There are quite a few things to keep you occupied for a long time in
Restaurant Empire 2. When you launch the game, you have the option of either New Game or Sandbox Game. If you want to just jump into the game and play, then you should choose Sandbox Game. In it, first you choose which type of restaurant you want to own from French, Italian, American, German, Coffee Shop, or Dessert House. You'll notice that the first three are the same as the previous game, but the last three are brand new to
Restaurant Empire 2. After you choose your restaurant type, you pick your chef. There are 58 chefs to choose from, 44 men and 14 women, in a wide variety of ages and appearances. After that, you set up your company. Here you can choose a theme for your restaurant like music, seafood, rainforest, and more. After that, you just run the restaurant as long as you want, until you decide to quit. There are no goals or specific challenges for you to meet, other than the daily operation of the restaurant.
When you choose New Game, you will then have two different campaigns to choose from: Restaurant Empire and Coffee, Dessert, and Sweet Success. In the Restaurant Empire option, you play as Armand LeBouf (which is sometimes spelled as LeBoeuf in the game). Armand is visiting his uncle, Michel, in Paris. Michel is a chef who used to own his own restaurant, Treize à Table. Since Armand's last visit, Michel has been forced to close down to keep the restaurant out of the hands of OmniFood. You'll be given specific challenges to meet for each scenario in the game. If you don't meet these challenges in the time given, you'll have to start that scenario over. It's not easy to bring the place back to life, so you'll have to work hard as Armand! Something that I didn't expect to find in a strategy game are mini-games. When you are in the cooking contests, you can improve Armand's performance by playing mini-games.
When you choose to play Coffee, Dessert, and Sweet Success, you will then be playing as Delia, Armand's beautiful wife. Delia has dreams of her own, other than just being a loving wife. She wants to open her own coffee shop. But she doesn't want a modern shop like she's seeing all over Paris right now. Delia wants to open a more traditional "Parisian Café." Just like in the Restaurant Empire portion, you'll have scenarios to complete to try and get Delia's coffee shop up and running. Just as with Armand, it is challenging, but you have different challenges with a coffee shop than you do with a restaurant.