Crush your coffee shop rivals as the Espresso Tycoon

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Build your business, manage baristas, design fancy coffee drinks, and even draw pictures in the foam—just like the pros.

I'm a coffee guy, but a boring one. I like regular old coffee. Nothing fancy, just grind the beans, drip hot water through the grounds, and fill up my regular old mug. Still, the idea of running my own fancy coffee shop and creating a caffeine empire is appealing, so the trailer for Espresso Tycoon caught my eye.

In Espresso Tycoon you'll create a chain of fancy coffee shops from the ground up. Pick a location in the city, rent it, decorate it, create a logo, buy some coffee-making equipment, and you're in business. You design drinks by choosing the coffee grounds and selecting the ratios of water and milk, and even choose the pattern to draw in the foam, something the guy at the back of the line waiting to order a regular old coffee (me) will probably be annoyed at.

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Espresso Tycoon coffee shop sim
(Image credit: DreamWay)

In addition to creating different coffees and managing your budget and decor, you'll also hire employees like baristas, cleaners, and even security guards, and manage their schedules. Additionally, you'll have to deal with something at the center of all our lives these days: social media influencers. "Espresso Tycoon has its own social app–Beanstagram–where customers can post pictures and write about their visit to your coffee shop," says developer DreamWay Games.

It looks pretty neat! Unfortunately, like a guy standing at the back of a long line in a fancy coffee shop, there's gonna be a wait. Espresso Tycoon isn't expected until late 2022. On the plus side, there will be a demo out later this year. You can learn more about Espresso Tycoon at the official site or here on Steam.

Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.