Inflation in the restaurant

Let's get technical. Inflation is regarded as a problem in Restaurant Story. It is suggested that with every update the price of the primary items is increasing, be it coin or gem content.

Well I've been going some research into this, and have recorded the prices of every table and counter added since May 2012. I may have missed one or two, but this data is enough to give a flavour of the extent of inflation in the game.

Here's a graph charting the cost of tables from the release of the Modern Asian on 31st May 2012 to the Spring Flower on 26th March 2014:

 

To make measuring the increase easier, I've only included tables which cost coins and have excluded tables required for completing goals as they naturally come at a lower price to be affordable for all players. This is also the case with all of the following analysis.

So the orange line above tracks the actual cost of tables and is clearly rather erratic. The fluctuation of this line indicates that the price of tables has varied drastically throughout the time period used, sometimes with extreme changes from one week to the next. For example the Shell table added in June 2013 costs 4,000 coins. The next non-goal table for coins to be released was the Pirate table for an almighty 78,500 coins!

Now the blue lines on the graph are ones I've drawn on myself to try and enclose (or bound if we're getting scientific!) the orange line. Despite the lack of a distinct pattern in table prices, these blue lines do show that there is a slight upward trend. It's not sharp, but instead quite smooth and gentle.

The maximum cost of tables has been broken several times over the two year period, with the Tangerine table being the first to make the 75,000 coins marker. Several others matched it, but it wasn't until the Pirate table that it was beaten. At 81,000 coins, the Vampire Bat table is currently the most expensive we've ever had.

On the other end of the scale, you'll see that the lowest priced tables were mainly added a year ago or more. Since the Shell table, the cheapest introduced has been the Cornucopia at 27,000 coins, hardly loose change.

Now let's take a look at a similar graph which tracks the cost of counters, ranging from the Bamboo Slat added on 24th May 2012 to the Pizza Display on 19th March 2014:

 

Once again those counters necessary for goal completion and costing gems are left off this graph.

Like the tables, the costs of the counters have flip-flopped over time, but in contrast to the tables, the blue lines don't give away much of a trend. The counters peaked in price with the three Hot Rod counters which were 60,000 coins each. There was then a dramatic drop to the Goo-Stained Counter at 6,500 coins. There's been a slow increase on average since but it's certainly not substantial.

Likewise the cheapest counters have seen a minor upward movement in recent months, but it's not too significant.

Making a sweeping conclusion about all content in the market is dangerous here because I've only studied the tables and counters, but there is evidence is that there is a degree of inflation in the restaurant when it comes to the cost of items, albeit not at as high a rate as some may have expected.