CHEF! September 16, 2026 CHEF! Day 4 Iteration 35

Stations Are Used From the Front

Workers now use a station only from the tile in front of it: the fridge, grill, prep station, dish sink, dish-rack spot, bathroom sink, toilet, trash can and dumpster. The podium works the other way round: the host stands behind it and guests come to its front. The pass, dirty-dish bin, plating table and counters can still be used from either side.
Turning a station changes where people stand to use it.
If something blocks a station's front, nobody can use that station. In edit mode its arrow turns red.
- If there's another usable station of the same kind (the second prep station, say), cooks use that instead.
- If there isn't, the cook waits with "WAITING: GRILL IS BLOCKED" rather than skipping the step, and carries on once the front is cleared.
A worker who can't reach where they're going now says "CAN'T GET THERE" and tries again every two seconds. Before, a worker who couldn't reach a station's tile would use it from wherever they ended up. In the before shot (086), a cook is grilling from the tile beside a blocked grill.
Guests skip their bathroom trip if the bathroom sink's front is blocked.
The default restaurant already had everything facing the right way, so a normal game plays exactly as before: 59 guests served and 10% lost, over 10 games of 15 minutes each.
The animated clip (108, v0.0.50) is staged: a counter is put in front of the grill, the cook waits, and once it's removed the cook grills from the front. In edit mode the arrow turns from red to white.