It’s your big day: a taco eating contest at Papa’s Taco Mia! After out-munching the other contestants, you are rewarded with the strangest of prizes: the taco shop itself. Well, you probably eat enough tacos to save a small fortune by running the store yourself, so you don your hat and apron, read our strategy guide for all the tips you’d ever need, and get to work!
Overview
If you’re familiar with Flipline Studios’ other time management games Papa’s Pizzeria and Papa’s Burgeria, you’ll be quite familiar with how Papa’s Taco Mia! Operates. The game is divided into three distinct sections: ordering, grilling, and building. You must switch between these screens as you tend to customers and make their orders from scratch. And you must do it quickly and neatly to boot!
At the end of each level you’ll be graded on overall service quality. You receive scores by each customer based on their waiting time, the quality of the meat, and how neatly you placed toppings on the taco. Once you’ve seen a day’s worth of people, your score is tallied, tips are calculated, and you’re ready to move on to the next business day!
General Tips
- Tickets can be ordered as you like along the line at the top of the screen. It’s usually best to start with the lowest number and work your way up, taking care of customers on a first come, first served basis. You can also drag tickets to the bottom of the screen for a quick zoomed-in glance.
- Each day a closer customer will arrive to give you a chance for extra points. Get his or her order just right and you’ll get a nice tip.
- The food critic comes once a week and will award you with a blue ribbon if you ace his order. The ribbon sticks around for three work days, inspiring customers to tip extra cash with each order!
- If a customer gives you an 80% or higher score on an order, a star will be added to him or her. Fill the star gauge and that customer will tip better and provide more points in the future. If an order is ever below 60%, however, the gauge empties!
- Before the level begins, you might get a sneak peek of the second customer of the day looking around the corner of the shop. Feel free to start his or her favorite meat cooking on the grill!
Ordering Station
Customers come in. You take their order. They wait in line. You get to work! The ordering station is a key part of the game that can make or break your final score. Taking orders promptly keeps customers happily waiting, but if you let them stand for too long, they get irate. Buy a doorbell in the shop to alert you when new customers come in, and be sure to take their order as quickly as possible.
If you’re having trouble with angry customers, buy one of the many lobby upgrades that improve waiting. Patient customers are much easier to work with, freeing you up to focus on the grill and building stations.
Grilling Station
The simplest part of the game is also the easiest to mess up, and one mistake can set you back several steps. You start with four burners. To cook meat, simply drag the pan to the burner and watch the circular timer. You’ll need to cut and flip most meat, so when the pan signals you, grab the appropriate utensil and get things done!
- Chicken and steak require more work and takes longer to cook than beef and pork. Check in on them as often as possible.
- You can queue tacos from the grill by filling shells one after another.
- You can start meat grilling before taking orders, but be careful not to let it burn while you’re with a customer.
- Mess up a batch of meat? Toss it in the trash to the right. You won’t be penalized beyond the time it will take to grill a new pan of meat.
Building Station
Making a taco isn’t as easy as you might think, especially when customers are as picky as these. In the building station you take the taco with meat filling and add toppings based on the customers’ order. Click on the bowl, then move the mouse above and swipe left and right to gently drop toppings on the taco. Try to keep everything as even as possible, and avoid spilling out the tops and sides if possible. The neater your taco, the bigger your tip!
- Pour ingredients as low to the taco as you can, starting just barely above the meat layer.
- Start pouring from left to right, making a slow, steady swipe to the other side. If there’s more topping to drop, make quick movements back and forth until the pan is empty.
- Make little “hills” on the left and right sides of the taco to help hold ingredients in. Do this by pausing for a fraction of a second on the edges. This is especially important when a taco has a number of toppings.
Upgrades
Half the fun of earning cash is spending it, and Papa’s Taco Mia! Features an upgrades store with 36 items to buy, ranging from the inexpensive alarm to the ultra-pricey royal crown. Check out the main groups of items below and spend your cash to compensate for the gameplay area you tend to be weakest in.
- Improve building score – Several items in the shop help improve your building score. Scientists are still working out the details, but it is thought that customers are simply more forgiving when judging their tacos!
- Spatula and knife – Forget this stainless steel garbage. The real taco master uses gold tools! Buying the gold spatula and gold knife, each costing $100, allows you to flip and cut meat twice as fast. Plus, they’re really, really shiny!
- Improve waiting score – Most of the items in the upgrades shop makes customers more patient, allowing you to get a higher waiting score. Use these to free up your time working with tacos instead of writing down orders.
- Alarms – There are four alarms you can buy, one for each type of meat and each costing $90. Grab them to be notified when a particular kind of grill meat is ready for the taco! You can also buy a doorbell that alerts you when a new customer walks in the door.
- Extra burners – Need more space on the grill? Purchase two extra burners and fit up to two more pans on the grill at a time.
- Wearable items – Five hats round out the end of the store, and there are some crazy ones to purchase. Hats don’t have an affect on the gameplay, but they look cool, especially the taco hat!
