So, I recently started playing businesses (despite having OFB since it was initially released, but I never really got that much into it). I'm currently starting with the premade families who own businesses but I do plan to make most of the Megahood businesses Sim-owned at some point. Now my question is, how to get businesses to gain rating and make a solid profit, enough to fund the family and employees?

Now, I'm not looking to do any of the unusual businesses, just the normal ones - shop, beauty salon, bakery, restaurant, etc. I think the ones with the ticket machine is pretty straight-forward: build a lot with many motive-satisfying objects, and charge money for it. Right? But what about the others, especially if you're starting on low money and low/none badges? I played the bakery for a whole Sim day and managed to sell ONE cake.

So, how do you play your businesses to make them profitable for the family, especially starting out with low funds? I have some Sims who want 5 top-level businesses and frankly even one sounds impossible for me

If you don't mind the missing pictures here is my bakery tutorial: http://joandsarah.livejournal.com/tag/tutorial scroll down. A bakery can be easy or quite hard and then like I say in the tutorial is the ridiculous-aka The Bluewater Bakery. It was obviously designed by someone who hadn't a clue. Don't play it as is. Also all the cakes you sell will be bad, so that cake if it came with the place will be off if a playable bought it.

One of the best ways to gain stars is through basic sell. If a customer likes it line up a couple more with them. Often that will give you a star. If they don't like it don't try them again.
If a sim stands looking lost go sell. may i help you. Again may result in a star.
Sims having a good time, might also through you a star. It helps to sell to friends.

use a mod to stop them complaining at the mess as it's unrealistic. They will complain about their own litter not twos seconds after they dropped it.

If you want to achive the LTW without buying 5 businesses, you can buy bring it up to ten stars and let it drop back to 9 and do that 5 times over.

Just start small. Don't try and start with a massive business.

For shops you want to start with one shelf or perhaps even items placed on the ground. Mix crafted items and items from the catalogue. If you want to use only crafted items or baked goods, have at least 20 in your inventory before you start, although I've started businesses with only four or five items before.

Get about 5 or 6 maximum items on your shelf or hanging around to begin with. Make sure your business owner is in a good mood. Open the business. When the first person comes, queue up a positive interaction or two, one which is unlikely to fail such as Joke, perhaps Admire (not all sims like being Admired by a stranger). When you see someone with the buy bar above their head, go up to them and do "Basic Sell". It will get a positive or negative reaction. Positive, you can do it again, or insert a Joke/Admire. Negative, leave them alone. You can, again, Joke, but don't try selling. Some customers hate pushy salespeople. As Jo says, if you have a relationship with a customer you can sell to them more easily too. As you get better Sales badges, you can change your approach: Start with Basic Sell. If the reaction is negative, bring it back by using Offer At.... If it's positive, use Hard Sell. If positive again you can use Dazzle. Or just use Dazzle always, if you have a gold badge, it almost always works.

As soon as someone queues up, click on the cash register and select "Ring up these customers". When your items are sold out, restock or if you have no stock left, close the business to give you chance to replenish. If your shelves are empty before you can restock them, close the business. Make tills your first priority, restocking second, sales and relationship third.

When you make more money, slowly increase the range of items. As customers start to stay longer, make sure you have facilities (food/toilets/fun) to make them stay longer. When you're struggling to keep up with the flow of customers, hire someone. My recommendation for a first staff member to employ would be a salesperson. Then you can concentrate on tills and restocking. You can jump on and off tills for a good while, so you don't want to hire someone for that until later, as it's annoying having to keep reassigning them all the time. When you have a near-constant queue, hire a till monkey. So the second person to employ will be a restocker or a till person. You can also reassign your salesperson to restocking to allow them to gain multiple badges and get closer to Management.

I recommend the mod which makes cashiering easier to learn - it's really not that hard to pick up. But yeah. Go slowly and start small and don't try to do too much at once. You can stick empty shelves into inventory to save them for later. It's better to have a huge empty shop than lots of restock signs.

Whenever starting a new hood the first business I start is the J'Adore Bakery. And like Jo said, you will need to do some remodeling on it. First thing I do when entering the Jacquet family home is add a garden. Anything will do, as long as it adds fresh food to the fridge. As long as there is fresh food, you won't have to buy groceries. Everything baked and sold is all profit. I generally plant Sun & Moon's Wild Berry Bushes found here http://www.medievalsims.com/forums/...hp?f=240&t=6599 . They are ready to harvest as soon as they are planted, no need waiting for the first harvest. Foods baked with fresh food is sparkly and sell for even more profit.

I usually have Denise watching the cooking channel (To build cooking skills) while Gilbert harvest the berries and stocks the fridge. Gilbert then joins Denise to watch the cooking channel. And Denise moves on into the kitchen to bake. Denise starts out with the foods that do not need to be prepared. (Jello, and so forth.) I always have her make at least 5 dishes of the item (for restocking). All bake goods are switched from Denise's inventory to Gilbert's inventory. Usually all this takes at least a sims day with the help of the sim blender on motives. (I only cheat to get the baked goods ready.) Gilbert has lost a day at the bakery, but this usually can be remedied the first or second day at the bakery.

Opening Day at the bakery. I send Gilbert and Denise to the bakery. I remodel the bakery by taking out everything in the kitchen and making it into an office\break area. Since the cooking is done at home, no need to hire a cook. (Saves money for the bakery.) I remove all food from the display cases and delete them. I restock with the fresh bake goods Denise prepared. Set price on all new bake goods. Then I add one of these: Bread and Roll Food Displays http://modthesims.info/d/229471 . Still looks like a bakery but customers can actually purchase groceries if they need them at home. Denise is then placed as cashier while Gilbert opens the business and greets customers. He will also restock when needed.

I run my deli, sub shop, and soup kitchen the same way.

As customers enter the business the first interaction the owner should do is greet the customer. Positive interaction. Everything else simsfreq mentioned should follow the greeting.

My recommendation: start with grocery store first. Just that you get feeling how it goes.

Use small place with no stairs and have enough empty space around cash register.

For the normal customers that look at an item use sell interaction. For customer who just stand around use "Show Item To" interaction.
Apartment Life changed things so that a customer needed to be greeted before the "show item to" social interaction was available. Useful fix http://www.simwardrobe.com/ >Fixes>Apartment Life Fixes.

Occasionally customer stand there looking around on the spot with an item in a thought bubble above their head. Go up to any customers doing this and say May I help you? This will earn a lot of customer loyalty for that customer.

Sell items to reporter for good review.
Place First Simoleon Award on the wall for small sales boost. Place Best of the Best Award in the middle of lots of for sale items and the customers will be much more inclined to buy it.

Interactions with customers are imporatant. I find the quickest positive social interactions are apartment life greetings - useful for unknown customers - and Appreciate - Admire for known ones.

If you are on low funds grab Cash Perks or Wholesale Perks first for earned business perks .
If you sell business back to the community you will be made a profit, even if your businesses have low rank.

Some strategies depend on your playstyle. If you send sims to community lots a lot, or are playing a closed economy in which everything has to be bought in a store rather than from the catalog, you will probably find that you need somebody at the register at all times; so hiring someone to Be Cashier takes precedence over hiring a salesman.

Visiting businesses from other households has its benefits and its problems. All employees will show up and be paid on the hour, so if you have a lot of employees and the visitor stays awhile it can cost you. On the other hand, badges get built during that time, so patronizing a new business can really help the owner and any employees out in learning their skills. Also, if the employees are playables, the wages for those visits will be transferred to them, in addition to their daily pay when their household is played. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing will vary with how you want that playable's life to work.

Don't stock anything you aren't willing to find in your sims' inventories - unless you use a mod that will restrict the buying behavior of playables. I like seeing what they bought and interpreting it, myself. When Junior Mann started stocking deco condom boxes in the General Store, suddenly everyone started turning up with them. Which is just appropriate as all get out in that hood!

If you want a place to be primarily a beauty salon, where your sims go for makeovers, don't stock a lot of other things as well until you can hire a stylist. If the owner is busy selling, restocking, and ringing up other merchandise, she may not get to the makeover chair when you want her to.

Cheap things sell faster than expensive things, so if you start "ridiculously cheap" and then increase the price when business is good, expect a temporary slowdown.

It is possible in a venue business to let someone in for free. If you have a sim who is a good people connector - the mother of a large family, the popularity sim who's friends with everybody - it can be worth your while to make this a permanent arrangement. That sim will hang around a lot, generating stars, and her friends who come in will have a better time, and stay longer, with less trouble to the owner, than they otherwise would.

Make sure your salesmen have nice points. Grouchy sims are terrors on the sales floor! Which can be funny, but isn't profitable.

Work your family. Go in with family members and assign them jobs instead of calling in employees. They work for free and get valuable experience.

I don't employ any salespeople in shops until a shop is popular enough to have 4 customers simultaneously, or 3 customers plus a queue, or 3 customers plus otherwise-empty shelves (assuming the business owner lives alone). Otherwise, it is little trouble for an owner to flit between the different tasks that need doing. Alternatively, alternate impressing a customer with till/stocking work at need. Start with 3 items to ensure employee recruitment is under your control, then expand as you gain confidence and your Sim gains skill and money.

Once you do hire someone, hire for what you need now, then for what you might need later - unless you literally just need extra feet on the floor, in which case aim for the cheapest Sims there are. Employees with skills you never plan to use (especially badges) will cost you money you needn't spend every single hour they work. Note that managers (who are rarely hireable from the anonymous employee pool on the phone) can count any badge towards their managerial ability and that 5 "levels" are all that is needed - so that Sim with a Gold badge in in Fishing and a Silver in Cosmetology will be just as good a manager of a disco with attached party frock shop as someone who has Gold badges in Sewing, Sales, Cashiering and Restocking.

Start with cheaper items and sell at a reasonable profit. Unless you want to be really extravagant and sell bowling alleys at profit, in which case feel free to buy several and stick them on your lawn (this is still the most successful business I've ever had). Sufficiently enthused customers don't care if they are getting wet during the sale as long as the deal is good - and if you are reasonably quick in doing the sale, they won't mind getting a little hot or cold either.

If you allow pets onto the sales floor for their cute factor, make sure they've access to their favourite food, toilet areas and scratch/chew things. Cats will get enough play from customers, but nobody likes the mewling of hungry animals, and you don't want your nice shop floor to become a toilet.

If you have a salon and are a sole trader, consider getting a good salesperson or cosmetologist straight away, otherwise you may struggle to juggle the tasks.

Wait until you know what you are doing before starting a restaurant, as these are often the trickiest ones to master. I gather these are rather satisfying if you do figure them out, but it is less fun if you don't know what you're doing or your Sim routinely insults people and burns mac and cheese.

You don't need every recolour of an item on the shop floor... ...but it can make the place prettier if you have a few and help with customers demanding more popular items before you can justify a permanent restockist.

And finally... always remember to turn off your bandatron before starting a wild party. Children's birthday party guests don't expect to pay $35 a head per hour of fun at a friend's house.. They just don't.

By the way, business at Leslie's Love Shack started booming when she started bringing Enola in! Visitors love a store cat. They'll bring their own animals in, too, if you have a pet on the lot, so a pet bowl with a larger-than-usual capacity is a good idea!

Make sure you have lots of room in front of the cash register. Shoppers can block people from the register, causing delays and star loss even with a good cashier.

A snap dragon by the cash register will help an employee a lot, but apart from that I allow them in my hospital rooms only as they make things way too easy. I got into that rut with my legacy and having too many snap dragons around and realized I had nothing to do as they kept their motives high without help. One by a work bench is okay too as that helps them stand and make items. Otherwise be wary of using them in normal houses unless sim is sick or doing something very taxing like the robot workbench..

Thank you everyone for replies! That's a lot of helpful tips right there

That bakery really seems the toughest one of the premade businesses. I like Ramirez's furniture shop, it's easy enough to manage, especially with one employee (went up 2 or 3 levels in one day, no cheats or snapdragons). I also tried Malcolm Landgraab's technology store and it went up 1 level I think, but it was pretty hard to do, and the profit of that day was very small, but at least it was a profit. The bakery, though, just keeps making a loss. I guess I have to rethink their business model as it's clearly not working.

Does anyone know of any tutorials on how to make a restaurant, or is willing to write a short one? I thought some of the Monty family members might want to have a restaurant as they are all chefs. But I have no idea how to go about it, what does a restaurant even need? How many Sims (family + employees) are required to keep it up? Can you have a restaurant as a home business (this is probably a really dumb question but I never actually tried building one)?

I had one, it was on the exchange. I think it got saved by someone at the old Boolprop forums to clock watching. Grammar, spelling etc all pretty bad. My attempt at humor just as bad. You can read it if you want. http://clockwatching.net/~jack/s2/reader/ There's a lot to wade through on there and I don't think it's with my other old stories. I could be wrong. It's called Restaurant Rescue.

A restaurant is the hardest business to run. Once you know what you are doing you can run it with 3 people. One as chief, one as host and one as server. basically, set the menu to the cooks cooking skill level, sims are just as happy to eat sandwiches as they are lobster so long as nothing comes out burnt. Assign your chief, assign your server. You might also like someone on sales. Right now I run my Lighthouse Restaurant with a married couple and one hired playable as server. If the server has some body points all the better as they are less likely to drop food on your customers.

Thanks!

Another question that's probably really silly, but does having a salon (with the salon chair) require a cash register? Or just the chair?

Just the chair. You'll only need a cash register if you decide to sell other items, such as hair product clutter or clothing, as well.

Thank you for your fast answer I think one of the Capp households in my game are going for a home salon now :D

With the chair you must click the chair and have your sim set as stylist, do not also have them try and sell or they are no longer stylist. You need another sim to sell.