Big Bob's Burger Truck

Prospectus

Invent your own burgers, then sell them from a food truck that drives from town to town. Stack any combo you like: beef, chicken, veggie or mac and cheese patties, bacon, pineapple, jalapeños, fried eggs, onion rings and six sauces. Name it, price it and put it on the menu board. Then open the window and cook it for real: grill the patties and stack every layer in the right order before the customer gets tired of waiting. Every customer tells you what they think. "Too spicy!" "No cheese?" "That's it?" Grandma Pearl likes it simple. Trucker Tex wants two patties. Willow won't touch meat. Write it all down in your notebook and build the menu each crowd loves. Three towns, three crowds, each with a taste of its own. Win them all over and the whole road is yours.

How it plays

Goal: earn stars by serving burgers people love. Earn enough stars in a town to open the road to the next one, then win over all three towns. Menu: tap ingredients to stack a burger (every burger needs a patty), set a price and save it to the menu board. Lunch rush: tap a patty bin to grill a patty and tap it when its ring turns green. Add the toppings in the order on the ticket, then the top bun, and tap the customer to serve. Listen: whatever customers say goes in your Notebook. Spend your money in the Shop on new ingredients and upgrades. Plays with a mouse or touch. Press P to pause.

Opening an account with this game takes one press: Open the holding, above, and it loads on this page itself — nothing downloads and no form stands between you and the first decision. It is drawn for a landscape (wide) screen and takes its instructions from mouse, keyboard or touch, as the game prefers. The file is drawn wide, for a landscape screen — turn a phone sideways, or let a tablet or desktop give it room to breathe. If a fullscreen control is offered, take it — a growing enterprise deserves the whole desk.

Analyst's notes for management holdings

• Fix the queue before the product. In management games the line out the door is rarely a quality problem; it is a staffing and layout problem wearing a quality costume.
• Hire for the hour you cannot cover. Your own attention is the scarcest employee in any management sim — spend money wherever it buys your attention back.
• Read the complaint, not the rating. Averages hide the one broken station that is quietly taxing every customer; the written grumble names it for free.

Big Bob's Burger Truck — questions from the readership

What does it cost to open Big Bob's Burger Truck?

Nothing, at any point. The holding is free from the first click to the last upgrade — no account to open, no download to wait for, no paywall filed anywhere in its pages. The advertising around this page is what pays the bookkeeping.

What kind of game is Big Bob's Burger Truck, exactly?

We file it on the Management shelf of the ledger. It is a browser game through and through — the prospectus above is the publisher's own summary of what the game asks of you and what it gives back.

Can I play Big Bob's Burger Truck on a phone or tablet?

Yes — it runs in the browser on phones and tablets just as it does on a computer. The file is drawn wide, for a landscape screen — turn a phone sideways, or let a tablet or desktop give it room to breathe.

Is there anything to download or install first?

Nothing at all. Big Bob's Burger Truck is an HTML5 game: press the open button and it loads on this very page, and closing the tab leaves nothing behind on your device.

Closing entry

Finished the audit, or still mid-season? The full Management shelf is one click away — One hundred and eighty-one exercises in being in charge: rotas, stock, queues, budgets and the eternal discovery that the bottleneck was you. Management games for people who enjoy a tidy operation.