How to Rank Up Stores

This is based on my experience. It has been working pretty well for me. I hope it will work for you too.

There are a few things effecting your Store Ranking. ( check your Store Ranking in Menu > Area )

1. Store Popularity
2. Menu - The Dishes you Serve
3. Clientele
4. Staff
5. Furniture Type
6. Store Size

While some of the factors are related to each other, I will talk about them separately.

1. Store Popularity

Each Store's popularity can be found in Menu > View Info > Store Info. Click ( or Tap ) on the little triangles to see different Stores. As you can see in the picture below, the green bar indicates Region population, and the pink bar is the Store popularity.

I like to think of Region population as the number of a particular type of customers living in that region, and Store popularity is the number of seats we provide for that particular group in our Stores. This saying turned out to be confusing, let's try something different.

Let's think of it this way:

Green bar - How popular your store is in that particular region
Pink bar - How popular your store is to a particular group

Our first goal is to make all pink bars showing after the green

We can see in the picture above, Student, Youth, and Businessman have pink bars showing after green. So they are set for now.

We have to work on Hswife, Elderly, and Tourist's Store popularity by adding some new items - read  Tables and Decoration for more details.

Remodel the Store changes the region population.

Region population + Store population --> Customer Popularity

Once you see the pink bars start appearing in all groups, you are all set for the first step. Later in the game you will have more money and more items available. When you upgrade your tables and decorations, the store popularity will raise even more naturally. But we are only talking about our first step here. It's more important to get all pink bars showing than, making one of them all the way up and leave some green.

2. Menu

It is important to serve good food. What I usually do is serving a Dish that has the highest Taste and Appeal stats. Having multiple Dishes on the Menu would bring up monthly cost. It is recommended to server one Dish only for each store.

It is a good idea to master at least one Dish in the Starting Menu, so you can get a good start of the game.

3. Clientele

Quite often I get a Store Ranked Up message soon after new Clientele starts to visit the restaurant. ( As long as you've provided enough seats for them. the store popularity is high enough. ) I found the fastest way to bring in new Clientele is to run those Plans. ( Read more about it Here. )

4. Staff

Staff Numbers - A larger Store requires more Staff. 

The Skills - Skillful Staff serve faster.

5. Furniture Type

4 Seats or 2 Seats?
Generally, 4 Seat Tables are better than 2 Seat Tables. However, if you start seeing people walking to the door and leaving straight away, it means you need to replace some 4 Seat Tables with 2 Seat ones. Some customers don't have many friends to go out with, they would only take the 2 Seat Tables.

And of course you want to keep some Counters. Special guests would only use those.

Table Rank

After you get Store Popularity sorted, Tables upgraded to 4 Seats, it is about time to think about getting Tables with higher Ranks.

6. Store Size

You can fit more Furniture and Staff into a bigger size Store -->  higher Store Popularity. I was able to have Rank 1 Stores in the 1st and 2nd Area. ( Sunny Village and Greenville ) without any expansion. I don't usually expand in those two Areas simply because I move them soon after they reach Rank 1 or I've discovered all the Chests, depending on what I wanted to do there.

If you have done all of above, then having Rank 1 Stores is just a matter of time.