How to Fix “Not enough customers” in Cities Skylines 2

Cities: Skylines II is a city-building simulation game where players create and manage a metropolis.

The game offers deep simulation and a dynamic economy to build and develop your city.

You have complete control over infrastructure, road networks, and city systems.

Your decisions impact the city’s growth, economy, and the well-being of its citizens.

With high-resolution graphics, the game offers a realistic and detailed city-building experience.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to fix the “Not enough customers” error in your supermarket or other buildings in Cities Skylines 2.

1. Commercial Zone Saturation
2. Understanding the Production Chain
3. A Hands-Off Approach
4. How to Fix “Not enough customers” in Cities Skylines 2
5. Conclusion
6. References

Commercial Zone Saturation

In the screenshot above, there is a saturated commercial area with too many furniture stores.

This situation can occur if you recklessly zone commercial lots all at once.

These stores may have spawned due to a heavy local logging industry.

Since wood doesn’t need to be imported, the simulation probably determined that furniture stores would have the most profit, and spawned a bunch of them.

Understanding the Production Chain

To gain control over your city’s economy, it’s essential to understand how production works.

If you have an excess of something, check the production chain to see if you can convert it into a more valuable resource.

For example, I produce a surplus of grain:

If I click on grain, I can see that grain can turn into petrol:

But if I scroll down to look at petrol, it seems I import a lot of it:

So ideally, I should zone new industry and/or demolish companies until I find one that creates petrol from grain.

That business should then thrive in my city.

Exporting raw materials like grain may not be profitable.

However, setting up a supply chain (like above) to produce higher-value products can benefit your city’s companies and help them level up.

A Hands-Off Approach

You can influence which industries appear in your city by using taxation and subsidies effectively.

For instance, if you want to promote the automobile industry, you can subsidize automobiles to attract those companies to your city.

This will encourage automobile companies to spawn in your new developments.

This will create a domino effect and boost demand for automobile manufacturing components.

Eventually, you can tax automobiles once the resulting industries have been established.

To expedite the domino effect, you’d probably want to look at what materials are necessary for automobile production, and subsidize all of those as well.

An alternative hands-off approach is to avoid designating entire zones for commercial or industrial purposes all at once.

This helps prevent the risk of oversaturating the area with businesses of the same type, as illustrated by our friend’s experience with the furniture stores.

How to Fix “Not enough customers” in Cities Skylines 2

I have this supermarket that complains about not enough customers.

It sells “Food” but I also have a lot of fast food companies nearby.

Fast food is a different resource, but perhaps it’s competing with our supermarket.

Now, if I check the production tab, I see that food can be consumed by more than just cim consumers.

It can also be used by other retail outlets, and converted into “Meals” or “Lodging”:

I have two electronic shops next to this supermarket, so lets demolish one until I get a company that produces Meals or Lodging.

To make this easier, I can subsidize Meals or Lodging to increase the chance they appear.

There we go! This Donut Shop will utilize food and sell meals.

Now, for the big question—will it fix the “Not enough customers” error?

After about 20 seconds, the supermarket no longer complains!

Conclusion

Managing your city’s economy in Cities: Skylines 2 requires careful planning and attention to detail.

Use taxation, subsidies, and the production chain effectively to create a thriving and balanced city.

Remember that profit drives all businesses and they will reinvest profits to level up the building.

This creates less burden on water/electric, higher salaries for employees, and requires higher education positions to be filled.

Travel costs eat into profits now, so you ideally never want to import or export as shipping costs a lot.

So, as an overarching strategy, periodically check the resources that are being imported, and try to minimize that.

References

1. ahrism on Steam

Further reading

How to Fix the Road Tool Yellow Screen Bug in Cities Skylines 2

How to Fix Exception Access Violation in ARK Survival Ascended

How to Fix ARK Survival Ascended Low Level Fatal Error