I just cant figure out how to have one! I've tried twice but it just wasn't working...

Is it even possible?
Any tips?

Define 'successful'. I don't think it's possible to have a restaurant be so successful that your sims can live of its earnings -- it's too intensive (in my experience) for that -- but it's certainly doable to have a functioning restaurant.

IME, the main problems are: it's staff intensive (even using family and not paying them you need a chef, a server, and a waiter/waitress, with possibly a second server and more wait staff as the place gets busier); time intensive (in the time it takes for a customer to decide to eat, be seated, and be given their food/pay for it, which gives $10-$75?, I could sell someone a 10k TV); and space intensive (no one ever comes in groups, so unless you plan to have a lot of playables dine out it's best to just have tons of one-tile tables with one chair, not to mention that time is taken up once a customer leaves cleaning up their plate).

By successful I meant making a decent amount of profit.

Every time I had one my money maker meter would always be red. I remember reading somewhere that you shouldn't really hire anyone at the beginning since its so slow so maybe that could make a tiny difference?

I never really tried to have any of my sims run a restaurant. I had Gilbert Jacquet run a somewhat successful strip club once, but not a restaurant.

Though it was kind of hard to manage it. Gilby kept autonomously went to get private dances from his workers. You'd think that would make it awkward, but meh.

If by successful you mean burnt the restaurant to the ground, then yes.

Nice, Frankokomando. lol

Seriously, I would suggest selling the restaurant and starting out with a smaller less complicated business. Once you get the hang of that and make enough money, then buy back the restaurant and try to run it. I refuse to even attempt running a restaurant at all because I have always read that it's very complicated. I had enough difficulty trying to run Malcolm Landgraab's night club. I only made him go in one day and his only employee ended up quitting. lol

Well, that would be a success in my book.

I don't usually hire anyone to start with - your sim will carry out all functions as required (with help). However, it can be hard work and is easier with two sims from the family doing it all at the beginning.

Of course it is, I've had at least five if not more.I do still have my very old restaurant rescue tutorial up on the exchange. Bad pictures, embarrassingly jokes and spelling side. Gah I thought I'd taken it down. *finds a paper bag to hide under* That aside it does contain some useful info if you want to take a look at it. http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/sto...user_id=1604938 Although scrap the part where I say wait up until about 3 stars to get help, I have done it with two sims but I must have been off my head. The best way to run a restaurant is as a family business. A couple with two teens is about right and if you have a servo or two it will nearly run itself.

Main points.
Use family members not hired staff for job positions. If you must hire pick the cheapest least skilled teen you can find and make them the host.
Make sure to set your menu to what the chef can actually cook! Sims are quite happy with jello and cereal. Also make sure that prices are low to start with. Otherwise they will send out burnt stuff and it can lose you stars.
Use servos
Use snap dragons
Make sure a server has body points or they will spill more food.
Don't use table centre pieces unless you have the hack that allows food to be placed in front of them
Use many smaller tables.
Make sure your sims have a back room to eat, bath and possibly sleep in. Open when motives are high.
If you have that darnable server glitch you can gain control of them again by calling to watch the TV. Otherwise cheat it. It is a glitch that was never fixed, just like the disappearing eyebrows.
You could always put on business hacks, like the ones from MATY but I never have. I like mine to be challenging.

I've never had a profitable one. Too much staff required, such that their salaries more than eat any profit made. OR, my chef would quit JUST when he/she got a decent amount of cooking points, which frustrated the hell out of me. *sigh* So...I gave up on them.

However, I'm thinking of giving it a shot again as a family-run thing, with therefore unpaid labor. I would think that would make it have a chance of being profitable. The thing that bugs me about them is that they don't have any expenses (i.e. you don't have to buy the food to be served), so they've always seemed kind of unrealistic. But then, maybe that's accounted for in the abysmally low profit margin.

Thanks for the tips, joandsarah! I will keep them in mind when I give the restaurant thing another shot. Especially the servo idea!

Ive had pretty successful restaurants. The highest level one may have been around 8. But I think the more high class/expensive the food are, the more money you'll make. I have a restaurant right now that uses lots of custom foods, but at the end of the day, they never make more than 100$. It just goes into the employee's pockets. Thats another thing, the less employees, the more money you can keep for your sim. I like doing family businesses where the household all pitch in. Ive been playing restaurants without servos, snap dragons, etc, so its not impossible!

ICad your chef probably quit because as they gained cooking points their wages dropped from being 'fair' when you first hired to 'low'. They get cranky if not fairly paid very quickly (More badly made EA code-The could complain first) and quit. Soon as you think an employee has gained some skill points and defiantly after gaining a badge you need to check their wages and put them up.

I didn't mean you had to have snap dragons, just those are a big help with running buisness especialy those with hired staff. Instead of going on break the snap dragon will keep their motives up.

I have, but I usually had a small bakery attached to them. I guess that's "cheating". My successful restaurant had more of a small cafe than a large eatery. And yes ... the more family members who get involved, the better!

I've messed with running a stand alone restaurant as a business a few times , but much prefer running combo restaurant bars/clubs. Those can be quite profitable and also enjoyable to run. I use the hotel podium here http://www.drealm.info/simlogical/s...s/Sims2_OFB.htm ( nothing to do with hotels, Inge named it prior to Bon Voyage) , this will keep sims from some of the annoying EA behaviors associated with restaurants ( eating , briefly milling about and then being seated again , chiefly) and works great in tandem with club/bar items. Fill up the non restaurant portion of your venue with a bar , dance area , pool tables , gaming tables , big screen tv's etc. Whatever theme/motif you wish to create. Charge by the hour.

In one of my neighborhoods I have a Playboy Club , including restaurant ( old sixties style , complete with bar , lounge , staff in bunny costumes , some gaming tables and lots of smoke filled rooms) , a Harem club , including restaurant ( middle Eastern motif, custom music , staff in Harem clothes and a hookah lounge (bubbleblower) , A Hooters with properly attired staff , a bar and some big screens for watching the games while you munch your wings( ya, I'm a guy and more than a bit of a pig, oink, oink) , and several other restaurant/club venues.

On a less sexist note , one could certainly create enterprises based on Chucky Cheese (for kids), ITZ (for teens) , and many other actual business models that are called restaurants but the food is of secondary importance. They abound. I definitely agree with joandsarah77 on hiring cheap/unskilled labor , although I always use a level 10 cooking skill chef ( if you even think about ordering jello in the Playboy club the bouncer will throw you out on your ear). Good luck!

That was the frustrating thing! I WAS good about giving them raises! Whenever they'd get a cooking point, they'd get a raise. Maybe it wasn't enough, but they were always already eating most of the profit, at the expense of having a decently-paid waitstaff, and I gave them what I could. Divas, all of them!

I usually fared better when I made the playable the chef and hired a host(ess), the function I usually set the playable to, but an NPC doesn't sell as well as a playable, so then there were fewer diners, and... Yeah, I just never found the right balance, I guess. Admittedly, I didn't try all that much. I gave up on restaurants fairly quickly. I'm hoping it'll work out better with playables on all of the staff positions except maybe waitstaff... (i.e. host(ess), bartender, chef.)

I may not have ever hired a chef, if they are that grumpy keep the job for your playables.

With hacks you can do anything. That one looks to be very useful. Without any buisness type hacks I found trying to run a nightclub with a ticket machine at the same time as a restaurant didn’t really work that well. I just swapped mine around so sometimes it was the restaurant and at other times -like when my playables were asleep or needed a break-it would be a nightclub/bar type venue.

I wish someone could make it so we could have ownable hotels, a hack like that would make my day.

I could not make the employees do any work. They acted as guests, they stood at the podium and waited to be served, then went home after some time.

Did you give them their assignments? Because if you don't, then they'll just stand there, yes, just like employees of other businesses. Otherwise...sounds like a glitch kind of thing.

ETA @joandsarah: Yeah, I had grumpy chefs. I'm thinking I was just doing it wrong...but then, the low-paid waitstaff didn't seem to get bugs up THEIR butts about their piddly wages. Maybe it was because they didn't get adequate break time...

Well if their emploee ball looked yellow then yes. We would get pretty grumpy after 8 hours cooking with no break.

I find that the secret to running a successful restaurant is to also sell food retail from the decrachill food counter thing. Not only do you make money from the normal restaurant patrons, but also from people just coming in to buy food to take home. It will mean hiring a chef just to make items for the food display but if you have a person on staff who has a silver sales badge you will be able to move enough product to turn a nice little profit.

I've had my sim do other businesses (Bakeries, salons, selling electronics, clubs) but eventually because of his LTW he's going to have to open up one of the restaurants downtown. xD

Thanks for all your tips everyone hopefully he wont fail so horribly Also can he hire family who doesn't live with him? Like lets say his mother who has high cooking skill and no job could he hire her? Would he have to call her on the community lot and then the option to hire would come up?

He can, but she won't be controllable and will want payment and breaks just as a townie would. I have the sister work as a checkout operator at one of my legacy family businesses, but I keep two snapdragons close by the till to keep her happy.

What a very familiar thread, lol.

Here was my diner, making a couple of thousands...per 24 hour cycles. The second post has tips I scribbled down at the time. The 5th post shows the diner. Everything is close together to get customer turn-over done quickly. that way, servers, the host, and chefs perpare the meals quickly.

After thinking about it, it seems very reasonable that profits for restaurant items would be cheap and difficult to make thousands of dollars from. Here's an example:

Say you were selling only a plate of salmon, and a customer came in to eat. Say also it takes a single customer 10 minutes minimum to read the list, be greeted, sit, order, eat.
= 6 customers per hour

Then let's say the salmon plate costs $8 to make. You mark-up the dish by 300% (sell it at $32 a plate):
= Gross Profit of $24 per plate.

Then per hour, you make 6 plates times $24
= $144 per hour, gross profit.

Then you hire 3 staff (1 host, 1 chef, 1 waiter), say they're paid $10 per hour each
= $114 per hour, profit minus wages.

If you're open for 12 hours a day, you make the following profit
= 12 hours x $114 per hour equals $1368 per 12 hours. Or ~$2,736 per day.

Assuming that you keep getting 6 people per hour to sell to. Now, the actual time a customer stays could be longer, and it may not necessarily be 1 person all the time. It could be a dating or outing couple, for example. So you'd have to adjust accordingly. AND because your business has to build up reputation (e.g. high # of stars per customer), you can't necessarily charge customers expensive prices for your dishes.

THAt is where the bandtron comes into play, lol.

Haha, i always laugh when i see sims ordering cerials at the restaurant

Thank you so much!