All of my Sims shop at OFB-owned stores for their grocery/fresh produce, clothing, toy, car, and robotics needs. It is true that only the (deed-holding) owner shows up to work because no employees are hired, but the only issue I have with that is my consumer Sims need to loiter about a bit before heading to the cash register. This is because the first thing most of my store owners will do is restocking or sales. They tend not to head to the register until a line develops, so I like to let other Sims get in line first.

This does not work for restaurants, in my experience. Left alone to tend a restaurant, the owner will either clean or play host, but will not switch roles from host to waiter to cook to waiter again. So restaurants do require a full staff.

Wow, so the owner will actually do all the work? This is great, thank you for informing me, I wouldn't even try it otherwise. Now I can avoid hiring excessive sims at the last minute (after the business is ranked 10) just to have them be present when playable sims visit the lot. Seriously, that was my idea with the clay factory...

New questions! Sorry for bothering you people, this thread became my personal thread for questions, but I get info from here that I can't find anywhere else.

1. Is there some hack or mod that enables the hiring pool to be bigger than 5 people? It really bothers me now that when my sim phones in to have people hired all candidates are already employees in businesses owned by other playable families

2. I wonder what the game takes into account in order to evaluate how much money to give you if you have a manager. I thought that it was about how much daily profit you've made, a percentage of it. But my new clay factory doesn't make any money at all, even though I made about 15000 on the lot last time. The game just says "it made no money today, maybe you need to show up and shake up things a little". I thought that maybe you must go from minus to plus on the overall profit scale (I used about 50000 initially to build a nice factory building and placed many statues there). So right now I have -60000 or so in the menu, although I do make some cash on the lot. Do I need to go into plus or there's something else that can be the reason why factory makes no money?

i have found that the best shops have a variety of items for sims to purchase. Even my rsstaurants have things my sims can purchase like champagne, small statues, take-out meals, paintings, etc. However, I also don't allow my sims to have a restaurant until after they have another retail business at rank 7 or higher. Restaurants are just for variety for playable sims, they can keep a few meals in their inventories without needing to cook or have high cooking skills.

All my retail shops make more than 20000 per day. Even my candle/lighting shop makes a ton of money although it has a lot of low-cost items to sell. Never make your sim sell only small stuff. Throw in one or two expensive electronics, or a couple expensive paintings, or rugs. Maybe even a few statues. Most importantly sell those items to your non-playables. My owners don't sell the low-cost items, only the expensive stuff when I play the stores. Non-playable salessims can sell the cheap stuff to the customers while I concentrate on making sure all customers walk out with at least one expensive item.

You can get a bigger hiring pool using christianlov's Easy Computer. I only hire sims with the Easy Computer so I can be sure to get the custom townies I created specifically to hire as employees.

I don't make my owners do all the work/jobs. I tried doing it that way and there were many customer complaints and it took forever for the business to get higher ranks. If you have a couple expensive items in the store, sell them to pay for the employee salaries. Do the math and make that your minimum goal per day. Concentrate on those sales and it is actually very very easy to do. My current hood has nearly 30 successful businesses.

I was thinking about giving something like that a try...have a Sim earn a talent badge in pottery, robotics, or something like that, then open up a shop.

I just broke down and installed OFB, I hadn't been interested enough before. It is totally kicking my butt! It's been a while since I thought something in the game was really hard. I had a couple who just sent their last child off to University. The Mom is at the top of the natural science career so she only works one day a week. I was kind of at a loose end with what to do with her all day so I thought a home business would be a good idea plus the family is loaded so I didn't care if it made money or not. She's pretty skilled so I thought it would easy enough, yeah right.

I thought it would be fun to have her learn a craft so I got her the florist station and turned a ground floor room into a little shop. I don't think she has slept since she opened the shop. She is either chugging "pepper punch" or using the aspiration reward that maxs all motives. I don't think of this as cheating as they had to work to earn both those options.

She runs the shop during the day and then has to make all the flora arrangements to sell the next day. The place is a mad house and I can't imagine what those townies are going to do with all those flowers they keep buying.

I cannot imagine trying to run a business with an unskilled or poor Sim and if they still had kids I can only imagine the mayhem that would occur.

Loads of fun, glad I finally installed it. Lot's of useful info in this thread can't wait to try it.

Clashfan, why not get her to purchase a community lot instead - it takes a lot of the stress out of trying to run a business while also attending to home domestic stuff (unless the sim lives alone or has a lot of time on their hands). Also if you get her to operate her business at a community lot, it is treated as "free time", exactly like community lots, so when she comes back home time will not have moved on.

My first attempt at a home business was this poor woman who lived alone on a tiny plot who decided to turn the end of it into a small pet shop. I had no idea what I was doing - didn't even install a cash register so although she was making "sales" there was nowhere for customers to go pay for the items! lol. I was so focused on her trying to keep up with the business I forgot about her motives and she died of hunger! All the customers just sighed and moved along!

(PS - I didn't save the game so at least her life was spared!)

^
Jodemilo: I think I will try a community lot, I thought a home business would be easier. (Ha, famous last words of many an entrepreneur!) I dislike her missing out on her family life, the poor husband doesn't know what to do with himself. He's just milling about and constantly has the want to fire her one employee.

If you want to sell crafted objects, my Prima guide gives the following advice:

Crafted objects--Skills that accelerate:

Robotics--Mechanical
Toys--Mechanical
Flowers--Creative (Playful)
Register--Logic (Serious)
Sales--Charisma (Outgoing)
Restocking--Body (Active)
Cosmetics--Cleaning (Neat)

I'm going to start out with a nightclub, though. Hire a barista, a DJ, and a bartender.

Right now in my BACC, I have my founder and his wife running a Farmer's Market and a restaurant. The Farmer's Market is the newest and it makes a lot of money despite having a ton of employees tending the enormous garden in the back. The restaurant is level 5 and makes a decent profit but it's not my highest grossing business. My highest grossing in the town is the Lillard family's electronics/game store. My highest grossing EVER would have to be Blair Montgomery's art store in my last legacy. It could be counted on to bring in $20k a day once it reached level 10.

I just had a Sim open a small nightclub in Desiderata Valley. So far everything's in the green. Admission is cheap (a little above wholesale) and it has a huge TV, vending machines (I have Apartment Life), bathrooms that have showers, espresso--basically Sims can have fun and still take care of their Needs (they don't have to run home to get a shower, for example). I have a break room that can only be accessed by household and employees.

My Sim has maximum Charisma skill (thanks to SimPE) and that's really helping him with his Sales Talent Badge. I made sure to hire a very creative Sim as the DJ, as I find that higher Creativity skill means you don't fumble with the records on the DJ booth as much.

Well my Sims little florist shop out of her home has turned into a large floral/gardening emporium. Really had fun building it and deciding what she would sell beyond the floral displays. She got lucky and had the option to hire a couple of YA playables on her first day open. I had read about the snapdragon arrangements but I didn't really think about that when choosing the first type of shop I would try. They do give a big help to keeping the employee's happy and productive.

Business is thriving and those townies snap up anything she can slap a price tag on. I can only imagine what their inventories must look like! Too fun!

I'm doing venues at the moment. Maybe I can have my Sims' daughter get a florist talent badge or something. They live in the Tech Terrace apartments, so that's how they were able to afford a nightclub.

I have a question about pet shops or having your sim be a breeder. What happens to the animals that the townies buy? Let's say a townie buys 4 or 5 pets at your store and then you later integrate that townie into a family, do they come with all those pets? Same thing if you breed dogs or cats and then sell them, what happens to them? I'm a wee bit oversensitive on the subject of animals, yes I know they're only pixels, and don't like the thought of them either not existing or becoming strays.

I should imagine they would although not sure how it would work as technically dogs and cats are classed as sims (whereas parrots and the wormrats are sort of disposable, like animated objects - once they die they just die.)

I've never done pet shop businesses for the same reason as you clashfan, I don't like the idea of having tons of animals being bought and lurking around in someone's inventory until you actually make them playable. Also unnecessary unwanted sims in my opinion.

The only experience I had of a sim buying a pet at a shop was this: one of my playable sims was visiting a community lot (which happened to have a pet store - it was a shopping mall I'd downloaded and was just trying out for a bit). I was playing another sim while she was visiting. When I eventually went into her household to play her family I had a message saying "great, it looks like one of your sims has bought a pet... now you need a bowl... "etc, etc, and I thought "huh? what has she been buying without my consent?" It turned out to be this plug-ugly dog. No way was I letting her keep it so I got the Adoption Centre to pick him up.

That's another reason why I don't do pet stores. I like to control who owns pets in my hood - generally only tend to give animals to sims with the "nature" hobby interest anyway.

^
I hadn't even thought about them increasing the number of Sims but that is a very good point. I don't think I'll be trying the pet shop angle of things unless they just sell stuff for pets. I guess you could set on up like a Petco where you only sell pet related items plus fish, birds and womrats. I don't see that being very profitable unless you really go the the Petco route and make everything ridiculously expensive.

I've only ever had a couple of pets breed once. The family had a couple of cats and they had kittens and then gave them to their grown adult children. It was lovely but I quickly realized that breeding them would either over run the family with pets or the offspring would be sold to townies never to be seen again. Since I can't even let a pet die I couldn't bear the thought of little puppies or kittens being trapped in townie space never to have life. Did I mention I was oversensitive on this subject?

LOL, me too! I probably treat my sim doggies and kitties better than I do the babies/toddlers (always trying to make sure I'm aware of their needs/motives). I once had quite a large family breed their two bernese mountain dogs - they produced two cute little pups and I thought "oh, let's play these for a while - puppies are fun!". It soon became pretty chaotic what with two adults and 4 kids in the family plus 4 dogs. The hallway was cluttered with dog beds, bones, dishes - you name it! Plus the poor lil mites couldn't get down the stairs to go and pee unless someone carried them. It was just too much stress! lol

Unfortunately my game corrupted so I had to revert to a previous backup (before the dogs had bred) so this time I got them to have the pups and then immediately donated them to relatives before I could get attached to them. Even that was a bit heartbreaking splitting them all up, especially when I saw the puppies playing with each other. *sobs*

Oops - got off-topic there... sorry!

I believe the pets sold to townies from the OFB display never generate as part of the population. If you sell a pet your Sims have actually bred, the pet is a character in the game: adult pets sold this way definitely become strays. I'm not sure exactly what happens to puppies and kittens, since the game doesn't have a concept of a puppy or kitten as stray.

Yet another question about business's. If your running a bakery and selling crafted food under the "make many" option you can only make desserts as group meals. If you also display them as single plates for sale you can't restock them unless you also have the single servings in the owner's inventory. The only way I've been able to do this is by having one of the Sims grab a plate then canceling the action. I then manually put them into the inventory.

Is there an easier way to do this? Am I missing something?

I'm not sure there's any way around this. I don't have a bakery business yet in my game but I do have a fish, fruit and veg store. Items that have been made, harvested, or fished (ie, not available in Buy mode) can only be restocked if they are in the business owner's inventory.

Theres a hack for that :D
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=235721

Aahhh, that's very useful... downloading it now. Thanks punchlines.

For my Sim Builders Challenge, I set up a really easy business. (It was actually the first business I ever had in the Sims, so I was really experiencing the core part of OFB for the very first time. ) It was basically a small video arcade/pool hall with karaoke. It never closed: townies just cruised in, paid the ticket machine and shot pool or sang or whatever and then cruised out when they were done. Even when the owners were asleep or at work, the business basically ran itself and got all the way up to Rank 6 before I closed it down. My Sims were reaching the top of their respective careers and earing more than a thousand simoleons a day, so they didn't need the arcade anymore.

Brilliant! Thanks so much for posting the link. :lovestruc

In my game, I found that Salons and furniture stores get the most money :]