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From the main menu, a picture of the three types of restaurant staff in The Sims 4 Dine Out Game Pack
Restaurants require, at minimum, one waiter, one host, and one chef in order to operate. Their roles and the skills they need to perform effectively will vary. The early selection of staff is not great, but you can improve their skills and make them happier to work for your establishment. This will help your Sim to make more money, and help guests enjoy their meals. This guide will teach you basic and advanced concepts for handling your staff. Let's look at some of the common things between the three types of employment, and then look at the unique features of each job in the restaurant.
Manage Employees
Press the manage employees button from the restaurant management menu (bottom right) at any time and you can access various commands, including hiring, firing, promoting and demoting.
Promote staff who deserve it and share success together.
Opinion, Praising and Criticizing
Beneath the worker's portrait is an opinion, which usually starts a 'Neutral'. The worker is neither satisfied nor unsatisfied with working for you. Check up on will give you the same information as looking at the manage employees menu. Sims who are being paid well will be 'Satisfied' or 'Very Satisfied', while they can also be 'Unsatisfied' and 'Very Unsatisfied'. There are two factors at play here. One, your treatment of them - are you praising good behavior, or calling them out for slacking? It seems as if there is a mechanic where if they ARE slacking and you call them on it by using the Criticize interaction, the relationship won't take as big a hit. They'll be extra-motivated for a while via a positive moodlet. If they're trying their best, you can make them ticked at you and lower their opinion of working for your establishment. Don't think they're staring at the phone the whole time, the waiters are usually checking orders.
The Praise Interaction encourages your employees to do better. Criticize may do more to whip them into action, but harms their job satisfaction.
The Praise interaction will give your worker a temporary positive moodlet that absolutely helps them with performance. You can't have the host being mean to the customer the moment they walk in the door. Additionally, and more importantly is their pay grade. When employees begin to develop their skills, they'll know they deserve more pay for what they do. A waiter with 5 ranks in charisma and fitness is going to grow dissatisfied with employment, and if you go too far they will quit. On the flip side, they will be generally happier and more likely to do a good job if satisfied and properly promoted. Each of the three careers has 5 levels for the employees and set amounts of pay.
Employees require skills to do a good job for you. Pay for training to help them learn faster. A nice touch by EA in my opinion.
Training & Skill Gains
Your restaurant's employees require two types of skills each. Chefs require cooking and mixology, for example. Training employees means getting skill XP between shifts, while employees will also get natural skill experience just working for you. They'll gain about 1 level, depending where they stand. It's good to do early on to make your staff better as level 1-3 of each skill greatly limits their ability to do their jobs. There are three types of training available:
Obviously, there are some gaps and staff will have to get on-the-job experience to fill them. It's better to do training as soon as it's available as the skill XP to level up grows greater as they progress, just as if you were leveling the skill with your own Sim. There are also good leaps from just a few levels in required skills.
Promoting & Demoting
As a general rule of thumb, a Sim should probably be promoted at least every 3 levels in their skills or else they are going to being feeling dissatisfied. This also depends how often you praise them. Demote should only be used if you have a 'Very Satisfied' employee who shouldn't be. Note the relationship is going to take a hit, but relationships DO NOT factor into the satisfaction of an employee (perhaps, unless it goes negative). Overall you should probably prefer the carrot (reward), not the stick (punishment). I guess Sims are good at keeping business and friendship from conflicting.
Let's look at employee types in the order your guests will interact with them:
Hosts greet and seat guests. Their first impression on you is huge.
The host basically represents the restaurant and puts customers in a good mood when they arrive. Hosts are responsible for seating and greeting the guests. The host is important as their first impression on the customer cannot be changed, so I made it a point to praise my host (and use inspirational speech once it was possible) to put them in a good mood and keep them on track. Don't interrupt them from seating, though. Get them right at the beginning of service and between waves of customers. You don't want long wait times just to tell them they're doing a good job. Find moments of downtime. This position relies on the Comedy and Charisma skills exclusively. Hosts' skills are much like waiters in that at lower skill levels - regardless of the praise moodlet - they are more likely to goof and make a bad impression on a guest. Raising them to at least level 5-6 will stop those bad impressions from happening so long as the host is in a good mood.
The host position is an expensive one, but you'll only ever need one host operating from a lone host station. The host station is best placed nearby to tables, like all others. If the host has to walk to the back and then upstairs, back to the front of the building, it's going to take guests much much longer to be seated than if they're right there. You may even consider placing them in the center of a group of tables. Hosts make the following per hour:
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Waiters clean up, take orders, and provide menus to guests. Station them throughout your restaurant.
At least one waiter is required, they use the waiter station and may idle near it when doing nothing - so keep it nearby to guests. You can zone out waiters this way. Waiters and Waitresses provide menus, cleanup, and finished meals to your customers. You can unlock 2 more waiter slots by purchasing related perks. Waiters are reliant on the Charisma and Fitness to do their job - charisma's role being obvious, but fitness having to do with how likely they are to drop a plate and their general energy levels. As Charisma and Fitness improve, the odds of a 'bad service' marker for star rating goes down and odds for 'good service' go up. For example, level 1 charisma/fitness and 40% chance at bad service. 2-3 is only 20%. Get to 7-8 and you are more likely to have neutral or good services and no bad service ratings. This should absolutely be rewarded, as waiters are also partially responsible for one of the most important metrics, wait time. If the food is ready and the waiter isn't on the ball, wait time suffers. It's also required of them to get the order in the first place! Here are the 5 pay grades for waiters, so you know what you'll be paying if you promote them:
If your chef gets insulted, praise them to help their mood. An angry chef = a bad chef. They have knives, you know.
The Chef's role in your restaurant is to make food and drink. Don't let them get less interaction from you just because they're in the back. The chef's mood and skill play into their performance, just as any other. I believe that Sims can cook level 5 foods at level 5, but not do it well until they surpass the skill level. Each level will make it more likely they are going to produce better quality food. Differing from other positions, the chef can be told to cook either quickly or carefully. These two both provide +/- 20% quality and speed. Quickly will sacrifice quality by 20% but speed up by the same amount. It is good to choose quickly if you have a high level chef cooking low level foods and you want to feed lots of Sims and move them out fast. Carefully is good for newer chefs who have low skill but might make use of the quality bump. This is particularly useful when you first hire your second chef. These settings will stay active until you change them back to normally.
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The Sims 4 Seasons expansion now has options! Want to disable weather or make plants in season year-round? You can do so with my new Seasons Tuner Mod
The past month, I've spent every day tinkering The Sims 4, making quality of life improvements, gameplay changes, and new difficulty settings for the game. If you'd like to learn more about my project, visit the post on Patreon where you can download it now.
Cottage Living Guide! Here is my guide to new features in the Sims 4 Cottage Living Expansion
You can also find handy Cottage Living Cheats
I have much more to come, since you can actually write a few guides about this pack!
Blender has been incredibly useful in video production, so I made my own Physics and Simulation Improvement Addon that lumps a ton of unique tools into one compact interface.
Snowy Escape Cheats
Lifestyles in Snowy Escape
Climb Mt. Komorebi
Sentiments in Snowy Escape
Rock Climbing
Skiing Skill
Snowboarding Skill
I've released a guide to Sentiments in The Sims 4 & Snowy Escape.
There is a new platform tool in The Sims 4. There's also a new Sentiments system, but it'll take some time to create a guide to that. Players can also use rental lots in any world now by changing lot types of builds in manage worlds.
I've created a massive List of The Best Mods in The Sims 4 that should be very helpful to new players and those who have not yet explored modding and how much it can do for your gameplay.
New - Secrets I have a new guide to secrets in the game. If you prefer, you can also watch a video about secrets in Sims 4.
Nifty Knitting is now available. Learn all about the stuff pack on my guide page here.
NEW - Nifty Knitting CheatsNew features in the Sims 4 June 2020
The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle Guide
Eco Footprint: How it Works
Neighborhood Action Plans
How to Cheat in Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle
Civil Designer Career
Insect Farms & Bio Fuel
Fabrication Skill in Eco Lifestyle
Juice Fizzing NEW
Traits and Aspirations in DLC
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Updated
Trait Cheats Updated
Traits List Updated
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This is inspired by a new series in which I start at toddler and gradually take on the major bonuses. Here's a link to the full playlist!
I now have a guide page to Tiny Living Stuff where you can learn about Murphy Beds, the new death, as well as the lot bonuses you'll receive if you manage to keep the size of your lot down with this new pack's Tiny Home Lot Type.
New I now have a guide to Making Super Sims in The Sims 4. Look for a text version within the next 72h. It won't have THAT much more info but it will help out as a checklist.
This was inspired by a series, "Let's Play a Super Sim" in which I start at toddler and gradually take on the major bonuses. Here's a link to each part for people who are interested. You can also see the Let's Play as a Playlist on Youtube.
The Sims 4 Discover University has been announced for November 15 for PC/Mac and December 17 for Xbox and Playstation 4 consoles. Click to learn more about the pack, see my summary of the livestream or read our FAQs below.
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Comments (42)
It's the second time my staff is just GONE one day to another. Like, most or all of my employees just disappear and I have to hire a new set of unexperienced employees. I'm getting really annoyed, has anyone else had this problem??? Is it a problem at all, or my employees just got suddenly extremely dissatisfied and decided to leave without a note???? Please help me
First go into the household management menu and delete the sims that you have currently hired but are not turning up from the Unplayed Sims list. If they are not there then it means that those sims have probably been culled which is why they are not showing for work.
Hire new sims. Place them into a household using Manage Households menu. Do not play them, this will make them lose their jobs.
Staff will be satisfied if you praise them and only have the restaurant open for around 8 hours a day. Pay for training for your sims and as soon as possible buy the perk Inspirational Speech and Patient Patrons
Perks Guide
Sorry you are frustrated. I know that these tips will help you and once you have got your staff in an unplayed household things will be a lot easier.
This tutorial was made by a simmer named mcrudd and she has posted this on the official USA Sims forum >Game Packs>Dine Out. It's fabulous and can show you step by step what to do which is far easier to understand then me trying to type it all out.
Tutorial
here
How do I sell a restaurant ? I bulldozed the lot however it still says that I own the restaurant even though it's now a bulldozed lot.
2. When sim is not on the restaurant lot got to Options Menu>Manage Worlds> then navigate to the Restaurant your sim owns then click on the lot. This will bring up a small menu bottom right of the screen. Click on the three dots (More)>Sell Business.
I thought it was going to be like the get to work when you owned a retail store and the family could help out there and fill the roles instead of hiring people :((((
I wish I would have read some of the comments on these guides before getting the dine out pack! The ONLY reason I bought it was because I wanted to make it a family business!!! The mom would have been the cook, the daughter the hostess etc I've had that family for a while now leveling the mom's cooking and everything and now I find out she can't even be the cook at her own restaurant... Ugh!!! I was so looking forward to a family restaurant and the teens helping out as waitresses etc
Basically if you delete every sims in the Not In World category and then evict your sims you want to hire to make them 'Not in The World' and then directly go to the hire menu these sims should show up to be hired. Once hired move them into a household without playing them. If you play them they will lose their jobs in the restaurant.