Games Like Diner Dash: Seat, Serve and Grow a Restaurant
Updated
Games like Diner Dash are restaurant time management games: customers arrive, you seat them, take their orders, serve the food and clear the table, and how fast you work decides how happy the customers are. Diner Dash itself is a strategy and time management game developed by Gamelab and published by PlayFirst. Below are original restaurant games by independent studios that share its loop of seating, orders, patience and upgrades.
What makes Diner Dash tick
Wikipedia's article on Diner Dash describes a game about seating customers and guiding the waitress Flo around the restaurant:
- Seat and serve. You drag arriving customers to tables, Flo takes their orders to the kitchen hatch and delivers the food, and customers pay, leave a tip and go.
- Clear the table. Dirty dishes have to be cleared before a table can be used again.
- Patience and chains. Customers lose hearts the longer they wait, and repeating the same action in a row earns a chain bonus.
- Levels and stars. You move on by earning enough money in a level, and falling short costs a star. As the game goes on, Flo renovates the run-down restaurant and builds three more.
Here is where those ideas turn up in the games below:
| Diner Dash idea | Games that share it |
|---|---|
| Bring customers to tables and serve them | Karas Cafeteria, Dream Restaurant |
| Orders shown on the customers, some impatient | Beach Restaurant, Cooking Place |
| Clear the table after the customer leaves | My Cute Restaurant |
| Serve before patience runs out | Boo Brew |
| Grow the restaurant with upgrades | Dream Restaurant Tycoon, Food Conveyor |
Closest to Diner Dash: seat, order, serve
- Karas Cafeteria is the nearest match to the loop. You seat customers, take their orders and deliver the meals the chef prepares, and effective multitasking earns energy boosts that increase your speed. You can customize the shop, and you play with the mouse or by touch.
- Dream Restaurant makes you the waiter: you invite customers in, collect all the orders in a row and serve them to the tables. Money buys more tables and hired waiters, and later sushi and donut restaurants open.
- My Cute Restaurant has you cook dishes, serve animal customers and clean the table after each customer leaves. You play with a mouse click or a tap.
- Open Restaurant Simulator asks you to run a restaurant and bring your management skills to every diner, surviving the daily target to get a high score.
Orders, patience and tips
These games put the order in front of you and the clock on the customer.
- Beach Restaurant shows each order as a picture on the customer, and some customers are impatient. A career mode and a free mode earn money that improves your shop and attracts more customers. You play with mouse swipes.
- Cooking Place has customers come to the rack where your hero stands and place orders, shown next to them as pictures. You study the order, prepare the dish and hand it over, and a satisfied customer pays. It plays with the mouse or by touch.
- Boo Brew runs a potion cafe: you match ingredients, stir enchanted brews and serve monster customers before their patience runs out. It has 12 midnight shifts and combos.
Fast kitchens and growing restaurants
- Halloween Cooking is a time management cooking game. You tap as fast as you can to give hungry customers Halloween food from your canteen.
- Monster Chef mixes funny robot monsters with fast restaurant challenges: moving ingredients, cooking machines and hungry robot customers. You tap to play.
- Food Conveyor has you prepare dishes, arrange them on a conveyor belt and serve customers quickly, then upgrade the restaurant and add new dishes.
- Dream Restaurant Tycoon has you take customer orders, grab the right food from the stations and deliver it fast, then buy more tables and open drive-thrus as the business grows.
- Pizza Cafe Tycoon starts with a pizza shop and asks you to deliver pizza orders on time and quickly. It plays with the mouse on a computer and by touch on a phone. More pizza shops are in the pizza games guide.
Kitchens with a stronger focus on cooking are in the cooking games guide, and the wider range of restaurant management is in the restaurant games guide.
Habits for Diner Dash style games
- Serve the longest wait first. In Diner Dash, customers lose hearts the longer they wait.
- Clear tables at once. Diner Dash makes you clear the dishes before a table can be used again, and My Cute Restaurant has you clean the table after each customer leaves.
- Keep several jobs moving. Karas Cafeteria rewards good multitasking with energy boosts.
- Read the order before you cook. Beach Restaurant and Cooking Place show orders as pictures on the customers.
- Look for chains and combos. Diner Dash rewards repeating the same action in a row, and Boo Brew lists combos.
- Spend on what holds you back. Beach Restaurant uses your earnings to improve the shop, and Dream Restaurant Tycoon sells more tables and drive-thrus.
Games like Diner Dash FAQ
Are there free games like Diner Dash online?
Yes. They play free in the browser, with no install and no registration.
Which game is closest to Diner Dash?
Karas Cafeteria: you seat customers, take their orders, pass them to the chef and serve the meals. Dream Restaurant is next, with a waiter who serves orders to the tables.
Can you play games like Diner Dash on a phone?
The site works in the browser of a phone, a tablet and a computer. Karas Cafeteria, My Cute Restaurant, Cooking Place and Monster Chef list touch or taps for their controls.
More restaurants to run are in the cooking games category.
