So I'm trying to run a successful restaurant, but I'm having two big problems. One, my servers are bringing diners nothing. They go get the tray, present it to the diner, and there's no meal. The customer just continues to sit there drinking water, until they get furious and leave. My sim is the chef who has complete cooking skills. Now, the ones I hired don't have high body skill, which was something I've had a difficult time finding. I know low body skill makes them prone to dropping food, but does that affect them also bringing empty trays?

Next, I have an employee that has suddenly become unmanagable. Nor does she work and I can't assign her, fire her, nothing. She stands around doing other stuff, not working, but still sucking money out of me. I don't know if this stuff is a glitch or not, but it's making me lose my damned mind.

Sounds like a glitch to me, when the chef makes the food and it comes up empty when the waiters open the tray there should be something there, the game has an annoying habit of making automated sims get stuck too so this is what's happened to your employee, i've had that before when i played OFB a lot except the game was making him act like the visitors on the lot and not a worker, the game just gets confused for some reason sometimes, what you can do is delete the cooker the chef is on and delete the thing the other employee came from then put a new one in there and it should fix it.

What have you got on the menu? This will happen with some custom foods so try switching to all maxis food and then see what happens.

And the menu may contain vending machine food items that don't appear on plates (e.g. chips, cookies, etc.). So don't forget to remove those too. I found those to be the main culprit in one of my fine dining establishments.

I forgot about those. I believe they show up on the menu planning board if you have the vending machines already in the hood, but don't if you haven't placed them. Strange glitch EA never fixed.

I was playing just yesterday, as a matter of fact, and had this happen to me. My Sim was trying to eat at one of the Maxis restaurants. I had her order a few of the fancy meals, such as steak, then lobster, then one or two other items and whenever the waiter brought the tray to the table, it was empty. A couple of times he never even brought a tray, but simply forgot about the order.
I finally had her order Chef's Choice, or whatever it's called, but that didn't work either and he came back with another empty tray. By that time, my Sim was starving and I barely got her home in time.

I went trough 4-5 menu items at that restaurant and none of them were ever brought to the table. It was the fancy restaurant in Bella Cove, I think. London something...
I don't think the game made her pay for any of those meals either.

Another reason for empty plate or usually no plate, is if your sim is at a small table with a centre piece like a candle, but you don't have the centre piece fix. http://modthesims.info/d/287228

Ah, yes, I do remember there was an object on the table. Must've been a centerpiece. And I don't have that mod installed. OK, thanks.

That's the damned culprit! I have candles sitting on my tables to make it look fancier. Didn't realize it was glitching my restaurant. Thanks, I'll try the mod.

Also, I notice that my sim loses management options whenever she assigns anyone to be a server. I got her to assign the bartender to be a server and the same thing happened to him. Not sure what the problem is here. Does it have something to do with her being the cook?

Hope that fixes it.

Yeah, that's a known issue. I seem to remember last time I hired someone to serve that the only way to get management back was to invite them to watch TV. It was a pain, but it worked so I never looked for a fix because normally I only use playables from the same house and if I hire anyone it's to be host. I don't know if that was ever fixed or modded.

Seriously?! You gotta love EA... I was having the same issue but figured it was a combination of wrong stove/chairs/doors/sinks that kept messing up my restaurants so thanks darkannie for posting this thread and jo for finding an answer

Someone pointed me to the centre piece fix years ago when I complained about getting no food on the tables outside one of the down town restaurants (Maxis made lot too lol) glitching because of the table lights, so I didn't discover it. Glad I remembered it though.

Thanks for the centrepiece fix link! I was going through and placing OMSPs for just about every community lot and it was a pain. The Crypt O' Night Club is especially annoying.

I already had the fix when I experienced this glitch in my previous neighborhood and I had no custom foods or vending machines in my restaurant.

It seems other things contributes to this as well.

Yeh i've encountered the center piece glitch before too, what happens is the food just dissapears into it rofl such a pain, it only seems to happen in community lots though.. .but doesn't in sims households.

I have the centerpiece fix mod in my game, and I've been able to run a lovely restaurant with centerpieces on the tables.

Though yeah, I thought it was just me when I saw I could add vending machine food to my menu, so I'm glad I took those off the menu. Seriously, why would you order a bag of chips at a fancy restaurant?

I spent hours ripping my hair out, removing/adding/removing different foods and centerpieces before I realized that my desert shop couldn't sell cookies from the vending machine.

This is my least favorite glitch, it's maddening.

'Cause they're hand sliced thin with delicacy by the chef.
Seasoned with the rarest of spices from the leaves of cowplants.
Grilled, then fried, then baked, then grilled again.
All placed together with the finest of aluminum bags.

...yeahhhhh. And the chef calls it fries!

Wasn't that the story of the potato chip? Where an angry chef, after getting sick of a customer that kept complaining about French fries that were too thick, decided to shave the potatoes paper-thin and salted them down as heavily as he could?

Bag not included...

That is indeed the story behind the potato chip. Also amusing is the rumoured story of the naming of the sandwich -- John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich decided he didn't want to get up from the game of cards he was playing, so ordered a servant to bring him a slice of meat in between two slices of bread.

There are restaurants who serve chips with sandwiches so chips are common with fine dining lol

Sometime "Restaurants" can be hard to run ( if private own ) That about the only business I seem to have problem with, so for me when it comes to restaurants I just keep it for community lots only.
But as member joandsarah77 have said in her post #7 having a small table and objects like flowers, candles can keep the Sims from being serve. Unlike us human the Sims think this is in my way,
@>> joandsarah77 >> thanks for the centerpiece link very helpful and needed.

I'm surprised not more people know about that fix, since it's by Lord Darcy. I've even watched a couple of recent Let's Plays where I see that no plate thing happen right on filming and another where someone used two tables together. I'm yelling at the screen, "Get the fix!"

A few years back I had this problem when I was trying to run a restaurant. I had spent ages building a medieval-themed restaurant, only for it to not work. I was extremely pissed because this was to be the 5th business owned by sim going for his 'Own 5 top level businesses' LTW, which was the only LTW I'd never completed. And the damn customers could not get their food. No one had a solution at the time, so I'm glad for this thread. I don't use custom foods and it sure wasn't the centerpiece bug (I already knew about that and didn't have anything on the tables anyway), so I'm hoping the vending machine food glitch is the reason. I'll have to try it out. Thanks in advance!

(Alas, it's a couple years too late for my sim to earn his 5 top businesses - I 'cheated' and pissed off some customers in one of his other businesses until it dropped to L9 and then I worked it back up to L10. Voila - LTW finished.)

I have all Lord Darcy's other fixes and I hadn't found that one.