Hi everyone,

FYI: I'm using the Sims 2.

I recently built a beautiful little house with a living area on the second floor and a coffee shop on the first floor. I moved in my sim and had her use the phone to start a home business. However, when I went to find a restaurant podium, I couldn't find one in the buy mode! I looked online, and alas, it says you can't have restaurants on home lots. Is there any way around this? I considered using the cheats to change her lot to a community lot, but I was worried that it would mess up my game to have sims living on a community lot. What I'd really like is a hack that allows me to open a restaurant on a residential lot like any other home business.

Thank you!

How about this mod? http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=352602

With the chef stove, if you use that on a residential lot it will sporn a chef and a waiter and the podium will sporn a host. They will then stay there doing there job 24 hours per day. I tried it once and it got annoying very fast. They way I did that was to make the house and restaurant on a community lot, change the zoning to residential and moved a family in. That works but it really isn't any fun to play.

Another option for a home restaurant is to use the shiny time uni cooktop patch from simlogical. The cooktop then sporns a uni cafeteria worker. Downfall is it's really a cafeteria with uni food.

Another way and how I make my community lot coffee shop work is to use a combination of simwardrobe pay buffet tables so that sims get charged when they grab a plate, together with a simlogical pay door which charges them as they leave and a coffee bar. This way I have sim either eating or drinking coffee. I think they should be available to use on a residential lot.

Never change a lots zoning with sims living on the lot.

I really like that mod, and I've bookmarked it for later download (I don't like to download too many mods at once in case one of them causes a bug), but in this case, I want the sim to be able to run a home business, so it won't solve the problem. Thanks though!!

I forgot to mention to make the third way work better is to drop all the customers hunger bars when they arrive to make sure they want to sit and eat. You can use one of pescado's bushiness mods or the simblender or whatever other mod does a group of sims.

How so? What made it so annoying? Did the homeowner need to pay the chef, waiter, and host?

Why wasn't it any fund to play? That kind of sounds like what I want, actually. Can I make the homeowner in charge of the business or does it just kind of happen, as in the other mod that was suggested?

Glad I didn't!! Phew! :D

It's no fun because your playable sim has no roll in it. The sporned NPC's go through the actions and don't stop or leave-ever. If the place is open or shut makes no difference to them. You can't make them leave. That waiter will be drying glasses the chef cooking and that host talking on the podium phone constantly. Maybe you won't find it annoying but after a few days of seeing that non stop and hearing that old host talking it sure annoyed me. You don't pay them as they are sporned automated NPC's exactly the same as you see if you visit an unowned community restaurant lot. They don't know they are on a residential lot. There is also the possibility they won't sporn at all as I have heard that can happen and in that case the objects will sit there unusable.