So, i just made a really awesome business... but i don't think it's going very well.
Here is a rundown of what i did:
I have a family of four sisters. The business is a home business in the Sultans of Bling palace. Basically, the opening room is a shop selling potion bottles and lamps, then there is a restaurant on the side complete with five two seater tables, kitchen, bar, and a lounge area with a pool table, karaoke machine, etc. Then upstairs is a spa with a hot tub, three massage tables and four make over chairs.
I want to be able to make it into a resort/hotel so i made two rooms with some twin beds (but i'm more concerned with getting the other stuff to work first).
My first question: i used the changelotzoning community cheat to be able to place the chef stove with the built in chef, and it took away the business tracker! What's up with that?
Second: my sims are total idiots. I've only been able to successfully seat one customer and the chef burned her pancakes, which i would think is a pretty basic meal choice lol. Does the NPC chef spawned by the oven reallly low level or something? How can i fix that? I took away all food items from the menu that had a skill level over two blue squares, so maybe that will help?
Next, i also have a ticket machine on the lot so that they can come use the hot tubs and stuff, but not one single NPC goes upstairs to the spa area (even though i have the two sisters waiting beside the chairs and tables "being" a stylist and masseuse) They also don't use any of the items in the lounge areas, or even sit on the sofas and stuff.
As far as the shop goes, one sim did come to stare confusedly at a lamp on the front counter for like ten minutes. My sim tried to sell it to her, but she just looked really dumb and walked away xP
Also, i got roaches on the lot, so when i tried to call the exterminator, the Services option wasn't there. So i figured it was because the lot had been switched to community and maybe you can't call services on a community lot, so i switched it back and they agreed to come in the morning. Which is totally fine, but is switching back and forth going to be a problem? When i am switched to residential lot will sims still be able to come to the restaurant?
And last, with the hotel thing, i read that it isn't possible to open a hotel with OFB. So in community lot buy mode i bought the concierge desk and a hotel door for one of the rooms just to test it, and when i clicked on the desk it said No Interactions Available. Do i just need to scrap the hotel part of the business?
Oh and actually one more thing. When my sims are working, their needs decay and since the place is really big, rather than waste time having them walk around, i turn off Free Willl and just use maxmotives when there aren't any NPCs around, because i am afraid if i maxmotives with NPCs present, their needs will also max which will make it pointless for them to be there and they will leave... will that happen?
Ok sorry for all the questions, thank you for reading =D

Oh and also (ugh lol) whenever ANY NPC enters the lot, they ALWAYS come in through the back kitchen door, which i placed there for easy access to the outdoor grill (which maybe i should delete since i have the chef oven?) Is there a reason why they refuse to enter through the actual main entrance?

Wow, uh.. alright, I don't even know where to start and by the time I'm done writing, 5 people will probably have written the exact same points and explained them in much simpler (and shorter) ways.

First of all, your best chance of getting all of those things to work is to turn the lot into a hotel. Same kind that comes with Bon Voyage. It is technically possible to run it as a community lot while keeping the hotel aspect intact (as I have understood it from a few other threads here), but it would require a lot of mods and hacks. Except I'm not even sure you can have a hotel in a regular neighborhood, now that I think of it... It's generally always difficult to make a huge lot with many different functions and businesses run perfectly.

Second of all, what chef stove are you talking about? If it's the yellow/orange/metal grey one that came with University, that would explain it. The chef stove you're supposed to be using doesn't spawn a chef, you have to hire an employee and assign them as a chef, same as you would hire a salesman or a waiter. Also, make sure that the sim's cooking skill is high. More skill, less burning, same as any other sim.

Customers are highly unlikely to use leisure items if there are businesses on your lot, such as a restaurant or a store. All except a few select elders (in my game, at least). They will hardly ever come in to buy anything. They will just socialize with the staff and each other, play dart, watch TV, dance to music, drink coffee and whatever else the place has to offer.

I'm actually not entirely sure about the hotel thing you got going on. I must admit, I've never tried to make a hotel. Let alone a hotel/community lot crossover.

It is best for your customers to be hungry, yes. And free will only applies to the sims you are controlling, not your employees (since it sounds like you believe it will change their behavior).

As for the entrance thing, that is always tricky for me as well. I have the same problem on residential lots, where visitors and NPC's will ring the non-existing doorbell by my garage or a backdoor, instead of going to the door that's closest to the sidewalk.

I did download a fix for it that improved it, but didn't remove it. They no longer consider the garage door an entrance, but they still sometimes waltz to the backdoor instead of the front.

I hope I covered everything here (except for the hotel question) and I will probably notice 20 typos after posting this, but HEY. The edit button is there for a reason!

Edit: Huzzah! First to post!

For a business to succeed, you need to emphasize ONE money-making activity and ensure that all your customers are involved in it, their behavior really isn't designed to handle anything else.

If you want to run a restaurant, I suggest downloading the hungerator at www.simwardrobe.com (it's under business facilitators) at a minimum, and if that doesn't work, you can cut your labor expenses with this mod: http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,7674.0.html

If you want to run a store or bandatron business, it's pretty straightforward. You just really need to pick one business model and stick with it.

It is possible to have several business on one lot, it's just difficult to make it run smoothly as the customers will tend to focus on whatever business is the closest to their portal.

In my case, my mega-lots have been for the purpose of playable sims, rather than business management. I would make them so that I could go there with my playables and have a nice spa day, a meal, buy some shampoo products and perfumes all on the same lot. But yes, it's very difficult to actually play that lot as the owner and make it rise in ranks. No one would use my massage tables or hair salon chairs unless I directed an employee/playable to offer one directly to a specific customer.

Changing the lot zoning should never be done with sims on the lot for these kind of reasons. You could corrupt your hood as well.

So some other points:

1. Pick one kind of business, as the others have said! Your lot focus is too broad, not only is that a pain to manage, your sims are totally confused - they are just pixels and code and you've given them too many things advertising at once. Make a store selling goods OR services, OR a restaurant OR a bandatron based business. Not all four things at once.

2. Restaurants can only be run on owned business lots, and they're buggy and frustrating. You need the OFB stove (it's two tiles, white and has cookbooks on it) and a fridge, probably a counter too. You also need a host podium and at least one table and chair or island counter and chair. You need three or four sims to run a restaurant, a cook, a waiter and a host. Sims will eat and leave. If you want them to stay around and do other things, use the Hotel Podium at simlogical.

3. If you don't run a restaurant you need some way for sims to eat so they stay longer. You have four options: Grills outside, vending machines, the portable "diner" which came with AL, I think, or using the Shiny Tyme dorm stove, which you'll want to grab the mod to make it spawn a dorm cook. If you have a restaurant, don't buy any of these other food items!

4. With a service-based store business, makeovers, massage chair etc, you need to have that be pretty much the only thing and have a sim assigned to it AND a sim assigned to sales.

5. I don't have BV so I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure that a hotel lot has to be a hotel lot, not a community or residential lot. Again, too many things! If you want to experiment with hotels, build a lot which is just a hotel and see what you can do with it.

You can get the same results with lots and lots of snapdragon bouquets if you place them right

Wow, that's super ambitious to start with such a huge business and the hardest one at that-a restaurant. I haven't read the other replies so sorry if this is a repeat.

1.
You will need one person on restocking, one on the cash register and one selling. Or one person can do both selling and restocking but with such a large place things will run more smoothly if you don't have to baby sit a bunch of sims every second.

2.
You will need a chef who has the skills to cook what you have on your menu. You need at least one server, one host and one bar tender.

3.
To have sims sleep there you will need to make them selectable and tell them to sleep in a bed. If you use the UNI door you can tell them to 'take' the door and then they can lock it.

4. You never change a lots zoning while sims are on the lot.

5.
No the spawned chef there should be no different to the one at an community lot restaurant, it was probably bad luck.

6. Sims are coded to do certain things first and since there is a restaurant they are probably going there first and when finished eating leave. A better set up would be to use the games buffect table or the pay buffet from sim wardrobe. Guests pay for each plate of food they grab and you don't have to worry about running a restaurant. You just need a sim to clean it up when it goes bad or at set times of the day.

7.The stylist chair has very low coding so generally if there is anything else on the lot sims will rarely go look at it.

8. To keep your bin from being kicked fence it in on three sides. Again-do not change zoning with sims living on the lot you can bugger up your lot.

9. The doors work fine on a residential lot as private doors. You cannot run a proper hotel, but you can make them sleep and if they have bought a ticket they will continue to pay while they stay.

10.If you max motives you are also maxing the townies needs and they will have little need to relax or do things. You can raise selected sims motives with the sim blender.

11. Did you place the back door last, sometimes see the last door placed as the front door. You can also trying making the front door more expensive.

There is also a fix at www.simwardrobe.com that allows you to sell massages. Otherwise the massage tables are pretty pointless.

You can't run a BV hotel as an owned business. You can't even make one work outside a vacation neighbourhood.

Wow!! Thanks SO much for all your help guys!! I am going to take a break for a day or so and then come back to it and decide exactly what to ditch and what to keep and improve because it sounds like i just have way too much going on. I didn't think about the fact that just because i have enough room for everything doesn't mean i should actually do it all lol. I know literally NOTHING about "sim code" or anything like that. I mostly just download custom content and i don't think i have many actual mods.
Also just in case it matters, the neighborhood i made the lot in is a custom neighborhood.. i'm not sure if that makes a difference or not.
Anyway you guys are freakin awesome lol thank you so much for helping me get it all in perspective. I love the game but it can get overwhelming especially for people like me who don't really know all the inner workings of the game codes and stuff like that. If anyone has any more advice or ideas please feel free to keep posting them cuz everything helps. i will probably check back on this thread tonight or tomorrow and let you guys know what i decide to do with the lot, if that's cool Thanks again!!!

Just as a general rule of thumb, it's a good idea, when first doing something, to keep your experiments simple! One thing at a time, master it before you move on to something else; or, if you absolutely have to try all the toys at once, one per household.

The neighborhood you're in shouldn't matter (as long as it isn't in a University or vacation subhood; I think YAs can buy community lots in university subhoods, but only YAs can go there and once they graduated it'd become a problem). All neighborhoods work the same.

If you grab the business selector from MATY on that is an area to set your business type. So if you really want it to be a restaurant you can set it as a restaurant on the selector and the sims who arrive will be hungry. if you want food to be secondary but for sims to use fun items you can set it for entertainment and they arrive with low fun. You can also select the type of sim who arrives, so if you want it to be an exclusive club for supernaturals or a ladies retreat it can be. I do find that aspect on the business controller a little hard to use so I often use the visitor controller instead.

Everyone gave you some excellent advice. The only thing I can add is, if you try all the above suggestions and they still enter via the back door, have the owner lock the back door. Use the option "household only" or "employees only." The back door will no longer be an option for visitors.

I got really tired of my customers wanting to talk to my cashiers, so now all my business owners have an office that leads to the cashier area. The owner locks his office door to "Employees only," so now my visitors can not get behind the counter to talk to my cashiers.

I used to have a locked door to the cash register as well, to prevent sims from talking to my employees. I don't have that problem anymore though, I think I downloaded a fix for it at some point (have so many hacks and mods, I can't keep track anymore).

As for locking the back door, that usually doesn't work (at least not in my experience), because NPC's will ignore locked doors when being 'forced' to enter or exit the lot. Like the social worker. It could be worth a try anyway though. I can't see OP's customers' behavior, so I wouldn't know if they really do enter the lot through that door or if they simply arrive closer to that, than the front door. If it's the latter, locking it would work.

I just had to add that, so the OP wouldn't think something was wrong with his/her game, if the door-locking didn't work.

Sims tend to leave by the back door by walking through locked areas but there is a fix for that called 'shoppers respect privacy' by Boiling Oil.

@Thax I THINK it might be the latter because there is a path leading to the front courtyard, and the side kitchen door is the closest to where the open courtyard entrance is. Think of like an upside down U with the kitchen on the right and the door there at the end. The main entrance that i want them to use is in the middle. So i think that may be what you're talking about, i haven't loaded yet i wanted to check this thread again first but i will see if the locking thing works first cuz that might be the simplest fix for that problem.

This sounds like it might be really fun, thanks!! I will go look for it =D

Thanks so much for all your great advice!! you guys are super awesome!! I'm going to go grab stuff and load and figure everything out =D

Is it here? Do you have a link?

If you don't know MATY then you are probably playing without the critical fixes in place. MATY is short for More Awesome Than You, and arrogance aside Pescado made some of the critical fixes to stop the game blowing up.

You need to go get:
No Corrupt death:
No Unlink On delete:
The Lot Debugger (Bat Box)
Creature Fixes if you play with vampires at all:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s.../topic,7.0.html You need those at least

I would also highly recommend getting Boiling Oils No Sim Loaded: http://www.leefish.nl/mybb/thread-1665.html

The Customer selector is here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,5906.0.html

Whoa ok that's alot lol! I've heard of More Awesome Than You or rather seen the name floating around here. I'm a little nervous lol what do they all do! i guess i will just have to go find out =D thanks! Oh but i have one question about them.. The reason i haven't downloaded many (if any at all) mods, hacks, etc is because i am worried about not putting them in the right place or not installing them correctly.
I have the Sims2CPI and also the CEP and both seem to work fine in my game. (Well, when i load the main screen my custom content dialog has a list of items with little yellow triangles beside them but i haven't noticed any major issues with anything other than a couple of maxis overrides) So my question is when you download hacks and stuff like this then do you still just put them in the Downloads folder like anything else? Do you have to go back in and install them after extracting them like when you get lots and sims?
Sorry i have so many questions lol. I'm really glad you guys are here to help me though because i would probably be really lost otherwise!!

I wasn't saying get the whole list! Just the ones I mentioned above or any others that take your fancy. I just posted the hack directory as I think those MATY mods are all in there.

Inside your Download folder make a folder called mods and place your unzipped mods in there. if you plan on getting a good number of mods each mod should have it's own folder or be grouped together with like mods. For example if you get a food serving mod you might want to place it with other food mods. Go over the read me but disregard the nonsense in MATY readme's about computer breakage etc. That's there to scare people off. Also you do not have to join MATY to get those mods. I would advice not posting there unless you like verbal sparring. You should try and keep your downloads organized by having folders for different areas. When you download a mod make sure to read any installation instructions in case it needs something else like 'smarter EP check' or if it needs to load last and so on. Those MATY mods need nothing special and will all work together. I forget about BO's No Sim Loaded, but just read through carefully and it will say.

The yellow triangles simply alerts you to the fact that you have custom content and that is all, you can turn that screen off and save on loading time.

Ok whoaaa dude i am mega confused lol ok i found creaturefixes hiding amidst a tonnn of posts about um yellowpee...
Is there a certain page in this archive i should be looking at or something >.<

And lmfao ok yah i will definitely stay the he11 outta there then and stay here where people are nice =D And ok that sounds easy enough YAY now only to figure out exactly where the other ones you listed are located lol ^.^

Lol i'm a middle aged lady. They should be in alphabetical order, so No Corrupt Death is under N and so on.

if you have any trouble you can also ask BO, he's a nice guy even given the short hand of his screen name.