2. The secondary rule of Facebook games applies.

You will take your biggest gains from working with shorter-term meals over similar lengths of time. For example, it's more profitable XP- and coins-wise to cook twelve 5-minute hamburger meals (264 coins profit and 84 XP) than it is four 15-minute salads (200 coins and 56 XP), which in turn gives you more than one 60-minute tikka kabob (130 coins and 22 XP). There are a few minor fluctuations when you get into the longer-term meals, and the Caramel Apples is all kinds of awful in the grand scheme of things, but the pattern holds.

In fact, here's an abbreviated chart for your viewing pleasure! We've got it sorted by how long the meals take to cook, and their XP gains...

3. Always have food on the table, and your Buzz Rating will take care of itself.

Part of Cafe World is your "buzz rating," which you can see in the top-right corner of the screen next to a green thumbs-up icon. This number goes from 5.0 to 105.0, and indicates the flow of customers that come into your cafe: the higher the number, the more customers come in. Note that it is this buzz rating, and not necessarily the number of tables and chairs in your cafe, that controls the speed of your cash flow...

4. Avoid spoilage.

Meals spoil in the same amount of time it took to cook it. So, if you cook up hamburgers, they'll be ready to serve in five minutes. After another five minutes, they'll spoil if left on the stove unserved. This gives your very long-term meals a large grace period, though you'll have to be on your toes (or your mouse-clicking finger) if you're doing short-term meals...

5. Take advantage of the spice rack ASAP.

The spice rack is a late game item that can do several boosts to your meals. By far, the most helpful one is to instantly complete a meal regardless of its normal cooking time. Having that spice on-hand completely negates the chart: simply use the spice on a long-term meal with a huge profit and XP rating, and you'll be gaining quickly...

If you really want to speed things up a bit, you'll want to trap your avatar. I know that sounds weird, but if your avatar is completely trapped, then when you give him an order to go do something, your order will be carried out immediately. This extends to your waiters: with the inability to actually walk over to serve food, the plates will just magically appear at the tables of your customers. In fact, if you set the trap, you can run your cafe with only a single waiter regardless of the size...