Fast Food Tycoon tests the player's culinary expertise and management skills. One creates his/her own character through balancing personal traits and experience, at the expense of age and starting money. The game provides more than 800,000 different character possibilities. The gameplay can be both open-ended or object-oriented. The player determines the conditions and objectives of the game during player configuration.

The player must manage and decide branch-location, pizza recipes, interior design, global marketing and fast food advertising strategies, employees, and out-competing rivals. The player has control of every aspect of the game, from the type of seating used in the branches to the medium of advertisement. The player can even choose what bank to invest/borrow from.