🍜 Food
“Kibble isn’t people! …probably. Look, do you want to eat or not?”
In 2045, real food is a luxury. Pollution, toxic waste, and resource stripping left most croplands barren. What you eat—and where you get it—says everything about your place in Night City’s hierarchy.
🥣 Food Tiers
Kibble (Baseline)
The standard food for everyone who isn’t wealthy.
| Property | Details |
|---|---|
| Base | Kelp, plankton, soy proteins |
| Nutrition | Fulfills basic requirements |
| Taste | Like its canine namesake |
| Smell | Also like dog food |
| Cost | Practically free |
| Availability | Everywhere |
“Kibble is people!” is a popular urban legend. It’s not true—the stuff is made from kelp and soy. That doesn’t make it taste any better.
Neocorps often “provide” kibble to laborers as part of support programs—with the cost deducted from their pay, of course. Most people in urban zones eat at least one kibble meal a day.
Prepack (Middle Tier)
Microwave or self-heating meals—press the tab, heat, and eat.
| Quality | Contents | Typical Users |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | Soy-based “faux food,” flavored | Combat Zone dwellers with income |
| Good | Higher percentage of real meat/veggies | Executive homes, corporate workers |
Good Prepack is like restaurant fare, just in a bag. It’s significantly more expensive than kibble. If you want Prepack in Edgerunner turf, you’re going to a restaurant—home delivery doesn’t survive the Combat Zones.
Fresh Food (Luxury)
Real vegetables. Real meat. A status symbol.
The City elite has always eaten fresh. For everyone else, it was a rare treat—and after the 4th Corporate War, it became nearly impossible to get any food past raiders, warring Megacorps, and broken transportation networks.
🌱 Guerrilla Gardening
Faced with starvation after the War, Edgerunners developed green thumbs.
| Method | Location |
|---|---|
| Lot reclamation | Tearing up abandoned lots to reveal soil |
| Rooftop gardens | Growing food on top of buildings |
| Apartment farms | Converting entire floors of conapts |
| Water systems | Powered by intermittent rains |
Within a couple years post-War, small, carefully tended gardens were feeding local buildings and neighborhood squats. The food is actually good—if you don’t mind the radioactivity and toxic waste traces in the soil.
Combat Zone Gardens
Most Combat Zone produce has trace levels of radiation and heavy metals. Locals don’t care—it’s still better than kibble. Corporate testing would probably fail it.
⚔️ Killing for Cabbages
Fresh food attracted attention from people who weren’t interested in farming: boosters, gangers, anyone who’d rather take than grow.
The Food Wars
Savage conflicts broke out over growing areas:
- Body counts climbed (and were reprocessed into fertilizer when possible)
- Whole neighborhoods armed up and patrolled their rooftop gardens
- Ready to maim and kill anyone who looked at a tomato wrong
The Cattle Drives
Things escalated when farmers started raising real animals: chickens, dwarf pigs, goats. (Cows are still rare.)
Herds are shipped under Nomad protection with heavy Solo escort—creating a new form of “cattle drive.” Rustling attempts end with the rustlers buried in Night City’s equivalent of Boot Hill.
Cloning is still too expensive to make cloned meat viable for the masses.
🏪 Where Food Comes From
Oasis Markets
Run by Continental Brands, these are the “legitimate” food suppliers in Night City:
- Clean, corporate-controlled stores
- Kibble, Prepack, and limited fresh food
- Premium prices
- Located in safe zones
Continental Brands holds patents on most synthetic food technology.
Night Markets
The black market for food:
- Guerrilla garden produce (quality varies)
- Nomad-transported fresh goods
- No questions asked about radioactivity levels
- Much cheaper than Oasis
Nomad Convoys
The Nomads are essential to Night City’s food supply:
- Transport fresh goods from still-viable farmland
- Run cattle drives with heavy armed escort
- Trade routes connect cities that can’t grow their own
- Raffen Shiv make these convoys dangerous
đź’° Cost of Eating
| Food Type | Daily Cost | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Kibble-only | ~1 eb | ~30 eb |
| Kibble + basic Prepack | ~5 eb | ~150 eb |
| Good Prepack diet | ~15 eb | ~450 eb |
| Fresh food occasionally | ~30 eb | ~900 eb |
| Fresh food regularly | 100+ eb | 3000+ eb |
Lifestyle Impact
What you eat is a direct indicator of your economic class. An Edgerunner celebrating a big score might buy fresh vegetables—not chrome.
🎲 GM Resources
Using Food in Play
- Social signifier: Eating kibble at a corporate meeting marks you as street trash
- Mission reward: A client might pay in fresh produce instead of eddies
- Plot hook: Someone’s poisoning the rooftop gardens—who, and why?
- Atmosphere: Describe the smell of kibble, the luxury of real meat
Food-Related Encounters
| d6 | Encounter |
|---|---|
| 1 | Nomad convoy rolling through—heavy escort, fresh goods |
| 2 | Rooftop garden dispute turns violent |
| 3 | Street vendor selling “definitely real” meat |
| 4 | Oasis Market being shaken down by local gang |
| 5 | Starving refugees begging for kibble |
| 6 | Corporate exec slumming it at a street food stall |
The Smell of Night City
Use food to build atmosphere:
- Combat Zones smell like kibble, smoke, and industrial waste
- Corporate zones smell like filtered air and expensive coffee
- Night Markets smell like grilling mystery meat and spices
- Nomad camps smell like campfires and real cooking
đź”— Related Topics
- Night Markets — Where to buy off-grid food
- Nomads — The supply lines keeping cities fed
- Continental Brands — The corporation controlling synthetic food
- Economy — Cost of living and lifestyle tiers
- Combat Zones — Where guerrilla gardens grow
(Source: Cyberpunk RED Core Rulebook, pgs. 327-328)