The Business Simulator gives every student their own café on Main Street. Each day, students set prices, staff hours and stock. You run the day for the whole class, and then they watch it play out customer by customer and read the books to find out what worked. It turns ideas that are hard to teach from a page (break-even, margins, why profit and cash aren't the same number) into something students can see happen to a business they care about.
Available on: Intertwined Pro. If you're on Intertwined Solo, you can start a free 14-day trial of the Business Simulator from its locked screen (see Trying a simulator free with a 14-day trial).
What students learn
Pricing against what customers will actually pay. Every customer has a price they'll pay. Price above it and they walk away, which students can see in the replay.
Fixed costs, variable costs and break-even. Rent, utilities and wages are due whether anyone shows up or not. The Plan screen tells students how many lattes it takes to cover the day.
Why profit and cash are not the same number. A big supply order can drain cash on a profitable day, and the books explain the gap.
Ordering stock that spoils without running out. Croissants keep only the day they arrive and milk keeps three days, so over-ordering is waste and under-ordering turns customers away.
How a day works
A "day" in the simulator is one round of planning, running and reviewing. Many classes run one day per class period.
Students plan the open day on their Plan and Stock tabs and click Save plan for day 1 (the button always names the day).
When the class is ready, you click Run day 1 in the control room. Every café's day plays out at once.
Within a few seconds, each student's screen shows that the day is done, with a button to watch it. They see their replay on the Street tab and their statements on the Books tab.
The next day opens for planning, and the cycle repeats until the last day.
Students can't run days themselves or play ahead. A café whose owner didn't save a plan still opens: it runs on that student's last saved choices (or the standard starting choices if they've never saved one).
Preview what students see
Five minutes in the student view before you start means you'll know what students are looking at when they ask questions.
Go to Classrooms > your class > Simulators.
In the Simulator menu on the right, choose Business Simulator, then open Setup.
Click Preview student view.
Use the buttons at the top to switch between Before day 1, Day 4 of 5 and Finished. Each one is a sample café played by the real simulator.
Nothing you do in the preview is saved or seen by anyone. Click Back to class when you're done. The sidebar's Simulators > Business page also has a Preview as a student button for each class. See Previewing a simulator before your students do.
Start a run
Before you start: students need to be in the class first, because every café belongs to a student. Students who join later can be added mid-run (see below).
Go to Classrooms > your class > Simulators, choose Business Simulator, and open Setup.
In Start a Business Simulator, pick How many days: 5 days, 10 days, 15 days or 20 days. Ten is selected to start.
The Business is a Café on Main Street selling lattes, drip coffee and croissants. There's nothing to choose here yet.
Click Start the simulation.
You'll see a message that students can plan day 1 now. Each student gets a café with a name from a set list, so there's no naming step and nothing a student types is shown to classmates. A class runs one Business Simulator at a time.
Run each day from the control room
The Class view is your control room. Open it with Open the control room in Setup, or click Class at the top of the Simulators tab.
Check the plans meter, which reads like "18 of 24 plans are in for day 3". Each little bar is one café: green has a plan in, gray doesn't yet. Hover over a bar to see whose it is.
Click Run day 3 (the button always shows the open day).
If some cafés have no plan, you'll see a warning that they'll run on their last choices. Click Run day 3 anyway, or Wait for plans to give students another minute.
When the day finishes, you'll see "Day 3 is done. Students can watch it now, and plan day 4." After the last day, students get their final books and a summary.
Reading the control room
Average cash, Average profit for the last day (with how many cafés made money), Out of cash, and Best rating sit across the top.
Main Street shows every café as a tile with its cash, star rating, the last day's profit, and how many customers were served or left. Tags tell you at a glance whose plan is in (Plan in or No plan yet), who has run out of cash, and whose café has Started over. Click a tile to open that student's café.
Coming up lists the events you've scheduled, with Manage events to change them.
Look inside one student's café
Click a café tile, or open the Students view and pick a student from the list. You'll see their Café name, Cash, Profit so far and Rating, and three ways to look:
Books: the same statements the student sees for any day that has run.
Replay: the same street replay the student watches.
Plans: every plan they saved, by day, with the time of the last save and a plain-language summary of their choices. This is the quickest way to see whether a student is actually adjusting from day to day.
Add events to shake up the street
Events let you put a specific idea in front of the class when you want to discuss it, like a supply price spike the week you cover costs.
In Setup, find the Events card while a run is going and go to Add an event.
Choose the Event: Street festival (more foot traffic), Rainy days (rain all day, whatever the forecast said), Supply price spike (pick Which supply), Minimum wage rise (goes up and stays up), Competitor opens (less foot traffic), or Viral review (every café's rating jumps toward five stars).
Pick when it Starts on and how long it Lasts.
For events with a size, choose the Strength: Small (10%), Medium (25%) or Large (40%).
Under Students see it, choose Ahead of time (it shows on students' Plan and Stock screens so they can prepare) or As a surprise (students only see it once it begins).
Click Add event.
Every café gets the same event. Students see what an event does to their costs (for example, that milk costs 25% more), but not exactly how it changes the number of customers. You can Cancel an event until its first day has run.
Pause, resume, or end the run
Pause (in Setup or the control room) lets students look around but stops them saving plans, and the day can't run. Click Resume to carry on. Students see a note that you've paused it.
End simulation (in the End the simulation card in Setup) ends it for everyone. Click End it now to confirm, or Keep it running to back out. Students keep every replay and their books, but nobody can plan again, and this can't be undone. You can then start a new run.
When a café runs out of cash
Deliveries can take a café a little below zero. If cash falls further, the bank steps in with an emergency loan and the café shows Out of cash. The bank does this up to three times. The fourth time, it closes the café, which shows Closed by the bank and can't plan or open again.
To give a student a fresh start, open their café in Students, go to Start this café over, click Start over, then Start over now. They get a new café with starting cash from the current day. Their earlier days stay in the class results download. You can reset any café this way, not only closed ones.
Students who join late
A student who joins your class after the run started doesn't have a café yet. The control room lists them by name with an Add button (or Add all for several). You can also add one student from their page in Students. A late café starts on the open day with starting cash, a floor plan to pick, and the starter loan, so they're not stuck with someone else's history.
Downloads
Class results in Setup has a Download (Excel) button once the first day has run. The workbook has every café's results, a summary per student and a day-by-day sheet. It names your students, so keep it private.
Students download their own books from their Books tab, as separate CSV files or one Excel workbook.
Grading and rankings
To grade the simulator, create an assignment for it: in Create Assignment, choose Simulator, then Business simulator. It's worth 100 points unless you change the Worth field. The Gradebook then suggests a score for each student that blends effort (on most days, saving a plan in time that actually opens the café) with outcome (days without a bank rescue, profit compared with a typical café, and star rating). You confirm or change every score. Simulator scores only appear for classes with a simulator assignment. See Simulator scores in the Gradebook and Creating an assignment.
The Rankings tab can also rank the class by Cash, Rating or Last day's profit. See Rankings and leaderboards.
What students see
Students open their café from the Simulators page in their sidebar. They work in four tabs: Street (the replay), Plan (menu, prices, staff, marketing and loans), Stock (supplies and orders) and Books. Their guide, Business Simulator: running your business, is worth sharing on day one.
Tips
Run day 1 together. Have students save a plan, run it, and watch the replay on the board. Clicking a customer who walked out and seeing "Would pay" next to "Your price" does more than any explanation.
Ask students to make one change at a time. When three things change at once, nobody can tell which one helped.
Read the Plans view for a few students before a debrief. It shows who changed their prices after a bad day and who kept the defaults all week.
Announce an event ahead of time the first time you use one, so students practice planning for it. Save surprises for later in the run.
When cash and profit differ, the cash flow statement asks "Why?" and answers it. That's a ready-made discussion question.
Common questions
Do students compete for the same customers?
No. Each café has its own customers, so one student's low prices don't steal another's sales. The weather and any events you add are the same for everyone, which makes cafés fair to compare.
What happens if a student is absent?
Their café still opens and runs on their last saved plan. When they come back, they can watch every day they missed on the Street tab and read the books for each.
Can I change the number of days after starting?
No. You choose the length when you start. If you need to stop sooner, end the run from Setup; students keep everything they've done.
A student says their changes weren't used. Why?
Only a saved plan counts. If you ran the day while a student had unsaved changes, those changes weren't used, and their screen tells them so. Their plan for the next day starts from what they last saved.
What happens when my 14-day trial ends mid-run?
The simulator locks for you and your students until your plan includes it. Students see a message that it isn't available. Their cafés aren't deleted.