OFB for Dummies --Bakery Help requested.

[lilpooh]

Ok
I have just gotten around to actually attempting to "Play" my OFB portion of the Sims and decided to run the bakery.  Now I had gone onto shops (toy & flower) and was successful.  But I can not seem to successfully run a bakery.  My sims has about twenty baked good in their inventory but can not seem to restore the shelves. And although whole cakes are available for sale in the pre-made bakery you can put different cakes and set them for sale.  Also why can you not take the cake home and serve it to your family?  Now am I missing something or has my head been in the custom content clouds so long I can't grasp this game.

I've spent so much time trying to get the darn thing to run with hacks and patches the acutally "playing" of the game is now lost one me.  

Anyone have a tip on just how to run a succesful bakery?

LilPooh

[BeosBoxBoy]

What I have found helpful is having more than one refrigerator and more than one oven/stove.  Then have one or two workers making the stuff you want to sell.

What I find works best is an L-shaped counter with the cash register at the middle and the displays 3 or 4 on either side.

Bakery items seem to have a shelf life - or that is the best I can guess. because things had a tendency to disappear from my inventory be fore I used them.  Another consideration is "burnt" goods - they still happen regardless of how high your workers' cooking skill is.  My advice is to  reduce the price on them rather than throw them away.

You can put most any cooked item in the display cases, be it whole meals or cakes or single servings of lobster thermidor.  You can also suppliment your content with birthday cakes and wedding cakes from the party section of the catalogue.

Make sure to order groceries at least once a day for each refrigerator or you will suddenly be running out of basic ingredients.

pricing is hard.  You have to mark-up your goods really high to make any significant numbers.  If you have a low resource system that limits you to 2 customers at a time, you are sort of doomed to a long haul.  you can figure out what works best by trial and error in a few game-days.

Also, don't feel constrained to limit yourself to baked goods, toss in some high ticket items like a sculpture or two and don't feel like you are cheating, think of them as ice sculptures for catering jobs :lol:

[ancienthighway]

I can't remember where or when I saw this, but I read that the bakery display case must be manually restocked.  It has no restock option or the restock option isn't functioning.  As I've never tried running a bakery I can't say for sure if that's true or not.

I have used that case in employee break rooms at other places of business, putting single servings of food there for when that hunger hits the employees.  As the food is pre-made, if the employee on break gets hungry I've seen them pull something out of it and eat.

[lilpooh]

Well so far I have to serve items and place in inventory to restock.  Still not able to sell whole cakes or pies as well as people being able to eart what they brought when they get home.

But thanks so far for the help and I welcome any insight on making the bakery more functional.
Thanks

[ancienthighway]

Not being able to sell any whole cakes or pies make it sound like you aren't marking them for sale.  Once an item is placed, you must use the sales tag to set the price.