I have a disturbing lack of customers. Despite being 5 stars.
Open like 8am to 10pm.
Did you grow your restaurant from a small one? I started out with lower prices and low skill foods and a small staff. At lunch I've always been full and at dinner I always have more customers than tables. Maybe the game produces customers according to some sort of hidden popularity scale. Maybe you need to keep up with the advertising for a while.
Sorry, late response and yeah. I started small with one of the premade restaurants. It's the one with the outdoor setting in light blue walls and tables.
I think I know my issues with my expenses but I don't know how to do anything effectively if I need to cut back.
1.High Quality Restaurant, with High Markup up 250% customers don't mind the price. - Got the lesser ingredients cost perk max one, howver due to a bug or whatever I have to work towards getting it again.
2. Employees I think I may have went a little over board and promoted my employees twice after a 5 star critic review. Downside is if I demote them I have their skills at max so that could make them unhappy and unproductive.
Current Staff:
1 Cook
2 Waiters (Became necessary between one taking and delivering orders and the other cleaning up became a much needed investment)
1 Hostess
3. Can't find a sweetspot for advertising. Silver doesn't seem to be enough despite increasing the amount of aviable tables from 5 to 12. Gold is either too expensive or not enough.
My endgame for this is to make the resturant successful enough that I can atleast drop in a few times a week or even every other day at the least without loosing money.
Final question: Would the Tidy Tipper or whatever it's called. Is that the secret to getting lots of money? The one that makes Simps tip extra for meals. Supposedly that's unlimited in purchase and would that count for not-present business hours too?
Right now my restaurant is at a 3 but I never buy advertising. To me it's a lot of extra money to spend on top of employee wages and any food you comp for happy customers. I would skip the advertising and make sure you aren't promoting your staff too much in the early stages. I have gotten notices when my restaurant was open for too long and my staff would get tired so you could try to just keep yours open during the middle 7/8 hours of the sim day during the busiest time.
I usually keep my restaurant open for ungodly work hours (I know I'm the worst) and i make sure that after each shift i get everyone the required training til they are all maxed out and praise each person when they come in and keep morale up. It shockingly works really well!
Dont get advertising... I dont use it and get quite a bit of profit, also request the chef ro cook quickly and I use the mc commander mod to make the sim leave by my command
To all you beautiful people out there, have a lovely day.
Maybe a bit off topic but is there a mod to help get the restaurant to make more profit? I'm a newbie at mods so if there is, please explain in easiest way possible how to get it and what not? Thank you
Thank you for this post!! I've been trying to figure it out for a week or two. I read a few pointers and am now profitable. What I did was make 3/5+ difficulty the only menu options, 300% profit on foods and recommended the highest priced main meal and I am not it the green.
ok I have a problem with customers getting food and just sitting there visiting and then they get mad at the wait times...plus another sim always is standing and chatting with them! its like a glitch so I usually have two tables takin up with these customers just sitting there and not leaving!
Yes. I've had that problem. It seems to happen mostly at the end of the day. There's no way to shoo the gabby customers away, but sometimes if you engage the visiting Sim in conversation, it will at least let the others finish eating. If there are only 1 or two tables lingering and it's the end of the shift-no new people coming in-I'll just close.
For those who are interested keep an eye on this mode: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=578862
The mod enable to hire the second host.
She is working for now to add new more staff. (3 cook, 4 waiters and maybe 1 host plus). Could be good for those with big restaurant.
One big problem is, even with the fast eaters perk, Sims will just sit there talking or wandering around and I can't turn the tables fast enough to get those waiting seated at a reasonable time.
Definitely add more tables. I have over 30 tables in my restaurant, and more customers = more profit.
Lawd! I'm getting stressed out just by looking at the picture. How can you manage such a busy restaurant?
Haha im the same... it's stressing me just thinking about entering that lot!
I have finally managed to create a high-end restaurant (self-built), which makes over 2000 simoleans net profit a day. This is my advice for maximising profitability, based on what I have learned:-
1. Hire only one of each type of employee (at least to start with) and invest in their training. In particular, get your chef to max out his skills ASAP and promote him (or her) accordingly, to keep up morale. Once his skills are at level 8, set him to cook quickly. I am not sure whether it is worth maxing out your host's and waiter's skills. They seem to do fine at a skill level of around 6/7 (mine are maxed out now, but it does not seem to have made a significant difference to their performance).
2. Buy the inspirational speech perk ASAP and use it on each employee daily. Systematically buy every other perk that will have a positive impact on the restaurant's finances - ingredient discounts, well-heeled customers, bigger tips, etc. Get the patient customers perk too, to stop your customers getting fed up and walking out when service is slow.
3. DON'T buy the customers-eat-faster perk (whatever it's called). I have a strong suspicion that it is buggy and that it is responsible (either wholly or partly) for the problem where customers stand about socialising instead of sitting down and getting on with the business of eating.
4. Buy the cheapest advertising package (silver). The more expensive packages are not worth the extra cost, but you do need some advertising in order to attract enough customers to ensure a high turnover.
5. Set your mark-up to 300% - yes, really! Your customers won't mind (this is supposed to be a high-end restaurant after all).
6. As your chef's skill level increases, customise your menu by progressively removing the cheaper options and offering only the more expensive food and drinks. Eventually, you should offer nothing below a difficulty level of 4. Your customers won't mind the more limited choice. You can include dishes that are slightly above your chef's current skill level. Ignore the warnings. Customers will still pay. This might be a bad strategy in RL, but it works fine in the game.
7. Don't comp anything. Comping affects your ratings, but does nothing for profitability. The game is geared to make you focus on ratings, but higher ratings do not necessarily mean better profits (in fact, I have seen no connection between higher ratings and profitability at all, but that might just be me). If it is profitability that you want, then it is on profitability that you need to focus. There is none of this 'do the right thing and the profits will surely follow' that you get in RL. This is not RL.
8. Now for the crunch: You must stay open late, because the majority of your customers will arrive in the evening and your profitability depends on how many customers you serve. Your employees are only equipped to work for 12 hours before their morale suffers (talk about exploitation!), so don't open until noon, then you can stay open until midnight. Your employees won't mind the late hours, but your managing sim will get tired, so make sure there is somewhere for them to take an afternoon nap when things are quiet. Or let different household members take shifts.
9. Make sure you have enough tables. The secret lies in the number of individual tables, not the amount of seating generally, so most of your tables should be two-seaters, since customers will generally arrive in pairs and these tables will fill up first. Put them closest to the chef's station for quicker service and make sure that there is plenty of space to walk around them so that the area does not get too congested if/when your customers decide to play musical chairs.
10. Don't enlarge your staff complement too much, or too quickly. I have tried having one chef and I have tried having two. Having two chefs at a pay-grade of 5 was hugely expensive (especially when you include the training costs) and, even with maxed-out skills and set to cook quickly, service speed did not improve all that much - at any rate, not enough to warrant the added expense. My current restaurant has only one chef and he seems to manage perfectly well. But I do have the patient customers perk too.
11. I have not decided yet whether it is better to have one or two waiters. I managed perfectly well with only one waiter for a while, but she has started slacking off and it might be time to replace her with someone new and more motivated, so I have brought in a second, more junior waiter to start training and will see how things go from there. If you only have one waiter, though, your managing sim needs to help out. Apart from welcoming guests and checking on tables, there is only one thing that they can usefully do and that is to clear tables. Make them do this.
12. One last tip - hire the youngest staff you can get, especially as hosts and waiters (and especially if you have aging allowed, which I don't at the moment). For one thing, they move faster and (although this may just be my imagination) they seem to tire less quickly. For another thing, if you have aging allowed, they will live longer and therefore offer better value for your investment in their training.
Anyway, this is what worked for me. I hope it helps. My next project is to make a greasy-spoon diner and see how low I can go.
That is an awesome post @FKM100 ! I will be definitely referring back to it when I eventually get around to having my sims run a restaurant. None of my households are wealthy enough to purchase one yet though, and I don't like using money cheats, but someday....
I'm glad you found it helpful, joleaco. By the way, if your sims can't afford one of the pre-built restaurants, why not try making your own? You can do this very cheaply. For example, you could take a vacant lot and turn it into an al fresco restaurant - all you would need is a single room for the kitchen with the basic appliances in it, another small room for the loo, and a patio with some outdoor tables. Add some trees and plants and other decor and there you are. Your sims won't care whether they are dining inside or outside.
I thought about doing that @FKM100, but I am a crap builder, lol. I do have one family who are a bit wealthier than the rest, as the wife is a gardener. They are getting a great return from their produce, so when they get a little bit more moolah, I am definitely going to give it a go, they are a very busy family though.
I like playing my game slowly anyway, so I can be patient.
One big problem is, even with the fast eaters perk, Sims will just sit there talking or wandering around and I can't turn the tables fast enough to get those waiting seated at a reasonable time.
Definitely add more tables. I have over 30 tables in my restaurant, and more customers = more profit.
woah ! ! ! I have 6 tables hahaha - definitely going to have to try better with this .... cheers
> @emiliajane1971 said: > elelunicy wrote: » > > KatsKats wrote: » > > One big problem is, even with the fast eaters perk, Sims will just sit there talking or wandering around and I can't turn the tables fast enough to get those waiting seated at a reasonable time. > > > > > Definitely add more tables. I have over 30 tables in my restaurant, and more customers = more profit. > > > > > > > woah ! ! ! I have 6 tables hahaha - definitely going to have to try better with this .... cheers
> @elelunicy said: > KatsKats wrote: » > > One big problem is, even with the fast eaters perk, Sims will just sit there talking or wandering around and I can't turn the tables fast enough to get those waiting seated at a reasonable time. > > > > > Definitely add more tables. I have over 30 tables in my restaurant, and more customers = more profit.
Going into this blind and not looking anything up I admit there was a bit of a learning curve for me, even owning a retail store and so on. My best advice? Fiddle with your stores settings and size until you find what works for you and you are turning a profit.
ok so I just opened a restaurant and was goin good till none of my customers sat down!! they didn't sit down cause celebrities walked in and they would flock around them and then wonder why they were getting impatient with the service!! good grief how am I supposed to serve them when all they do is gawk at celebs!?!
Comments
Did you grow your restaurant from a small one? I started out with lower prices and low skill foods and a small staff. At lunch I've always been full and at dinner I always have more customers than tables. Maybe the game produces customers according to some sort of hidden popularity scale. Maybe you need to keep up with the advertising for a while.
I think I know my issues with my expenses but I don't know how to do anything effectively if I need to cut back.
1.High Quality Restaurant, with High Markup up 250% customers don't mind the price. - Got the lesser ingredients cost perk max one, howver due to a bug or whatever I have to work towards getting it again.
2. Employees I think I may have went a little over board and promoted my employees twice after a 5 star critic review. Downside is if I demote them I have their skills at max so that could make them unhappy and unproductive.
Current Staff:
1 Cook
2 Waiters (Became necessary between one taking and delivering orders and the other cleaning up became a much needed investment)
1 Hostess
3. Can't find a sweetspot for advertising. Silver doesn't seem to be enough despite increasing the amount of aviable tables from 5 to 12. Gold is either too expensive or not enough.
My endgame for this is to make the resturant successful enough that I can atleast drop in a few times a week or even every other day at the least without loosing money.
Final question: Would the Tidy Tipper or whatever it's called. Is that the secret to getting lots of money? The one that makes Simps tip extra for meals. Supposedly that's unlimited in purchase and would that count for not-present business hours too?
anyone else have that problem??
The mod enable to hire the second host.
She is working for now to add new more staff. (3 cook, 4 waiters and maybe 1 host plus). Could be good for those with big restaurant.
Haha im the same... it's stressing me just thinking about entering that lot!
Very impressive though
1. Hire only one of each type of employee (at least to start with) and invest in their training. In particular, get your chef to max out his skills ASAP and promote him (or her) accordingly, to keep up morale. Once his skills are at level 8, set him to cook quickly. I am not sure whether it is worth maxing out your host's and waiter's skills. They seem to do fine at a skill level of around 6/7 (mine are maxed out now, but it does not seem to have made a significant difference to their performance).
2. Buy the inspirational speech perk ASAP and use it on each employee daily. Systematically buy every other perk that will have a positive impact on the restaurant's finances - ingredient discounts, well-heeled customers, bigger tips, etc. Get the patient customers perk too, to stop your customers getting fed up and walking out when service is slow.
3. DON'T buy the customers-eat-faster perk (whatever it's called). I have a strong suspicion that it is buggy and that it is responsible (either wholly or partly) for the problem where customers stand about socialising instead of sitting down and getting on with the business of eating.
4. Buy the cheapest advertising package (silver). The more expensive packages are not worth the extra cost, but you do need some advertising in order to attract enough customers to ensure a high turnover.
5. Set your mark-up to 300% - yes, really! Your customers won't mind (this is supposed to be a high-end restaurant after all).
6. As your chef's skill level increases, customise your menu by progressively removing the cheaper options and offering only the more expensive food and drinks. Eventually, you should offer nothing below a difficulty level of 4. Your customers won't mind the more limited choice. You can include dishes that are slightly above your chef's current skill level. Ignore the warnings. Customers will still pay. This might be a bad strategy in RL, but it works fine in the game.
7. Don't comp anything. Comping affects your ratings, but does nothing for profitability. The game is geared to make you focus on ratings, but higher ratings do not necessarily mean better profits (in fact, I have seen no connection between higher ratings and profitability at all, but that might just be me). If it is profitability that you want, then it is on profitability that you need to focus. There is none of this 'do the right thing and the profits will surely follow' that you get in RL. This is not RL.
8. Now for the crunch: You must stay open late, because the majority of your customers will arrive in the evening and your profitability depends on how many customers you serve. Your employees are only equipped to work for 12 hours before their morale suffers (talk about exploitation!), so don't open until noon, then you can stay open until midnight. Your employees won't mind the late hours, but your managing sim will get tired, so make sure there is somewhere for them to take an afternoon nap when things are quiet. Or let different household members take shifts.
9. Make sure you have enough tables. The secret lies in the number of individual tables, not the amount of seating generally, so most of your tables should be two-seaters, since customers will generally arrive in pairs and these tables will fill up first. Put them closest to the chef's station for quicker service and make sure that there is plenty of space to walk around them so that the area does not get too congested if/when your customers decide to play musical chairs.
10. Don't enlarge your staff complement too much, or too quickly. I have tried having one chef and I have tried having two. Having two chefs at a pay-grade of 5 was hugely expensive (especially when you include the training costs) and, even with maxed-out skills and set to cook quickly, service speed did not improve all that much - at any rate, not enough to warrant the added expense. My current restaurant has only one chef and he seems to manage perfectly well. But I do have the patient customers perk too.
11. I have not decided yet whether it is better to have one or two waiters. I managed perfectly well with only one waiter for a while, but she has started slacking off and it might be time to replace her with someone new and more motivated, so I have brought in a second, more junior waiter to start training and will see how things go from there. If you only have one waiter, though, your managing sim needs to help out. Apart from welcoming guests and checking on tables, there is only one thing that they can usefully do and that is to clear tables. Make them do this.
12. One last tip - hire the youngest staff you can get, especially as hosts and waiters (and especially if you have aging allowed, which I don't at the moment). For one thing, they move faster and (although this may just be my imagination) they seem to tire less quickly. For another thing, if you have aging allowed, they will live longer and therefore offer better value for your investment in their training.
Anyway, this is what worked for me. I hope it helps. My next project is to make a greasy-spoon diner and see how low I can go.
I like playing my game slowly anyway, so I can be patient.
woah ! ! ! I have 6 tables hahaha - definitely going to have to try better with this .... cheers
> elelunicy wrote: »
>
> KatsKats wrote: »
>
> One big problem is, even with the fast eaters perk, Sims will just sit there talking or wandering around and I can't turn the tables fast enough to get those waiting seated at a reasonable time.
>
>
>
>
> Definitely add more tables. I have over 30 tables in my restaurant, and more customers = more profit.
>
>
>
>
>
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> woah ! ! ! I have 6 tables hahaha - definitely going to have to try better with this .... cheers
Which World is that and what lot is it?
> KatsKats wrote: »
>
> One big problem is, even with the fast eaters perk, Sims will just sit there talking or wandering around and I can't turn the tables fast enough to get those waiting seated at a reasonable time.
>
>
>
>
> Definitely add more tables. I have over 30 tables in my restaurant, and more customers = more profit.
Hey what world is that and what lot?