurry won't wait long |
| College town | Lots of young customers, but they're tight with money |
| Tourist spot | Sells even at higher prices, but nobody's around on rainy days |
| Residential | Fewer customers, but low costs, and the regulars don't mind waiting |
Part-timer and menu prices
A part-timer raises how many drinks you can serve in a day from about 200 to about 400, but you pay wages every day. You set prices for Milk Tea, Brown Sugar Milk, and Matcha Latte (from day 4) with the − and + buttons, anywhere from 40% of the going rate for Milk Tea up to 2.2 times the going rate for Matcha Latte. Staff and prices stay the same for all 7 days.
Before opening, check the summary at the bottom of the screen: the startup cost, what's left after opening, daily rent and wages, the going rate, and foot traffic.
Every morning
The morning screen shows the forecast, your cash, your reputation, and yesterday's customers. The only thing you decide is how much boba to cook.
- Boba is cooked in batches of 100 drinks, 1 to 8 batches a day (as many as your cash allows)
- Cooked boba has to be used the same day. Leftovers are thrown out at closing, and if you run out, you close right then
- The forecast is wrong about one day in four. The first day is always sunny
| Weather | Customers |
|---|---|
| Sunny | Normal |
| Heat wave | 1.4 times |
| Cloudy | 0.85 times |
| Rain | 0.6 times (even fewer at a Tourist spot, a bit more at a Station) |
During business hours
The day runs by itself. The top of the screen shows the time, the boba you have left, and your sales; the bottom lists what's happening. Choose a speed of ×1, ×5, or ×10, or press "Skip to closing" to jump to the end of the day. Each customer on screen stands for 10 people.
- A customer's speech bubble shows their order, and the bar under it shows how much longer they'll wait
- Serve them before half their patience runs out and you get a heart; after that, a green check. If they run out of patience, they leave with a red ×
- The line holds 6 people. Anyone who arrives when it's full, or after you sell out, leaves with a blue teardrop
- As days go by, word gets around and about 7% more customers come each day, but customers also get a little less patient
The nightly diary and reputation
After closing, you see a table of customers, drinks served, sales, ingredient costs (cost ratio), rent, wages, today's profit, and your cash, along with a diary of the day.
Your reputation (1 to 5 stars) goes up or down depending on whether you served people quickly or a lot of them walked away, and it drops if your prices are far above the going rate. Each extra star brings 25% more customers.
If your cash is negative at night, or you can't afford even one batch of boba for the next morning, the shop closes that day.
Reading your results
Your average daily profit over the 7 days (or until you closed) is multiplied by 30 to work out how many months it would take to earn back your startup cost.
| Time to pay back | Rank |
|---|---|
| Up to 3 months | A shop with lines out the door |
| Up to 6 months | A shop growing nicely |
| Up to 12 months | A new local favorite |
| Longer | Barely in the black |
| Losing money | A shop in the red |
| Ran out of money | Out of money and closed |
You also get projected monthly sales (30 days), cost ratio, labor ratio, rent ratio, operating margin, and a chart of daily profit. These don't include your own salary or smaller costs like utilities.
On the results screen, you can make an image with your payback time and rank, then "Share", "Save image", or "Copy result".
Saving
Your personal best (your shortest payback time) and the country you chose are saved in your browser. Progress during the 7 days isn't saved, so closing the page starts you over.