'Juice bar' on a business lot

[Motoki]

I put the 'juice bar'  on my restaurant lot, which is a community lot business, and the npc still came. Doesn't seem like I pay her, and my sims can tend the bar and make money that seemingly comes out of nowhere. I can't assign her a uniform either. Basically, she's just like the regular old University community lot 'juice bartender'.

Is it supposed to be this way or do I have some hack that's interfering. The Prima guide is, surprise surprise, mum on the issue and not any help. 

[Zaphod]

I've not put up a juice bar yet.. I've put an espresso bar in the bakery and staffed it, but no-one ever came to use it. Afraid I'm not of much help with your question, just wanted to add the espresso bar wierdness.

[Ancient Sim]

I have a bar and an espresso bar on two of my business lots, but no bartender or barista turns up.  Are you saying you are getting a bartender?  I have no idea if they're meant to come, but I only have the option to assign one of the business staff to them and none of the customers seem interested anyway. 

[Jysudo]

Does anyone have a coffee obsession bug in ur game? I scanned my folders at least 3x and I didnt have any coffee related hacks but my playable sims keep drinking coffee in their houses like crazy, one cup after another... its horrifying.

I have to ban all coffee/expresso machines from my houses. Anyone else have this issue?

I had jfade's charging buffet on my lot and no idiots came to eat. I was dissed. Yet when I served berry pies etc, they all swamped for it cos of the "invite...XXX to eat". I wish we had that option for buffet tables. The $300 I wasted to fill up the buffet table was money down the drain...

[Motoki]

I have a bar and an espresso bar on two of my business lots, but no bartender or barista turns up.  Are you saying you are getting a bartender?  I have no idea if they're meant to come, but I only have the option to assign one of the business staff to them and none of the customers seem interested anyway. 

Yes, I get one. But wonder if I'm supposed to. She's unpaid lol so I guess I shouldn't complain, but she's not really one of my employees and if I have one of my sims takeover they get paid for it and it's not my money it's coming from.

[MissDoh]

It does not seem normal to me.  If you still have the Landgraab IV family in Bluewater send Malcom to "Club Dante" (one of the community lot he owns) you should normally need to assign an employee to be the bartender otherwise there will be no Sims to take care of it.

If you see a NPC as the bartender on that lot, something is definitely conflicting.

[Motoki]

I'll try that.

Oh and I just remembered I have Christianlov's residential bartender so that's probably causing it. Hmm.

[Theo]

Strange... I've put the industrial stove in a restaurant/community lot (following the game tip), and I can't hire a cook: an npc cook appears automagically from nowhere and occupies the stove.

Now and then there's a warning that the cook's skill is low for the menu, but hey! How can I control it?

To make matters worse, whenever I close the restaurant, the sim boss never ends that whistle drill, trying in vain to send the glued-to-the-stove cook home! So I end up moveon - selling the stove just to exit the lot!

Tsk, tsk... 

[miramis]

I don't think there should be NPC's generated on a business lot for those items.  I know for a fact that no NPC turned up when I placed the stove at one.  I had to assign an employee to the bar in Club Dante too.  Check your hack folder too Theo.

[Motoki]

Theo, do you have any hacked stoves? I know there's one by EddieF66 at MTS2 that lets you put the industrial stove in residential lots. Trouble is that one clones the unupdated NL version of the stove and overrides the OFB version so if you have that hack it will make the npc come when they shouldn't.

[Theo]

Ahhh, gotcha! I *hadn't* even begun to find the culprit, thanks for the hint

[maxon]

Does anyone have a coffee obsession bug in ur game? I scanned my folders at least 3x and I didnt have any coffee related hacks but my playable sims keep drinking coffee in their houses like crazy, one cup after another... its horrifying.

I have to ban all coffee/expresso machines from my houses. Anyone else have this issue?

I had jfade's charging buffet on my lot and no idiots came to eat. I was dissed. Yet when I served berry pies etc, they all swamped for it cos of the "invite...XXX to eat". I wish we had that option for buffet tables. The $300 I wasted to fill up the buffet table was money down the drain...

I've seen other discussing this on the binaries boards - you haven't got this hack in your Downloads have you?

http://forums.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=30750&c=1&page=3&pp=25

[speedreader]

Does anyone have a coffee obsession bug in ur game? I scanned my folders at least 3x and I didnt have any coffee related hacks but my playable sims keep drinking coffee in their houses like crazy, one cup after another... its horrifying.

I have to ban all coffee/expresso machines from my houses. Anyone else have this issue?

Yep.  I had just started thinking that I would pay close attention to the lazy factor because it isn't ALL my Sims houses, just a lot of them.  I am certain I have no coffee hacks, other than the cup one by JMP which is unrelated to the drinking of the stuff.

[Lion]

Motoki, I don't think any NPCs should show up if the business lot is owned. Either you take the owner to the lot to work, or have another sim to visit the lot, you will only see the owner and any employees hired. I have owned almost all the Bluewater community lots, no npc ever comes to juice bar or any other "positions". In one of the clubs, I put in a juice bar, and hired someone to "tend the bar". So far, no custmers ever ordered a drink on their own, basically a waste of money. But that club just started, level  0 or 1.

The more annoying thing than sims drinking coffee non stop is they have to stand in front of unattended coffee bar. This only happens when I have owner visit the community lot and no one is assigned to the coffee bar. If I have another sim visit the business, they won't be obsessed if there is no one selling coffee.
 

[Motoki]

Hmm, can you set the price of the juice at all?

I agree that are fickle and odd in what they choose to browse and buy and I can't seem to make much rhyme or reason to it.

I've started coming to the conclusion that baked goods like pies and cakes just aren't worth the effort for the little bit of gain you get out of them. It takes me a long time to stockpile and decent quantity of them, and those pigs just run over and snatch them all up. I think I will stick to the buy catalog wedding cakes and birthday cakes, much easier to restock and the profit margin on the wedding cake is at least a bit higher.

[Jelenedra]

To fix the coffee obession try this:

http://forums.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=139079

It cut down on my caffeine addicted sims from shaking themselves into an early grave.

[Lion]

Hmm, can you set the price of the juice at all?

I agree that are fickle and odd in what they choose to browse and buy and I can't seem to make much rhyme or reason to it.

I've started coming to the conclusion that baked goods like pies and cakes just aren't worth the effort for the little bit of gain you get out of them. It takes me a long time to stockpile and decent quantity of them, and those pigs just run over and snatch them all up. I think I will stick to the buy catalog wedding cakes and birthday cakes, much easier to restock and the profit margin on the wedding cake is at least a bit higher.

Exactly, I came to the same conclusion just the other day and wanted to start a thread asking about how to have a successful bakery, strickly bake and sell cakes and other foods. It's definitly not worth the effort. I have the Jaquet mother and son team run their bakery, I kept them there for days trying to make a profit (beyond "revenues"  from selling off furnitures). No luck, too much work for too little margin. First I thought the little plates of pie pieces are cute on the display. Also I remember one Maxis bakery shot showing that people are buying those pieces and taking them to tables. Well, it is staged. They don't buy the pieces and then sit down to eat. They just snatch them. If you want to restock those pieces, you have to serve them into little plates and put in inventory so that an employee can restock.  So I quickly switched to only selling wedding and birthday cakes, and added a podium to get people to sit down and eat. No money made there either, even though I try my best not to call the employees to work, just mom and son greet, serve, and cook for sit down customers. After like a sim week continuous work, I only got to level 2, because customers keep getting negative opinions. I would say bakery is the harded to run, if you want it like a real bakery, that is. Compared to it, any store selling stuff is easy like a breaze.

No, I haven't tried to set the price for the bar.

[MissDoh]

To fix the coffee obession try this:

http://forums.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=139079

It cut down on my caffeine addicted sims from shaking themselves into an early grave.

I could just kiss you.. thanks for this link 

[Motoki]

I'm not sure the podium is meant for a bakery/cafe sort of thing. I bet those sims that sit are expecting a waiter or waitress to come and take their order and bring them food on a tray and getting mad that they don't get it.

What you could do is just put the nice pies and cakes on display but don't mark it for sale lol, then have an industrial cook stove, plan the menu with the podium to only server cakes and pies and such (you can decide what's on the menu). Then have one person be the host or hostess, another be waiter and another the chef. It's possible to have one sim do 2 jobs like host and cook or host and waiter, but it takes some manual micromanaging of the queues and once you start getting to level 3 or so it gets really hectic.

Servos make good chefs since they start with 10 cooking. That's what I have in my restaurant. I do have employees but I try not to bring them in unless things start getting really crazy.

I have two food display cases, I think I am going to load one up with pie and cheescake and cake and make it all nice and pretty and then unmark it for sale lol. Then the one for sale will just be birthday and wedding cakes.

[Lion]

lol, I even put a cake out for customers to eat for free! just to have a nice scene. But no, they wouldn't even eat free cake, they just looking and looking trying to decide whether to buy. That's why I decide to install a podium so that some will sit down and eat. I also realized that keep your customers stay longer does not help with business level. I suspect that even for the venue business, the number of customers you serve, not how long they stay counts. Also more customers will come only when old customers leave at a given business level.

Will customers come in pairs or groups once you have higher level  in restaurant business? If no, that's really disappointing, because once a sim sits down, you can't have other sims sit at the same table.

[Motoki]

No they never come in pairs. It's stupid, but I guess that's the way it is. I visited my restaurant on a date with a different sim and my guy was running it autonomously. The sims I was controlling were still the only couple there and this is the 50s Diner in Downtown that I bought. Funny thing is, if I hadn't bought it and went there for a visit it would be all couples. 

[Lion]

That's too sad. I really hope Maxis can do something to it in a patch, but who am I kidding? Modding sounds quite complex for this issue, as I imagine. 

[Jarsie]

I deleted the power espresso machine that I got from MTS2 from my downloads folder, and my Sims seem to just drink espresso when they have a low energy need; much better than having them drink espresso after espressso.

Regarding the bakery...I'm kinda ticked that I can't make many servings, because the game doesn't recognize that the owner has them in his/her inventory. I tried playing the Jacquet bakery and finally gave up on it. I hope that Maxis fixes this in its patch. Otherwise, running a bakery is an exercise in futility.