Cafe World Offline ... For Now

UPDATE: As of 6:20pm ET, Cafe World is back online and our French Onion Soup was waiting to be served.

Just as we were about to serve up four French Onion Soup in our cafe in Zynga's Cafe World, we just couldn't seem to connect. After trying to connect with two other browsers, the company confirmed via its Facebook page that "We're working out some kinks with Facebook and you may be experiencing trouble accessing your Cafe. Thanks for your patience while our maintenance crew works to get your cafes running again!"

A few moments later, it appears that the game was taken offline with a new message "Hello, Cafe Owners! We're experiencing unexpected difficulties with our hosting provider. We're actively working with them to get you back into your cafés."

Given the game's massive leap from zero to 8.6 members in a week, Zynga itself may not have anticipated its success. Just yesterday, the game went down for a scheduled maintenance in order to add a few new items to the game, including more servers to handle the increase in users.

Until then, Cafe World owners will have to prepare food in the real world until the game returns.