There’s a lot of info available on the web about different coaster and ride types- their stats, cost, and advantages and disadvantages, but there isn’t really much literature to be found about the different stall types in RCT other than Duerklink’s video and spreadsheet on their price mechanics, which is available here.[docs.google.com]

On the other hand, there appears to be nearly no information on how exactly food and drink works, especially with some persistent rumors that different food types might have additional effects like salty food making guests thirsty.

To that end, I wasted an afternoon examining all the different food and drink stalls in the game and observing single guests using them in controlled conditions. My results are as follows, though your mileage may vary if you are not using OpenRCT2.

The cost to build a stall is determined by what it sells or provides.

• All Food Stalls cost $300
  
• All Drink stalls plus the Info Kiosk and First Aid Room cost $250
  
• All Souvenir stalls and the ATM cost $200
  
• The Toilets cost $225
  
• All stalls have have a running cost of $49.60 per hour except the ATM and First Aid Room which have a running cost of $44.80 per hour.

This was tested by dragging a guest into a cut-off path with one stall and using OpenRCT2’s cheats to fill the energy and happiness meters and empty all needs meters (except the one being tested). The guest would immediately buy from the stall, and their subsequent stat changes could be observed in isolation as they consumed each item.

Summarized, it appears that drinks only decrease thirst whereas food will decrease hunger while also increasing thirst and bathroom need (sometimes dramatically), in a way related to the amount of time the food takes to eat rather than whether or not the food is salty or whatever else.

Now with the game's listed "consumption time" (which it seems does not directly correspond to a real time value) plus a more reliable (though still approximated) set of hunger and thirst values, organized from "biggest" food to "smallest".

• Fried Chicken: 170, -100% hunger and +70% thirst
  
• Pizza and Burger: 150, -100% hunger and +60% thirst
  
• Hot Dog: 133, -100% hunger and +45% thirst
  
• Sub Sandwich and Beef Noodles: 130, -100% hunger and +45% thirst
  
• Fries and Fried Rice Noodles: 120, -100% hunger and +35% thirst
  
• Roast Sausage: 115, -100% hunger and +30% thirst
  
• Meatball Soup and Tentacle: 110, -100% hunger and +30% thirst
  
• Wonton Soup: 100, -100% hunger and +30% thirst
  
• Funnel Cake: 90, -100% hunger and +20% thirst
  
• Donut: 80, -90% hunger and +20% thirst
  
• Cookie and Popcorn: 75, -85% hunger and +15% thirst
  
• Pretzel: 70, -75% hunger and +10% thirst
  
• Ice Cream: 60, -60% hunger, no thirst
  
• Candy Apple and Cotton Candy: 50, -50% hunger, no thirst
  
• All drinks: -100% thirst, no other effects, though with some variance in time (115-85).

As mentioned above, different foods take a different amount of time to eat. The Fried Chicken takes almost exactly 3 minutes for a guest to eat, and Candy Apples about 52 seconds, to put things in perspective. All other items fall within a spectrum between those two loosely corresponding to the consumption value.

Oddly, guests don’t experience increased thirst until they have already been consuming the food for some time (usually when they’ve gone from 100% hunger to around 30%) and will continue to consume the food after their hunger is already at zero, thirst increasing the whole time. This is also true for the Toilet need, but this is always to a much smaller degree than thirst (generally less than half of the thirst increase).

Some stalls are actually reskins of another stall, and sell the exact same food item. Some are obvious, some are not, and most (but not all) are from RCT2’s DLC and used in the DLC themed park scenarios.

Fruity Ices Stall and Ice Cream Stall - Ice Cream
Fried Chicken Stall and Chicken Nuggets Stall- Fried Chicken
Fries Shop and Fries Stall - French Fries
Sea Food Stall and Neptune’s Seafood Stall - Tentacles
Wonton Soup Stall and Witches’ Brew Soup Stall - Wonton Soup
Drinks Stall and Moon Juice - Soda
Candy Apple Stall and Candy Apple Market Stall - Candy Apples
Art Deco Food Stall, Lemonade Stall, and Lemonade Market Stall - Lemonade
Art Deco Food Stall and Beef Noodles Stall - Beef Noodles
Souvenir Shop and Soft Toy Stall - Cuddly Toys (Souvenir Shop also sells Umbrellas)

With the exception of the Art Deco Food Stall being a two-for-one with both a drink and a food item, both of which are slightly suboptimal profit-wise, there is pretty much no practical purpose to this information (though I used to think that Fruity Ices and Ice Cream stalls sold different products before examining this, so YMMV).

Litter is a mechanic wherein guests who consume certain items will obtain a litter item in their inventory. If they don't have access to a trash can, they'll eventually just drop litter on the path, which causes many different problems for you.

However, some items create litter and some don't. Litter items are also generally unique and relevant to the specific item the guest consumed, which is an excruciating level of detail for something you’ll only actually notice if you're specifically looking at a guest's inventory when they finish eating.



You can see these litter items within the guest's inventory in the brief period between them finishing it and them finding a trash can/deciding to drop it on the ground, and the graphics for the items on the ground do in fact correspond to the items they were holding.

• Generic Trash/Litter: Popcorn, Pizza, Fries
  
• Empty Box: Fried Chicken
  
• Empty Burger Box: Burger
  
• Empty Cup: Coffee, Iced Tea, Hot Chocolate
  
• Empty Can: Soda
  
• Empty Bottle: Lemonade
  
• Empty Juice Cup: Fruit Juice
  
• Empty Drink Carton: Soybean Milk, Sujeonggwa
  
• Empty Bowl (Blue): Beef Noodles, Fried Rice Noodles
  
• Empty Bowl (Red): Wonton Soup, Meatball Soup
  
• Nothing: Candy Apple, Tentacle, Cookie, Donut, Cotton Candy, Funnel Cake, Hot Dog, Pretzel, Roast Sausage, Sub Sandwich, Ice Cream

Guests who are eating food will greatly prefer to sit on benches, which allows them to regain energy while they eat. Not having a chair doesn’t seem to drain their energy, however. Guests will almost always sit on a chair if they find one while consuming food, but do not actively path towards them. If they are drinking, they won't necessarily sit, but can still decide to do so.



Guests can still queue and do most other activities while consuming items if they don't encounter an available bench, but won't be able to buy any other consumable item. They also walk much slower than they would normally.

This is a general tier list for shops and stalls based on the info present in Duerklink’s shop price spreadsheet above with some influence from the stall mechanics info I gathered, available here. The primary influencing factor for tier rating are the stall’s highest possible profit and its average profit across temperatures, but other features (such as stat restoration levels and time-to-eat) are also weighted.

This tier list is probably not objectively correct in all situations, but should be useful for those looking to optimize their stall profits or to add a challenge to created scenarios by, for instance, locking the best stalls behind research.

I should also note that you should have at least 4 unique Food stalls in order to avoid the Worst Food award and qualify for the Best Food award (the awards only track Food, and not Drinks, so you only need 1 type of those), but you should place as many Souvenir stall types as you have access to no matter their tier rating because you can’t sell the same souvenir to the same guest twice.

I wouldn't really recommend building a stall type with a rating below C unless you have absolutely no other options for that type. Or you could just build whatever you please, since to be honest stall profits are not usually crucial to scenario success (the exception being scenarios where stall profits are the actual goal).

Pizza - highest profit for a food stall in all temperatures

Drinks (aka Soda) - most profitable drinks stall in normal and hot parks, unlocked very often

Coffee - most profitable drinks stall in cold parks

Burger - second-highest food profit (close second), unlocked very often

Chicken - same profit as Burger. Takes longer to eat than any other food

Souvenir - toys purchased in all temps, third most profitable souvenir, plus sells umbrellas

Hats - most profitable souvenir except in the cold, but is still good there. Huge profit in heat

Shirts - purchased in all temps, second most profitable souvenir

Art Deco - items are suboptimal for profit, but sells food and drink for the cost/space of 1 stall

​
Sub Sandwich - usually same profit as Burger, but worse in cold

Ice Cream - only removes 60% hunger, but eaten quickly. Profitable in hot parks, bad in cold

Iced Tea - same profit as Soda in heat, but worse in temperate parks

Hot Chocolate - second-best profitable drink in cold parks

Lemonade - less profitable than Soda, but only just. Is the drink item sold by Art Deco

Sunglasses - profit is great in hot parks but terrible in cold ones. Not sold in the rain

Balloon - purchased in all temps, not sold in rain, slightly less profitable than other souvenirs

​
Hot Dogs - average profit

Sujeonggwa - decent profit, but much lower hot price than Soda

Fries - mediocre profit

Star Fruit Juice - mediocre profit

Fried Rice Noodles - mediocre profit

Beef Noodles - mediocre profit, is the food item sold by Art Deco

Candy Apples - low profit, but only removes 50% hunger and eaten quickly

​
Tentacles - mediocre profit, but becomes low in both hot and cold

Popcorn - low profit, but eaten quickly (place this next to your 3-D Theater)

Wonton Soup - low profit

Roast Sausage - low profit

Meatball Soup - low profit

Funnel Cakes - low profit

​
Cotton Candy - identical but worse than Candy Apples (not bought in rain/horrible cold price)

Cookies - very low profit

Donuts - very low profit

Soybean Milk - very low profit

Pretzel - very low profit

​
Bathroom - obviously, it is the only stall of its kind. Profit is pretty bad but you really shouldn’t charge for it at all anyway, morally and practically.

Info Kiosk - guests path towards rides directly when they have maps, increasing the speed you can profit from them, even if the maps themselves have poor profit. Also sells umbrellas, for massive profit in the rain.

Cash Machine - absolutely essential stall, makes profits soar even though it doesn't itself produce profit whatsoever. Its presence or lack is a significant factor in a scenario's difficulty.

First Aid Room - probably the worst utility stall since in my experience the guests sometimes ignore it, but it's your only proper way to prevent guests from puking violently all over the path, benches, each other, etc. so you may as well build it near intense rides' exits if you have it.

On-Ride Photo - not really a stall type, but the Photo Section should be built as early as you can get access to a ride that has it available. It’s basically free cash if you set it to $3.

So, TL:DR, what's the best stall?

My ultimate conclusion for the most optimal stall arrangement is selling primarily Pizza for $2.10 and either Soda for $1.20 (in temperate or hot parks) or Coffee for $2.00 (in cold parks only), with your choice of an additional 3 'novelty' food stalls that you only build one of each of in order to qualify for the Best Food award. The most efficient choice for these would be Burgers, Sub Sandwiches, and Chicken, since they can all be sold for $1.90. Also good in a hot park is Ice Cream for $1.50.

In addition you'll want as many souvenirs as possible, use of utility stalls where required, and the Info Kiosk selling maps for $0.70 and umbrellas for $20.00 (the Souvenir Stall too, if you have any).



This arrangement, if not the absolute best, should be extremely effective and profitable as long as your stalls are sufficient in number and placed well throughout the park.