Cookhouse

**Cookhouse** is one of the Buildings in Frostpunk.

## Acquisition

**Cookhouse** is available from the start, can be built from the Food tab.

## Description

Due to our current and dire circumstances, we need all the Resources we can get our hands on to sustain ourselves, which unfortunately leads to some problems. Every chunk of Coal has to be stockpiled and used carefully to keep the Generator going, Wood as a building material has become a very scarce resource, and refining Steel in these freezing temperatures has become much harder than before. However, to keep gathering and processing these resources we need people, and it's an old rule that people cannot work with an empty stomach. Food is the fuel that keeps both your people and the economy going, and without it they become weak, Sick and eventfully starve to death. The problem is that with such a scarcity of resources we cannot afford to give people coal or wood to cook their own food, but we can’t let them eat Raw Food either because eating uncooked food is an easy way of getting sick in these frigid conditions.

So, since people are not allowed to cook their own food but we cannot give them raw food either, you as their leader must provide for them by building a Cookhouse, where your Workers process 2 Raw Food into 4 Food Rations. In reality, though, the Cookhouse is little more than a glorified Soup Kitchen.

The Cookhouse is chiefly supplied with Raw Food provided by the Hunters' Hut and Hothouse and will use one unit of Raw Food to produce two Food Rations.

If things get dire, you can pass a Law that allows your Cookhouses to become literal Soup Kitchens where they serve only soup (hence its name) with perhaps some bread made with algae/moss/lichen from Hothouses. This allows them to produce 5 Food Rations per every 2 units of Raw Food but people will not like eating soup.

Furthermore, another Law authorizes the cookhouse to add sawdust to the meals to make them more filling, allowing the Cookhouse to produce 6 Food Rations from every 2 units of Raw Food. Eating sawdust, however, is not healthy and people may get sick from eating it.

In addition to all that, if a severe food shortage leads to people dying from starvation, if you have the right laws already signed, you can sign a Law that allows the Cookhouses to process dead bodies into Food Rations, getting 15 Food Rations per body. That being said, though, May God have mercy on your soul if people find out what you are doing...

## Recipes

 Hearty Meals Only available in The Last Autumn. | 3 Raw Foods into 3 Food Rations | Raises Motivation when eaten.

## Abilities

* Alternative Food Source
* Change the Shift Length
* Heater
* Emergency Shift
* Foreman
* Cocaine Pills

## Upgrades

* Research Cookhouse Insulation (Technology): +1 heat level
* Complete Cookhouse Helpers: 40% increase in bonus efficiency.

## Notes

The Cookhouse is very efficient at converting raw food. Until the very late game 1-2 employees can satisfy the need of the city.

The Cookhouse can complete 10 recipes per hour at 100% efficiency, regardless of difficulty. Using Standard Meals, the ratio of raw food to food rations is 2 to 4. This, along with the opening hours, means that one Cookhouse can convert 200 Raw Food into 400 Food Rations per 10-hour work shift, per day. One upgraded Hunters Hut can produce 20 raw food per day, which in turn means that one Cookhouse can receive the input of 10 full Hunters Huts and process that into 400 food rations per day.

Cookhouses have an internal queue that limits how many citizens they can serve. This queue holds approximately 250 people at one time, per Cookhouse. This means that if you have too many people queuing for food at the same time, they may forgo eating and get hungry even if you have enough food to serve them. You can avoid this issue by simply creating more cookhouses - they don't need to be manned, heated, or even connected to a road to function as a location for people to eat at.

Cookhouses are part of the people's daily routine and included in their path-finding. If a wave of starving and sick refugees or survivors arrives, this can potentially lead to people dying on the way to eat if the Cookhouse is far from the map entrance and the next medical facility. Later in the game it can be beneficial to have five Cookhouses with one employee each rather than having one Cookhouse with five employees.

## Trivia

In endless mode there is a relic that shows a previous version of the cookhouse, which was closer to a food cart than a mess hall.