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Food Chain Magnate
#51BGG8.0RATING
Updated Sep 12
2–5
PLAYERS
2–4h
MINUTES
3
BEST WITH
4.2
EXPERT
ERRATA1
Personnel card count in the components listdesignerpublisher
- RULING
- "The game should come with 222 personnel cards, not 223 as listed in the rulebook ingredients list."
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(20 replies, 12 thumbs)DATE: 2015-10-07
DESIGNER CLARIFICATIONS4
Which employee actions are mandatory and which are optionaldesignerpublisher
- CONTEXT
- The rulebook's "may perform actions" wording conflicted with an older FAQ answer stating that card actions cannot be skipped.
- RULING
- "You have to do the actions of every card you put down." Quoting the updated rulebook: "The actions of the pricing manager, discount manager, luxury manager, CFO, recruiting manager, HR director and waitress are mandatory; the actions of all other employees are optional." The designer's rule of thumb: "anything to do with prices or money is mandatory; anything else is optional."
Drink collectors must complete their full movementdesignerpublisher
- CONTEXT
- The designer originally answered that a collector could stop early, then edited his post to strike that answer and reverse it. The corrected answer supersedes the older community FAQ compilation, which still states that ranged drink collectors may stop their route at any moment.
- RULING
- "No, you have to take the full movement amount (though you can usually avoid picking up more drinks than you want)." You pick up everything you pass by, and "the cart driver also cannot choose to take only 1 drink from a source."
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(edited by the designer 2022-04-25, 18 replies)DATE: 2016-06-07Producing food is optional, but never partialdesignerpublisher
- CONTEXT
- The designer first answered that a chef could produce less than the maximum, then corrected himself later in the same thread.
- RULING
- "you may choose not to produce, but you cannot produce less than the maximum."
Gardens double the price only, not milestone bonusesdesignerpublisher
- RULING
- "Only the price is doubled. So anything that affects the price is doubled too... But milestone bonuses are not."
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(19 replies, 6 thumbs)DATE: 2015-11-21
Q&A18
Collecting drinks from a source you only pass bydesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Can a beverage buyer collect drinks from a source it passes alongside but does not traverse?
- ANSWER
- Yes. Passing orthogonally adjacent to the source is enough to collect from it, and drinks can be taken from either side of the road. The designer later restated this as "Passing by is enough to get the drink — curbside delivery indeed!"
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(39 replies, 15 thumbs)DATE: 2015-11-11Range counts differently for houses and for drink sourcesdesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Do houses and drink depots use the same range rule?
- ANSWER
- No. For a drink depot you only need to trace to the road space adjacent to the depot; for a house you must trace into the house itself.
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(39 replies, 15 thumbs)DATE: 2015-11-12How often a single drink source can be useddesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Can a buyer collect from the same drink symbol more than once in a turn, for example by looping past it?
- ANSWER
- "No, each drink symbol can only be picked up once per turn (per buyer)."
U-turns on a buyer's routedesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- May a cart operator or truck driver reverse direction partway along its route?
- ANSWER
- "No U-turns for buyers." A route may loop back to its start only by travelling a genuine circuit, which needs at least four tiles of range.
What the HR Director discount countsdesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- If a recruiting action produces no new employee, does it still count against the HR Director's salary discount?
- ANSWER
- "The HR director just counts the actual cards recruited - anything less than four gives a salary discount."
Whether the salary milestone counts owed or paid salariesdesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- For the "first to pay $20 of salaries" milestone, does the $20 have to actually reach the bank, or is it enough to have that much salary on your payroll?
- ANSWER
- Only salaries actually paid count. "So if you have the training milestone (and no HR manager discounts), you need to have at least seven trained personnel to get the milestone."
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(9 replies, 6 thumbs)DATE: 2015-10-12Salaries on the final turndesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- When the bank breaks for the second time and you "pay all dues", are salaries still paid for that final turn?
- ANSWER
- No salaries are paid in the last turn. Players receive their income, writing down cash owed if the bank runs short, but the Payday step is not carried out.
Order of a player's employee actionsdesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Are the actions granted by a player's employees all taken at once, or one at a time in turn order until no actions remain?
- ANSWER
- All at the same time. A player resolves their whole set of employee actions before play passes on.
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(37 replies, 52 thumbs)DATE: 2015-11-01Restaurant adjacency after the opening placementdesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Does the setup restriction against placing a restaurant next to another one apply for the rest of the game?
- ANSWER
- No. "(c) only applies during initial placement - in later turns, you can place a restaurant right next to another one." During setup, each tile may hold only one restaurant entrance.
Range requirement when placing an additional restaurantdesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Does the whole new restaurant have to sit within the manager's range, or just part of it?
- ANSWER
- "at least one square of the new restaurant must be within range 3 of the 'placing' restaurant."
Which square of a restaurant is the entrancedesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- The two dark lines in a restaurant's corner suggest two entrance sides — are both sides valid entrances?
- ANSWER
- "Correct, just the top right square is the entrance (unless you have a drive in)." Rotating the restaurant can therefore cost it access to one of two adjacent roads.
Reaching a restaurant without a roaddesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Must there always be road between a restaurant and a house, or can a customer reach it directly?
- ANSWER
- A road is always required. "Who ever walked to a restaurant?" This is explicitly described in the Dinnertime rules.
Range cost of leaving your own restaurant tiledesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- If a restaurant's entrance corner touches roads on two different tiles, may staff choose which road to leave by, and what does that cost in range?
- ANSWER
- Yes, and the choice is made independently for each staff card — but exiting onto a different tile adds 1 to the range, because leaving your own tile counts as a step.
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(30 replies, 10 thumbs)DATE: 2015-10-25Overlapping airplane campaignsdesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Can a new airplane campaign token be placed over rows or columns already covered by another airplane?
- ANSWER
- Yes, provided the tokens themselves do not physically overlap. "Technically speaking, overlapping planes are not allowed. But two planes can cover the same row/column of the map by flying from the two opposite directions."
Where a radio token may be placeddesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Does the radio marketeer's unlimited range mean the token can go anywhere at all?
- ANSWER
- "radios need to be placed next to the road. The unlimited range means that the radio marketeer can place a radio anywhere on the board (next to a road)." The square itself must be empty, and it need not connect to any restaurant.
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(20 replies, 12 thumbs)DATE: 2015-11-07How a mailbox campaign's area is determineddesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Does the mailbox token's exact position inside a block change which houses it reaches?
- ANSWER
- No. "the mailbox area is always the area contained by all roads. It doesn't matter where in that area the mailbox is actually placed." No road connection to the mailbox is needed — roads only bound the area.
Path a mailbox campaign may tracedesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- Must a mailbox campaign reach a house by the shortest path, and can it pass through other houses on the way?
- ANSWER
- Neither restriction applies. "one does not have to take the shortest path", and the area "can go through a house". The only limit is that the path may never cross a road.
Card availability in a two-player gamedesignerpublisher
- QUESTION
- In a two-player game, are all employee cards from all three decks available, or only some?
- ANSWER
- "In a 2p game, only 1 copy of each of the '1x' cards is available (as shown in the table in the rules). All copies of the other cards will be available." Only the number of "1x" cards changes with player count.
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(37 replies, 52 thumbs)DATE: 2015-11-06
EDGE CASES4
Prices driven below zerodesignerpublisher
- SITUATION
- Enough discount managers push a player's price to a negative value, so selling food would mean paying money out rather than taking it in.
- RULING
- "you must pay to the bank for every item sold (price doubled by gardens normally). If you don't have enough cash, your restaurant chain is bankrupt and out of the game (at the end of that turn)."
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(30 replies, 17 thumbs)DATE: 2015-12-04CFO and the $100 milestone on negative incomedesignerpublisher
- SITUATION
- A player with negative prices also holds the CFO or the "first to $100" milestone, both of which modify income.
- RULING
- "the CFO ability (as well as the $100 milestone which you cannot 'turn off') applies to all income - also negative."
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(30 replies, 17 thumbs)DATE: 2016-02-02What a bankrupt chain leaves behinddesignerpublisher
- SITUATION
- A player is eliminated mid-game, leaving restaurants and active marketing campaigns on the board.
- RULING
- Everything stays. The restaurants remain "as derelict buildings to discourage others from starting another chain", and the campaigns "stay (and run their normal duration, eternal or otherwise)". The intent is to preserve the board state as much as possible.
AUTHOR: jmdsplotter (Jeroen Doumen, designer)SOURCE: boardgamegeek.com(30 replies, 17 thumbs)DATE: 2016-02-11Bridges and overpasses in a mailbox campaigndesignerpublisher
- SITUATION
- A mailbox campaign's area runs up against a bridge, where two roads intersect without a crossover.
- RULING
- "The bridges cut off the corners for a mailbox campaign, exactly like a regular (4-way) crossing does." Travelling over a bridge still counts as crossing a road, so houses on the far side are out of reach.
Last researched: 2026-08-10
CATEGORIES
Economic·Industry / Manufacturing
MECHANICS
Delayed PurchaseIncomeMarketModular BoardOpen DraftingSimultaneous Action SelectionTech Trees / Tech TracksVictory Points as a Resource
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