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.

[qvcatullus]

Thanks for the details, notovny!

I do use the BRY thingy, but don't end up actively using it much, so unless it has some autonomous/passive function I don't think I'm getting much out of it.

As per the gardener/portal deletion business: I have some of Crammyboy's things in the game from way back to stop various portal deletions, and these include a 'portal monitor' that came packaged in. I don't see an rtfm for the monitor itself. What does it do... warn when a portal has disappeared? I didn't get any warnings related to the gardener thing. Does it need to be in 'debug mode' and if so, how do I turn that on (never messed with it, always used hacks to fix things as they show up)? Finally, will the broken portal pose a danger to other lots in the hood, or is it more of a symptom of greater, very bad things?

[J. M. Pescado]

I do use the BRY thingy, but don't end up actively using it much, so unless it has some autonomous/passive function I don't think I'm getting much out of it.

BRY has a passive functionality that overrides the "stare stupidly into space" "logic" of Maxis employees, as long as Macrotastics and necessary modules are correctly installed. Otherwise, it malfunctions or does absolutely nothing at all.

[Skadi]

I've had a successful restaurant, without BRY but the the host, cook and server were all family. Keeps wages low. First day the business made $1000 and has been growing since. Only employed servers, since the playables ran everything else.
BRY makes it easier though.

-Skadi

[nocomment]

Here are some details that may help you.

There's no need to show them the menu or do a sales pitch.  Customers will eventually browse the podium on their own, and buy without a sales pitch.

This will be frustrating at first, because there are so few customers.  As your rank moves up, you will have more customers and the flow will be steady.

You can do the sales pitch, if you like, to earn stars and move up in rank.

The fewer "fun" things you have around, the more likely they are to browse the podium.

If you want customers sitting next to each other chatting, put in a bar.  I mean, a long row of counters with barstools - not a juice bar.  Usually townies will be seated one per table, which can look odd.

[J. M. Pescado]

I've had a successful restaurant, without BRY but the the host, cook and server were all family.

Manual control would let you do what BRY does, namely, rotate the jobs around as the workers need breaks, especially since some roles have no real specific need to retain a dedicated employee at all times, and often one sim is capable of effectively performing the entire cycle. However, Maxis code is stupid and does not handle this well. Or at all.

Alas, this configuration produces a nonfunctional restaurant that cannot be used as one by other families, as if you try to visit this restaurant as a visitor, nobody except the owner will be present, and the owner will not do any work, since Maxis did not include any way to assign a job or effectively recognize what jobs really need doing (hence the way managers arbitrarily reassign everyone at random, leaving your business assignments screwed up when you revisit).

Basically, it's not possible to create a profitable pure-restaurant due to the massive inefficiency of stupid Maxis AI code, and impossible to effectively make use of ANY employees at all for more than a brief duration without BRY, since they will quickly stop working and have no method of repairing depleted motives.

[mdrturner]

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.

Okay, I've just re-installed my entire game with all EPs and Stuff packs about a week ago and I've just had this problem in three different houses.
When I get rid of all of the gardeners (by dismissing or ending services), the next day the gardener that I originally hired turns up as normal and the problem doesn't tend to happen again (so far).
Unfortunately, as I don't tend to play with "testingcheats" turned on I've never managed to get an error log. All my hacks come from here or jfades site.
I've had a few sims autonomously juggle the damn coffee cups, but I thought that this problem was fixed with the OFB patch.

[jrd]

If you want customers sitting next to each other chatting, put in a bar.  I mean, a long row of counters with barstools - not a juice bar.  Usually townies will be seated one per table, which can look odd.

Or remove Pescado's nodiningwithscum.package, and Maxoid dining rules apply (anyone dines with anyone... including playables).