Restaurant and gardener troubles
qvcatullus:
Question the first:
OK, OFB is old as the hills and restaurants have been around forever. Nevertheless, I always figured they'd be annoying enough to run that I'd just do without.
I decided to go ahead and give it a try, and good lordy was I right. Is there a half-decent guide to running restaurants around? I already tried a general google search and a more specific search here and on mts2. I guess what primarily annoys me is that there seems to be a ridiculous amount of effort involved in getting customers to give you money VERY slowly.
First and foremost -- my sim is an expert cook -- maxed skill. I figured it would save me a lot of hassle (and probably some cash) to have her be the chef. Maybe I can find a half-decent cook and train them up for later or so that the restaurant can work ok as a community lot to visit (for that matter, why is it that if you visit an owned lot with another sim family the owner doesn't show up by default like the employees do?). That means I've got a waiter and a hostess. What appears to happen, though, is that a few customers show up and wander around like goons. I can have my chef stop chefing and show them the menu, at which point they do the 'should I buy this?' thing at the podium. I was sorta hoping that the hostess might take over at this point like a regular salesperson would, but no -- the owner/chef/shepherd has to convince these people to get something to eat too. God forbid anything needs to be cooked. There does not appear to be an 'assign -- sales' option in the restaurant to get someone else to do this by default. After all this, if I'm lucky, I might get them to order 18 bucks worth of food or something.
I will be sad if this is how it is supposed to work.
I am prepared to be sad.
Question the second:
On an unrelated note, one day my gardener showed up for work and got out of the truck, at which point the truck disappeared and a new gardener showed up. Repeat as desired. All these gardeners decided they would rather watch TV or eat snacks than garden, so I guess they were behaving as normal visitors. I finally managed to use something (don't remember what) to delete the npcs on the lot so they would go away. The next time I had the gardener come over, a whole pile of them (maybe six or seven) got out of the truck and proceeded to make themselves at home. I haven't kept playing to see if it will happen again.
Is this something that anyone is familiar with? Perhaps a faulty hack? I think I have 'daily gardener' or some such from here, maybe some others. I'm still just using OFB, and have not gotten any hacks that were not (theoretically) OFB-compatible. In fact, I haven't gotten many new ones at all in a long time, because I stopped playing for a while and now I'm seeing if I'm interested enough in the game to shell out for pets and seasons.
Gwill:
On restaurants:
Tip #1: Don't bother with restaurants.
Tip #2: If you absolutely have to; use BRY.
On Gardeners:
Sounds like a broken Portal, and BFBVFS about to happen.
Skadi:
Restaurants: Family Business!
J. M. Pescado:
BRY is the only option for successfully operating any business that requires employees, since employees are utterly useless without it, as they will stop and refuse to work very fast, forcing you to fire them and hire new ones over and over again, as the Maxian AI is not capable of restoring motives.
notovny:
I'vew run four restaurants with OFB successfully, and profitably. All four rely on BRY, all four are primarily run by Employees (The largest has six employees), and all four are combination businesses, rather than pure restaurants. Two sell take-away food (produced at an offsite factory), and the other two are really more venues with a food-service option.
I tend to prefer to have a hired cook, and have trained skilless, badgeless sims on other lots to Cooking-10 for this purpose. The largest of my restaurants, Rooster Gold's Chicken, typically makes about $2-3000 on-lot profit, and (Including sales of offsite-produced turkeys at Expensive) and has six employees: Chef, Manager/Salesperson, Cashier, two Servers, and a Janitor. When I play the restaurant the Owner typically functons a Host (as well as performing Cashier, Cook, and Restocking Duties as appropriate under BRY), and her husband primarily does Cashier/Server Duties. All the employees except the Cashier were hired on day one and the business has made a profit every serious play session.
Having Household Members as servers is a good idea, as having customers Tip servers is worthless behavior unless it's a household member recieving the Tip.
I have to say, I like Restauranteering. They're among my favorite businesses to watch in operation. BRY helps enourmously in this, as I didn't manage to pull off a decent restaurant without it. However, all the Sims I have doing it are independently wealthy from other, far more lucrative business options.
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