Cooking Fever Automatic Cooking Machines: Cost, Restaurants and Are They Worth It
A Cooking Fever automatic cooking machine is the one kitchen upgrade the game sells for gems on a timer. It appears once, stays for 72 hours, and never comes back for that location if you pass on it. This guide lists which restaurants offer one, what the community tables say each costs, what the machine handles and what it leaves to you, and whether the gems do more good somewhere else. It sits alongside our other Cooking Fever guides.
What a Cooking Fever automatic cooking machine actually does
Every restaurant gives you stations you tap to start cooking, then tap again to plate. The timing is the whole game. Leave food too long and it burns. Start it too late and customers walk.
The automatic machine, which Nordcurrent’s support centre calls an autocooker, replaces one of those stations. The community wiki describes it plainly: it cooks a food or dispenses a drink on its own, and the food on it does not burn. You stop watching that station and spend the attention on the rest of the counter.
Two limits matter before you get excited. The machine covers a fixed set of items, usually one to three portions of one or two foods, and nothing else on the counter changes. And it is one station per restaurant. There is no machine that runs a whole kitchen.
Which restaurants offer an automatic cooking machine
Not every location has one, and the list has grown. Older forum answers still say only four restaurants (Fast Food Court, Chinese, Seafood Bistro, Breakfast Cafe) offer a machine. That was true once. The tables kept by touchscreengaming and simplegameguide now run past thirty locations. The rows below are the ones where both tables agree. The level column is the level inside that restaurant, not your account XP level.
| Restaurant | Offered at level | Gem cost listed | What it handles |
| Fast Food Court | 17 | 10 to 15 | 1 burger patty and 1 sausage |
| Chinese Restaurant | 22 | 30 to 40 | 1 shrimp, 1 fish, 1 chicken wing |
| Seafood Bistro | 22 | 40 to 70 | 1 lobster, 1 octopus, 1 mussel |
| Bubble Valley Doughnuts | 22 | 40 to 60 | Fries doughnuts |
| Italian Buffet | 24 | 30 | 3 coffee cups |
| Mount Breakfast | 25 | 40 to 60 | 1 pancake |
| Michelle’s Cafe | 27 | 40 | 1 stroopwafel |
| Gourmet Restaurant | 28 | 30 to 40 | 1 tuna |
| Ice Cream Bar | 28 | 30 | 1 wafer cone |
| Paradise Cocktail Bar | 28 | 30 to 40 | Ice |
| Cafe Mexicana | 28 | 30 to 40 | Minces 3 portions of meat |
| Sports Bar | 30 | 10 to 15 | 3 glazed sticks |
| Sunset Waffles | 30 | 30 to 40 | 1 rectangular and 1 round waffle |
| Thai Food Stall | 30 | 30 to 40 | Stirs the wok |
| Smokey Grill BBQ | 30 | 20 | 3 ginger ales |
| Salad Bar | 30 | 40 | Picks and washes 3 lettuces |
| Sandwich Shop | 30 | 30 | 1 soup |
| The Dumpling Venue | 30 | 60 | Bakes and slices bread |
| Breakfast Cafe | 32 | 30 to 40 | 1 sausage, 1 egg, 1 black pudding |
Why a range and not one number? Touchscreengaming notes the price shifts with the upgrades you have already bought at that station. Nordcurrent does not publish a price list, so treat every figure as what other players saw on their screens, not a promise of what you will see. The wiki adds that a few offers ask for coins as well as gems.
How the offer works and why you only get one chance
The 72 hour window
Nordcurrent’s support article on autocookers spells out the rule. Complete a set number of levels in a location and a limited time offer appears for the next 72 hours. Let it expire without buying and the offer never returns for that location. There is no menu where you can buy it later, and support will not restore it.
That rule is why this upgrade needs planning rather than impulse. The offer lands past level 20 in nearly every restaurant, which is also the stretch where you are spending heavily on stations and interior. If your gem balance is empty when the timer starts, the decision is made for you.
The two other routes
The community wiki lists a second free route: the Chef’s Mystery Box, which comes at the end of the month from the Daily Rewards calendar or from filling either bar at the casino. It puts the chance of a machine dropping at 5 percent, and you cannot choose which restaurant it is for. Nordcurrent’s article also mentions a paid in app offer that gives a random machine for one of the locations you are eligible for. Both are lottery tickets, not plans.
The decision has to be made before the offer appears. By the time the 72 hour timer is running you are already deep into a restaurant and probably short on gems. Noodlearcade’s advice is to check your balance before starting any level above 20 in a location you care about. Decide then whether this is a restaurant where you want the machine. If it is, stop spending gems until it lands.
What the machine does not automate
The word automatic oversells it. Here is what stays manual after you buy one.
- Serving. Food still has to be dragged from the station to the customer. The machine cooks. It does not deliver.
- Every other station. A Fast Food Court machine covers one patty and one sausage. Fries, drinks and toppings are still yours.
- Assembly. Where a dish needs a base plus a topping, the machine at most supplies one of the parts.
- The rest of the bar. A few machines are drink dispensers, such as the Smokey Grill BBQ ginger ale unit, but every other drink is still poured by you.
- Burning. Removed on that station, which sounds like pure upside until you want the achievement for burning food. Players on the chaptercheats Q&A board suggest finishing that achievement in a location before buying its machine.
Player answers on the same board say each machine has a switch in the kitchen upgrade screen so you can turn it off and cook that station by hand again. Useful if you ever need to burn something on purpose, and a sign that Nordcurrent expects some players to prefer manual control.
When manual play is faster
A Cooking Fever automatic cooking machine trades speed for attention. It saves you from watching a station, but it does not necessarily push more plates out of that station than you could yourself.
The table shows the trade. Most machines handle one portion of each food at a time. A station you have upgraded with coins can hold more portions and cook them faster, and you control exactly when each batch starts. In a rush where three customers order the same dish at once, a fully upgraded manual grill you keep loaded clears the queue before a machine cooking one at a time. The machine wins when the bottleneck is your fingers, not the station.
Three situations where you should keep cooking by hand:
- The restaurant’s hard levels are limited by a different station than the one the machine covers. Cafe Mexicana’s mincer does nothing for a queue held up by the drinks.
- You have already put coins into that station’s speed and capacity. Noodlearcade’s Chinese Restaurant guide goes the other way for that location and tells you not to upgrade the pans past level 2 so the gems go to the machine. That advice only works if you follow it early.
- You still want the burn achievement in that location.
Are the gems better spent elsewhere?
This is the real question, because gems are the currency that gates the game. Opening every restaurant costs 1,125 gems, and the per location figures are in our restaurant unlock table. A level up pays somewhere around 1 to 5 gems by touchtapplay’s count. One Cooking Fever automatic cooking machine at 40 gems is roughly the gem price of a mid game restaurant, or ten levels of account progress.
Noodlearcade’s verdict is the honest one: in some restaurants the machine is close to a necessity for three stars, and in others it is a luxury that makes the location nicer to play. Its guides put the Fast Food Court in the luxury column, since coin upgrades alone carry you through, and the Chinese Restaurant in the necessity column. The cost of the Fast Food Court machine is low, but the cost of the habit is not. Buy the cheap one and you will buy the next one.
A workable rule:
- Skip it in any restaurant you are already clearing with three stars, and in any early location where the offer arrives on a level you breezed through.
- Buy it in a restaurant where the offer lands on a level you have failed more than once and the failing station is the one the machine covers.
- Never buy it with gems you were saving for a restaurant unlock or a Challenge entry. A Challenge costs 14 gems and pays 30, the only gem spend in the game that returns more than it takes, as our tournaments and challenges guide explains.
If the balance is thin, the free sources in our guide to getting gems are slow but steady, and the Community Hub and friend invites pay gems and nothing else. Build the balance first, then let the 72 hour timer find you ready rather than reaching.
Frequently asked questions
How much does the Cooking Fever automatic cooking machine cost?
Nordcurrent does not publish a price. Community tables list the Fast Food Court and Sports Bar machines at 10 to 15 gems, most others at 30 to 40, and the Seafood Bistro unit at 40 to 70. The figure you see depends on the upgrades you already own at that station, and a few offers also ask for coins.
Which restaurants in Cooking Fever have an automatic cooking machine?
Far more than the four in older answers. Fast Food Court, Chinese Restaurant, Seafood Bistro, Breakfast Cafe, Sports Bar, Gourmet Restaurant, Ice Cream Bar, Paradise Cocktail Bar, Cafe Mexicana and many later locations across the three areas all have one. The table above lists the ones two independent sources agree on.
What happens if you miss the automatic cooking machine offer?
It is gone for that location. Nordcurrent’s support article says the offer runs for 72 hours after you complete the required levels and does not return once it expires. The only fallbacks are the Chef’s Mystery Box, which the wiki puts at a 5 percent chance of a random machine, and a paid random box in the shop.
Can you turn the automatic cooking machine off?
Player answers on the chaptercheats board say yes. Each machine has a switch in the kitchen upgrade screen that returns the station to manual cooking. That matters if you want to earn the achievement for burning food after buying a machine, since food on an active machine never burns.
Is the Cooking Fever automatic cooking machine worth the gems?
In a restaurant where the station it covers is the reason you keep failing, yes. In a restaurant you are already clearing, no. Noodlearcade rates the Chinese Restaurant machine as close to essential and the Fast Food Court machine as a luxury. Weigh every purchase against the 1,125 gems needed to open all 48 restaurants.
The short answer
Decide before the timer, not during it. Check your gem balance before starting any level past 20 in a restaurant you care about, and only save for the machine if the station it covers is the one holding you back. Skip the cheap early machines, because coin upgrades carry those restaurants on their own. Finish the burn achievement first if you want it. Keep gems earmarked for restaurant unlocks and Challenge entries untouched, since those return more than any machine does.
Sources. The 72 hour offer rule comes from Nordcurrent’s support article on autocooker machines. Machine mechanics and the mystery box chance come from the community maintained Cooking Fever Wiki. Restaurant, level and gem cost tables come from touchscreengaming and simplegameguide, with value advice from noodlearcade and player answers on chaptercheats. Cooking Fever and its trademarks belong to Nordcurrent Games; this site is independent and not endorsed by them.