I gave them two bars, a television (expensive model) and let a third sim cook food. Still, the patrons left water on the floor, threw plates everywhere, and nobody cleaned. For the first time since 2006, I achieved a minus three business rank! One patron has as much red opinion as he can muster. I allow the business to continue for laughs. it's also a social mixer for a small village.
EA why can't we build restaurants on home lots? did it break the universe in testing?

Did you hire a person and have their job be the command "tidy up"? that could clean up the place without too much input.

I've never tried running a restaurant on a home lot because they aren't profitable and are hell to play.

Ah, they're not so bad. Okay, it's awful if you're in it for the money, but I actually love having my Sim run a food shack at his home. Sure, I had to plop a vase on his dining room table to stop him from serving customers there, and okay, everyone started whining because his newspaper was a day-old and should be recycled. (Okay, that last one got really annoying, so I downloaded Squinge's No Complaining Customers.) But I find it all less tedious than having to send him to a separate lot to work at. And his wife can work on her articles or paintings.

The worst business I've ever tried was when I took over a mall my brother had made. It was cool, but at three stories high and with several outlet stores, the customers ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. They never managed to make a purchase, and would fling their bags down in fury, leaving the owner to refund them and go bankrupt.

-2 was the lowest I had a new business go as it was still rank o with one star and the bad witch caused a storm and the storm set a tree on fire and the customers dropped stars left and right. It's okay now, a rank 10 bowling ally and pool, but it had a rough start.

You can place a restaurant on a home lot, (Take an empty residential lot>change to community>place items>change back to residential>move in sims) but I doubt after seeing it in action that you would want it. The chef stove will spawn both a chef and a waiter or two and the host podium will spawn a host, those NPC's never leave and never stop working, so 24 hours a day even when the restaurant is closed you will see that host talk on the phone, the chief cook and the waiter clean glasses. I only managed to tolerate watching that for 3 days before it drove me bonkers. I guess if your lot is large and the restaurant is tucked to one side out of sight of the main house it might be okay, but it's not really fun to play.

@joandsarah77--So, is it a problem to zap the NPCs with Inge's teleporter cat? If so, too late for me. I did that, and they didn't come back once I had my Sim starting working. But I have no idea if that was a very bad thing to do or not, so I'm not going to recommend it.

Sorry for being off-topic with that, TortureTheNannies.

I've heard zapping them works for some people and for others the NPC's come right back again, so if it works for you, great. I don't think zapping them will hurt anything as they are still in your game and it should not damage their character file.

Phew, thanks for letting me know. They're still there, at other lots. I did it without thinking, or rather, I was thinking, "No, this is MY Sim's restaurant, go away!" But that's too bad it isn't always reliable for other players, because that must get very annoying with them buzzing around.

That's why that was my first and last attempt at a home restaurant.

When I first got Open for Business, I started a single sim and had her start a home business (and fulfill the 20 Woohoo want...>.>). She ran an antique store, which was a pretty cool concept, I thought, and there was a lot to use in the catalog for antiques.

Noob me didn't know that you could close the business. I just never noticed that there was an interaction on the sign. My sim was trying to hold down a regular job while she got on her feet, and every time she left the lot to go to work, or went to sleep, or was dating one of her lovers upstairs, the customers kept piling up at the till and giving me red stars. Then they'd throw their purchases on the ground and leave, and I was staring at the screen, yelling at them, "What do you expect?! It's the middle of the night! Come back in the morning!" I thought what you were supposed to do was hire someone else to manage the till when your playable was busy, but she couldn't afford to do that, and the store certainly wasn't making her any money! I think I ended up at a rank somewhere around negative three or five, but I couldn't swear to it. That was a long time ago.

I still remember that sim's name, though--Mirabelle Harcourt. Gosh, she was pretty. I think that whole experience might be the reason Open for Business is my least favorite EP. First impressions, you know? :P

I thought if you made a lot a business lot then the restaurant NPCs didn't spawn so you could put your own employees to work there?

I never knew you could get negative business rank lol.

On an owned community lot you can, but on a home lot the NPC's spawn.

it isn't negative rank, as that stays at 0, but your stars go down into the negatives. So instead of needing 3 or whatever stars to get to level 1, you have to climb back up to 0 stars and then gain 3 more.

Ah, another EA cock up. DX

I suppose you could just put a community restaurant right next to your house and pretend that it was part of the home.

[/QUOTE] I think that whole experience might be the reason Open for Business is my least favorite EP. First impressions, you know? :P[/QUOTE]

I agree with you there, since the entire point of Open for business was to have fun running businesses. The one thing my world's worst bar needs is the no complaining hack. Is that lesswhiny? Otherise I enjoy watching them fail.
Restaraunts get support. I grant the sims 100,000 simoleons and let them fail for three generations or until a huge fire kills a number of customers. The one thing that truely suceeds is the electronics business. Since EA is a software company, it makes sense to favor it. they want us to think electroics are the most fun things we can find. Maybe it is. Does anyone play in the back yard?

I was thinking of running a horse riding service as a home business one day, with Rebecca's animals. They're based off the NPC remote control car, I think, and Sims seem obsessed with riding them and petting them, just as obsessed as they are with electronic toys. Guess I'll see how it goes, charging them with the ticket machine so they can go play. It'll be better for them than buying out Malcolm's electronics store, right? :p

I've recently started using Pescado's Business Runs You and the Customer Controller and that's made such a difference to my enjoyment of Open For Business! If you run the business through the BRY controller, the sims actually work smarter. If you set a sim as a waiter and there's no one to serve, they'll automatically start cleaning things, for instance. The Customer Controller lets you set what type of business it is - if it's retail, sims arrive with low shopping needs, if it's restaurant sims arrive with low hunger, if it's entertainment sims arrive with low fun, etc. That really helps the business run smoother (and really, if you're not hungry, why would you go to a restaurant?).

I use the customer selector to set the business type, but I've never got the hang of the actual customer part so I use the visitor controller for that. I also have no complaining and employee don't take hit when told to get back to work. I always wondered what the heck the owner was doing yelling at them to get back to work! Sheesh I only want to say it nicely that break time was over. I have simlogical employee time tokens although it's been awhile since I used them as I try and keep most business family run, including Hire family Members. I also have other mods that effect things indirectly such as community lot time, skilling and sleep in beds, but those are the only business mods. I don't care for BRY. Right now I am trying Simlogical's restaurant podium which encourages customers to stay longer rather than be kicked out as soon as they have eaten as I have a bar and entertainment upstairs.