Run a Christmas Tree Lot layout

A Christmas tree lot is a queue problem wearing a Santa hat. Three things have to be true at once, and they compete for the same square metres:

1. A customer must reach a tree, then reach the till. Two moves, no detours, no waiting behind staff. Every metre of walking between the tree and the counter is a chance the customer leaves instead.
2. Stock must reach the display without crossing the shop. Trees are ordered and delivered rather than grown, so restocking is continuous traffic through the lot.
3. The lot must have somewhere to grow. Expansion adds space in one direction. Pick the wrong direction early and the expansion has to be bought twice.

These six placements follow from the loop rather than from a fixed blueprint — the game does not dictate coordinates, and lots differ in shape. What does not change is which side of the counter each thing belongs on.

Rows beat piles. A row gives each customer their own approach line, so four customers can browse four trees at once; a pile gives the first customer the whole display and everyone behind them a view of a back. Build rows parallel to the entrance lane, not perpendicular to it — a perpendicular row turns every browsing customer into an obstacle on the main path.

Leave the gaps generous at the front and tighter at the back. The front rows are where new arrivals stop, so they need room for two people to pass each other. The back rows are where stock waits, and stock does not need elbow room.

Keep one empty row slot from the day you open. Expansion always needs a place to put the next row, and a lot built to the fence has to be reworked rather than extended. That single unused slot is the cheapest upgrade you will ever buy.

Place the till before you place anything else, then arrange the lot around it. A counter at the geometric middle keeps every row within the same short walk; a counter at the gate means the far rows are a commitment. When you expand, expand away from the far side and let the till drift toward the new middle rather than adding a second counter at the edge.

Keep the two metres in front of the till clear. A queue that spills into a tree row blocks the row it spills into, so the till needs its own approach lane that stays empty even when the lot is full. If you have ever watched a customer walk up to a crowd and turn around, that is the lane being used as storage.

Trees arrive on the supplier truck, which makes the drop-off the second busiest point in the lot after the till — and the only one that moves heavy stock. Put it behind the tree rows with a straight lane to the back of the display, and never route that lane through the customer path.

This is also where the Instant Delivery pass changes the room you need. The developer describes it as the supplier truck heading out “the moment you place an order” (149 R$), so orders arrive sooner and more often, and a shared lane between deliveries and customers becomes a queue instead of a path. Without the pass you have dead time between deliveries, which you can spend on serving; with it, the drop lane has to be genuinely separate.

Leave one clear square at the mouth of the drop. It is where the truck appears, and it is the square most often filled with a decorative tree because it looks empty for the first ten minutes of a session.

Hiring workers is the third step in the game’s own loop, and the point of a worker is that you stop doing that job. That only pays off if the worker’s walk is short: from the station to the stock, and from the station to the till.

Put the worker strip along the back edge, between the tree rows and the supplier drop, with one gap in the row line so a worker can step through to the display. Two things then stay true as you grow: workers never queue behind customers, and adding a worker does not add clutter to the shop floor. If a worker has to walk around the outside of the lot to reach a tree, the placement is costing you the wage.

Expand in one direction, and buy in this order:

1. Display rows first. More rows are more customers served at once. Until the rows are full, decoration earns nothing.
2. Then the till approach lane. A wider clear lane in front of the counter holds the queue that the new rows create.
3. Then worker coverage. Add workers when serving is the bottleneck, not when cash is short.
4. Decoration last, and along the front. It sells the lot, so it goes where arrivals see it — the entrance lane and the fence, never a working aisle.

The order matters because each step makes the next one cheaper: filled rows pay for the lane, the lane keeps the rows earning, and only then is decoration an upgrade rather than a bill.

The First Frost pass (299 R$) unlocks the premium row of the seasonal pass, and its headline reward is the Light-up Tree Tunnel at tier 20, alongside exclusive Christmas decorations. Those are wide, lit pieces: they read best from a distance, which means the entrance lane and the fence line, and they read worst from inside an aisle.

Two rules keep decoration from eating the lot. Hang it over the path rather than in it, so the piece is above head height and the lane stays walkable. And when a decoration and a tree row want the same square, the tree row wins every time — the decoration is worth reputation, the row is worth cash.

1. Redeem the cash codes before you spend anything — the list is on the codes page.
2. Walk the empty lot once and pick the entrance lane. Everything else is placed relative to it.
3. Put the till at the end of that lane, as central as the lot allows.
4. Build two rows of trees parallel to the lane, with a wide gap at the front.
5. Set the supplier drop behind the rows, with a lane that touches the back of the display and nothing else.
6. Serve customers yourself until the queue is the problem, then hire your first worker and give them the back strip.
7. Keep one row slot empty. Expand into it, not into the fence.
8. Only now add decoration, along the front.

• One big tree pile. It looks like a full shop and behaves like a single-serve counter.
• The till at the gate. The counter is the destination, not the entrance; putting it at the door makes the far half of the lot a museum.
• Deliveries through the shop. One shared lane for the truck and the customers turns two fast flows into one slow one.
• Workers on the customer path. You pay a wage for a worker who spends the shift being furniture.
• Building to the fence. Every expansion then starts with demolition, and demolition is the only thing in the game that costs cash and earns nothing.