Restaurant Woes

[Skaven]

Has anyone had any luck combining a Nightlife style restaurant with anything else?  I originally tried combining a restaurant with the bandatron for a nightclub, but that causes the restaurant to stop working.  Then, I attempted to add a bakery to a restaurant (my thought is that an NPC could come in and buy a cake or pie and/or eat at the restaurant), but nobody ever buys anything.  They just eat, maybe look at the art or use the toilet, then leave.

I appreciate any suggestions for better results.

[J. M. Pescado]

I've managed to successfully run the NL-introduced club-restaurants as ownables with bandatrons before, but it ain't easy, and restaurants in OFB operate at an extremely poor level of efficiency, given that you pay people a large sum of money to spend most of their time standing around spitting into glasses and stirring uselessly, so that they run out of energy right when the customers show up and start goofing off. Plus your product tends to be extremely low margin, given that you make maybe $20 profits on most food...and are paying maybe 3-4 people $15/hr to get it.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes, it's a low efficiency operation, no doubt.  I can't stress enough the importance of family member slave labor.

Family member slave labor is a temporary solution at best, since it A: Does not decrease your level of micromanagement, B: Is prone to bugginess when you X out actions, and C: Does not produce a functioning lot when visited as another family. In order for a lot to function when visited, neither the owner nor any of his family should be needed to operate any of the critical positions.

As a general rule, the owner of a business should be primarily focussed on restocking, crafting, and/or cleaning/maintenance. These tasks are non-critical and do not need to be performed while visiting. Unfortunately, every single one of the horrible low-efficiency restaurant tasks requires the full attentions of a sim. I'm looking into making Business Runs You! improve their efficiency by reducing unpleasant critical downtime.

[Skaven]

Thanks for the verification.  I'll run run the pie counter longer and see if anyone will bite.  I have had success running the restaurant alone with marginal profit, though I did make a decision early on to have my PC be the chef, which, as you point out, means that the restaurant cannot function when my PC is  not there.  One catch that I noticed with the restaurant is the lack of relavent badges (the only badge is sales for the hostess) means that none of the NPCs get adequate badges to become manager when using Relavent Wages without adding something unecessary like a cash register.

[Faizah]

Um... Don't you need a cash register anyway for the bakery part of the restaurant/bakery?