Supermarket Together: Complete Guide

Everything you need to run a profitable store in Supermarket Together, solo or with up to 16 players: the daily loop, pricing, franchise perks, employees, thieves, departments (online orders and manufacturing), and the new store layouts added in 2026.

Researched September 2026 — current as of the "Routine Patch: Event End" update (5 September 2026). Live games change; check the linked sources if something differs.

Quick Start

It's free to play. Grab friends; the more players in the store, the more demanding customers become, so solo is a genuinely different (and valid) experience.
Stock what sells, then expand. Early days are about a handful of product types kept full, not a huge range of half-empty shelves.
Never price above double the unit cost. Customers refuse to buy items priced over twice the Price Per Unit.
Spend Franchise Points on staff and speed first. Extra employees and their efficiency perks are what let the store scale.
Watch for shoplifters from around Day 10. Hit them with your broom before they reach the edge of the parking lot, or the goods are gone.
Keep the store clean. Cleaning is a "secondary duty" that directly improves customer happiness.
Recycle empty boxes. Clutter slows everyone down, and the Recycling perks make disposal faster.
Save/quit is disabled on Day 1 (added in April 2026 to stop money exploits), so plan to play through your first day.

The Daily Loop

Morning (store closed): Check money, order products from the computer, and restock shelves from storage.
Open the store: Customers enter, shop, and queue at checkout. Someone (you, a friend, or a Cashier employee) must work the tills.
During the day: Restock empty shelves, catch thieves, clean spills, and keep boxes moving from storage.
Close: Once the last customers leave, the day ends with a financial summary. Stolen items that escaped cost you at the end of the working day.
Evening: Spend Franchise Points, buy expansions, rearrange shelves, and order for tomorrow.

There is a short cooldown on the close-store button (added April 2026) to prevent duplicated invoices from spam-clicking.

Pricing

The core rule from the community wiki: price up to 2x the Price Per Unit; above that, customers won't buy the item.
Market prices shift over time (the wiki notes they change every Thursday). Re-check prices regularly so an old price doesn't end up above the 2x limit or leave margin on the table.
A franchise perk (listed on the wiki as MART OS 2.0) automates pricing once unlocked. It's a big time saver in solo games.
In multiplayer, assign one person to pricing so shelves don't get conflicting labels.

Franchise Points and the Skills Blackboard

Owning a successful supermarket grants Franchise Points as the store levels up through checkouts. Spend them on the skills blackboard (Franchise Points Board). Most nodes cost one point; stronger ones (marked with stars) cost several.

Category	Examples	Why it matters
Employees	Employee tiers (each adds a hireable worker), Recruitment (daily rerolls)	More hands equals more throughput
Staff efficiency	Cashier and Restock Formation courses, free energy drinks and coffee	Faster workers mean fewer queues
Revenue	Marketing Courses (employees earn +10% at checkouts), Bad Weather Boost (stormy/snowy days bring more online orders and triple their earnings)	Straight profit
Store comfort	Wi-Fi, Air Conditioning	Attract more customers
Operations	Logistics (see product locations), Recycling courses and container, time acceleration while closed, efficient lighting, accountant automation	Quality of life and cost savings
Products	New product categories	Expands what you can sell

Star perks are the multi-point nodes. The September 2026 patch added Vacuum Expansion (5 perk points), which makes the mini transport vehicle automatically pick up stolen items on the floor when they touch its front.

Suggested early order: one or two employee tiers, then cashier/restock speed, then marketing and customer-attraction perks, then quality-of-life automation.

Employees

There are 18 employees available for hiring. Their wage depends on experience.
Seven roles: Cashier, Restock, Storage, Security, Technician, Packaging, and Manufacturing.
Employees earn experience in the role they're assigned and gain advantages as they level, so avoid constantly reshuffling your best workers.
The employees' blackboard lets you set priorities and save/load priority layouts (seven extra slots were added in July 2026).

Role	Use it when
Cashier	Always your first hire when solo; queues are what lose customers
Restock	Once you have more shelves than you can keep full
Storage	When storage boxes pile up faster than you can sort them
Security	Once shoplifters become regular (around Day 10 onward)
Technician	For maintenance tasks as the store grows
Packaging	After unlocking online orders
Manufacturing	After unlocking the Manufacturing department

Store Space, Storage, and Layouts

Expand public space to fit more shelves; a fully improved store can hold up to 49,000 products.
Expand storage so you can order in bulk and restock less often.
Demolish pillars for better decoration placement and customer navigation.
Layouts: When creating a store you choose a layout. Classic is the original; Plaza arrived on 18 June 2026 and has longer entry/exit paths (the game adds extra customers to compensate). The developer has named "The Big One" as the next layout.
Logistics Desk (July 2026): transfer money from an older, more advanced store into a new one. Limits: $1,000 per day passed in the new store, only while the new store's day is lower than the source store's, and per-layout caps. Starting more layouts makes this more useful.

Departments

Online orders (Packaging)

Prepare online packages for customers yourself, or assign Packaging employees. It's extra revenue once the main floor runs smoothly.

Manufacturing (added January 2026)

Unlock the Manufacturing department plus its extra store row and extra storage in the space acquisition blackboard.
Place a research unit and feed it products to unlock recipes (breads, pastries, cakes, salads, sandwiches, and more). Research only progresses while the supermarket is open.
Manufacturing units turn ingredients into products; the Manufacturing Desk (February 2026) lists your recipes and sends products to a global queue that feeds available units automatically.
Salads, sandwiches and similar chilled goods go in the manufacturing freezer.
April 2026 added ten more recipes: rice with chicken, pasta bolognesa, burgers, soup, tiramisu, apple tarts, pumpkin pies, cookies, pretzels, and smoothies. There's an achievement for unlocking all recipes.
Customers now choose among several manufacturing shelves if they hold the same item (September 2026 fix).

Thieves and Security

Shoplifters start appearing around Day 10. Signs: an icon above their head, moving quickly with goods, heading to the parking lot.
Broom them. Hitting a thief knocks them down; several hits may be needed to recover all items.
If they reach the edge of the parking lot, an invisible wall stops you and the items are lost.
Security employees apprehend thieves for you; an Anti-Theft scanner and a CCTV / Surveillance Desk help detect them.
The mini transport vehicle with the Vacuum Expansion star perk auto-collects stolen items it drives over.

Mini Transport Vehicle

Reworked in August 2026: more responsive controls, can spin on the spot, auto-collects boxes you drive over, and drops them all with one button (it needs free space on the left or right side). A panel shows which slots are occupied. If it gets stuck, the builder can move it a short distance. Three achievements were added for it in September 2026.

Events and Cosmetics

The developer runs recurring limited events, each activated by placing a special decoration:

Event	Trigger	Status
Alien event	Suspicious Looking Antenna, then wait until 18:00 in-game	Ended 5 September 2026
Animals event	Event Cage	Ended April 2026
Winter event	Abnormally Tall Mailbox	Ended January 2026

Events drop tokens and broom skins; the alien event could drop every previous event token and added The Entropy Broom (finish the alien off with a salt firework). Old event items stay placed but do nothing once the event ends. The DLC room holds paintable tablets (230 paint materials as of April 2026) and a gardening tablet with 25 hedge textures.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Over-pricing. Anything over twice the unit cost simply won't sell.
Too many product types too early. Empty shelves look bad and waste customer trips; fill fewer shelves fully.
Skipping cashiers. Long queues cost more than any wage.
Leaving boxes everywhere. They block aisles and slow everyone; recycle them.
Ignoring thieves until closing. Losses are counted at the end of the day.
Joining with mismatched versions. After updates, make sure everyone has patched or you'll get heavy desync.

Advanced Tips

Group products logically and keep high-demand items near storage to cut restock walking time.
Use priority layouts on the employee blackboard to switch staffing between "rush hour" and "restock mode" quickly.
In large lobbies, split jobs: one pricer, one or two storage runners, cashiers, one security. Customers scale with player count, so organisation matters more than speed.
Start a second layout once your first store is advanced, then use the Logistics Desk to give it a head start.
Manufactured goods add a high-margin product line; start research early since it only progresses during open hours.
Check the public server list for difficulty, day, and layout before joining a random lobby.

FAQ

Is Supermarket Together free? Yes, the base game is free to play on Steam. The DLC room contains cosmetic items.

How many players can play? Up to 16, or solo with hired employees.

Why won't customers buy my product? Most likely the price is above twice the Price Per Unit, or the shelf is hard to reach.

When do thieves start? Around Day 10.

How do I get the Plaza layout? Choose it when creating a new store; the store creation menu lists available layouts.

How do I start the alien or other events? Only while an event is active. As of 5 September 2026 the alien event has ended; watch the Steam news for the next one.