Two gameplay problems with running an OFB restaurant.

[Reluctantly Human]

1.) Hopefully I am not the only one who took advantage of OFB's capabilities to run a restaurant. I used Malcolm Landgraab to purchase Londoste, which I believe is a standard Downtown location. I hired two of my created Sims and two townies. My two personal Sims who work there (other than Malcolm) have full body, and full cooking and one works as a server, and one a chef, respectively. So far everything is fine, except for when I promoted one of the townies to Manager. Now, whether I have autonomy turned on or not, the manager is ALWAYS trying to assign them jobs. She never does it to the other townie (also full body, server), and the two she is trying to reassign don't have any other skills/talents that high. So it is not like they could just as easily do one another jobs. As such, I have to set Malcolm to be the host the entire time, and manually control the manager so that I do not lose track of her.

Malcolm still runs the Eletronics Store in Bluewater and I have another townie as a manager there as well. But he never stops doing what he is assigned to do (run register). The only other difference is that it is not a restaurant, and I do not have any player made Sims working in that establishment. So I am not sure why she (the restaurant manager) is always doing this. I have downloaded one or two hacks from Sim Wardrobe, but until just last night I was not using any of them actively in that lot (but this problem has been going on for awhile).

I know I should probably just fire her and either rehire her, or someone else, but I suspect that will lead to some relationship fallout, and I don't know how easy it will be to get her back onto a lot to rehire her. So if there was any other method of 'fixing' this, I'd love to hear it.

2.) And on a somewhat related note, is it really that difficult to make money with a player run restaurant? I know in real life it's difficult, but I didn't think the game took things that seriously. I know my service is alright, since my servers always get tipped, and like I said, my cook has topnotch cooking skill, and before last night, the menu was pretty low skill fare. I've added most of the costly items now, and bumped prices to Expensive, but this just seems to make people clog my foyer more than anything. Any other suggestions?

[axle3610]

There is a difference between your two managers you never noticed. The manager at Electronics Superstore is assigned a job (run register) but the manager of Londoste doesn't have an assigned job that you mentioned. If you tell the manager to mind the store in any business they will constantly reassign jobs so that all employees will eventually get all the gold badges. Maybe you should make the manager the host or assign a job to tidy up. I've noticed that they will always put someone on tidy up no matter what the business looks like (environment, I mean).

It is also possible that the constant reassignments are meant to cover a job that isn't covered. Try hiring a new employee and see if that calms your manager down.

[axle3610]

On your second note, I have never gotten a player run restaurant to make money. My sims have lost fortunes trying. I have even used cheat devices and still can't make money. I've made money with all other businesses both with and without cheats but never a restaurant.

[kokozas]

Running a restaurant maybe fun, but it certainly does not bring in any cash if you have to pay salaries.

I been playing a lot with my Turkish restaurant, which is run by Ali Iskender, a created character. Ali Lost a lot of money in early stages, while I was just learning things and had to keep his day job to fund this expensive hobby. Slowly I learned how to do it, the restaurant received many prizes and praises, but Ali was still loosing money, if not so much but still some. So, then I developed a masterplan: I got Ali married with a beautiful blonde woman, who was already pregnant, but single. Ali earned some dough from his day job as a cook (I don't use money cheats), so he could build a second floor to his house and in she moved. A boy was born and soon a second one, this time Ali was the father.

So, as the first born became teenager Ali had a whole new crew. Even the smaller kid helped to clean the place, while Ali cooked, wife hosted and the teenage boy waited. Now there's also some income, but still not much.

Restaurant business would be really fun if there'd be at least 30% more income. And I don't think that would be unrealistic at all. Restaurants, other than soup kitchens, are there because they bring money to their owners.