How to play Tray Rush

The goal

You are the only server on the floor. Customers order, the kitchen cooks, and you carry each dish to the right customer before their patience runs out. You start a shift with 20 coins. Serving earns coins and missing an order costs them. Finish a level by serving its orders, and keep your coins above zero: at 0 you're fired.

Play Tray Rush

Your first shift

1. Pick a venue, the city diner or the airplane, and a character to play.
2. Say yes to the dare. The game asks if you have the guts to work the floor alone.
3. A customer orders. A bubble over their head shows the dish and a patience bar that starts draining.
4. The kitchen cooks the dish in a couple of seconds. Walk to the kitchen counter (on the plane, the galley) and pick it up.
5. Carry it to the customer and serve it before the bar runs out.

Controls

The action button changes its label to show what it will do next, such as picking up a dish or serving a table. Order timers stop while the game is paused.

Coins, combos and VIP orders

• Every serve pays 10 coins, plus a speed tip of 1 to 10 coins depending on how much of the bar is left.
• Serve 3 orders in a row for a x1.5 combo, and 6 in a row for x2. One missed order resets the combo.
• From level 2, VIP orders appear. They pay double but their patience bar is half as long.
• A missed order costs 15 coins on level 1, and 3 more on each level after that.
• Finishing a level adds a 10-coin bonus.

An example: you serve a dish with 70% of the bar left. That's 10 coins plus a 7-coin tip. In the middle of a x1.5 combo it becomes 26 coins, and if it was a VIP order, 52.

Levels and stars

Each level asks for more orders, shortens the patience bar, adds dishes to the menu and lets more customers order at once.

When you finish a level, you get a star rating:

• 3 stars: no missed orders, and on average you served with at least half of the bar left.
• 2 stars: one miss at most, and on average at least 30% of the bar left.
• 1 star: you finished the level.

Finishing a level unlocks the next one on the level select, so you can come back and replay any level for a better rating.

The two venues

The city diner

Play as the waiter or the waitress. Dishes come off the kitchen counter and you carry them on a tray to six tables. The menu grows from burgers, coffee and pizza to noodles, salad, fries, sushi and cake.

Dinner rush: halfway through each level, orders start arriving twice as fast for 20 seconds.

The airplane cabin

Play as the air hostess or the steward. Meals are loaded from the galley onto a trolley that you push down the aisle to 36 seats. Passengers order coffee, tea, juice, water, sandwiches, snack packs, cup noodles and meal trays.

Turbulence: halfway through each level the seatbelt sign comes on, and you walk slower for 8 seconds.

Tips for a better shift

• Fill both hands. Your tray or trolley holds two dishes. If two are ready, take both before you leave the counter.
• Serve the shortest bar first, and keep an eye on VIP bars, which drain twice as fast.
• Dropping is cheap. A dropped dish goes back to the kitchen and is ready again in about two seconds. Drop one when your hands are full and a more urgent dish is waiting.
• Protect your combo. At x2 every serve is worth double, and a single miss sends you back to x1.
• Clear the counter before halfway. The dinner rush and turbulence both start once you've served half of the level's orders.
• Follow the wave. A customer waving at you is close by and waiting for their order.

Settings

From the title screen you can switch sound, music and vibration on or off, and set the time of day: day, night, or automatic, which follows your device's light or dark mode. On browsers that support it, the full-screen button hides the browser bars.

Play Tray Rush