CHEF! September 16, 2026 CHEF! Day 4 Iteration 24

A Third Cook (Provisional Balance)

A new game now opens with three cooks instead of two. Two cooks could finish about 2.8 orders a minute while about 5.6 guests arrived, so a default game lost roughly 39% of its guests.
Six options were measured over 10 games of 15 minutes each. One extra cook was the clear winner: losses fell from 39% to 12%, guests served rose from 39 to 56 on average, and the restaurant ended with more money ($328 vs $261) despite the extra wage. A fourth cook only trimmed losses to 7% and made less money; halving arrivals cut losses but served fewer people.
This is a provisional test balance, not a final design, and is marked as such in the project rules. A new automated test fails if a default game starts losing a quarter or more of its guests.