Manage a live coffee stand: set your price, keep beans in stock, and clear the line before customers lose patience or your beans spoil.
The clock runs in real time. Customers join the queue, each willing to pay up to a hidden amount, and they buy automatically from the front of the line if your price is at or below what they'll pay and you have a fresh bean ready. Buy beans to keep stock up, but beans spoil seconds after purchase, and tune your price to balance margin against throughput. End the session with the most profit.
Bean Counter is a business sim about pricing, inventory and perishable stock under real-time pressure.
A real-time queue of customers with hidden reservation prices, buying automatically when your price is at or below theirs, combines queueing with willingness to pay.
Running the clock continuously is the original pressure.
Two forces pull against each other. A lower price clears the queue faster, which matters because waiting customers leave; a higher one earns more per sale but lets the line build — so throughput and margin are genuinely opposed rather than merely traded off.
Bean Counter is an original free browser business sim about pricing, inventory and perishable stock under real-time pressure. Built in-house for PlayPendium.