Could have sworn I played this game in LAN as a kid, taking "Vanilla Ice" to my friends restaurant among other things.

Yes! You're definitely right. There is normally a multiplayer-part in the game, and it's that, what brings the real fun into the game!

The problem seems to be, that the base of this GOG-Version is the PC-Game Pizza Tycoon and not the AMIGA version Pizza Connection. The PC-Version was buggy and never completely patched. So the multiplayer-part of the PC-version was/is useless/broken.
But the mulitplayer in the AMIGA version was running fine! I spent days and weeks playing with/against my friends in hotseat.

Hope, that Gog can manage that and briong us multiplayer!!
Tha's what the game is meant to be played!

Thanks. So long since i played, but strange, we played on PCs.

Hey!
Good news!

The GoG support and me had a fruitful talk and they gave me a good hint, how it worked the old times.
I simply forgot it over the years.
The missions had been never multiplayer, as far as I remember, but the free mode had.
So
- choose the free mode
- select your character on the left side
- change the name of the top company on the right side (or let it be if you like it). That's your company
- then use the arrow down at the bottom of the compony column by clicking it once (the top entry get's green)
- let your buddy choose his character on the left side
- let your buddy change the name of the second company (or he/she lets it be, if he/she likes it). That's his/her company.
- use the arrow down once more, if you have more than two human players gaming with/against you.
And so on, up to eight human players (which isn't really funny in questions of time).
- start the game

Now day one starts with human player one. At the end of this day player one goes to sleep and day one starts again with human player two. After he/she finished, human player no. three starts with his/her first day. If there isn't another human player, the computer guys follows in fast forward. Than day two starts with human player one and so on ...
It's Hotseat like in the old days.
Enjoy!

I'd be interested in how that plays out.

One ought to compete for something. Like a specific rank or becoming a millionaire. It would make sense to compete for a goal.
Pizza competitions? The early bird gets the worm? Cause those AIs will only do one competition per month. Tough luck for Player2.

The last time I did that I played a try-hard battle against a gamer friend. Needless to say: Marble tables don't pay if they are destroyed by nightfall anyway. We banned gas'ing the opponent from the getgo, so I am not sure how that plays out. Especially as far as the 1st shops are concerned I'd expect more trouble than it's worth.

So marble floor and camping gear it is.

Joke articles...
Those make it really hard to make any initial profit and get going: One needs some reserves to even think about opening a shop. Expensive advertisements as well as weapons & jokes of your own may be necessary to win the customers' favor. Despite the rats, the smell, the runs. With camping gear.
Perhaps you chose each others characters instead of your own, so you ended up with Buster Gut and his 1000$? Good luck with those initial weeks.
Let's just say we both didn't manage to open a shop w/o going bankrupt.
Chance is multiplayer ends up being a criminal career...

Then again we played 'impossible' difficulty. Perhaps it is more adequate to play normal difficulty. That may even allow opening a shop w/o a month' worth of expenditures saved up.

I swear I played this game in Lan with my brothers before. Now I can't figure it out how to play multiplayers again. Follow your methods but can't change the player name since those guys are just cpu opponents