Running a Business

[dodi90]

By the way did you use the Retail freezer or regular fridge? Because if i am not mistaken stuff on retail freezer will always be tagged as for sale and when people buying from those, they take it for a while and either store it to their inventory or very rarely just left it on nearest surface that you can put it back again for sale on the freezer.

I guess the problem why Sims couldn't eat the baked goods at the bakery at the moment is because when you actively control them, the tag for sale is still stick on the goods after they have been purchased. This make the cake impossible to eat for the customer so they just left the lots. However, If your non - owner sims buy it, the items are correctly unmarked for sale when you bought them and you can eat them without problem on the bakery.

[XxMousiexX]

I have 3 Retail freezer's 2 by the register and one in back by the tables the one's with the purple & green boxes. And I filled it with food that they can eat for free.

[dodi90]

Just to add another info:
You can set all mixologist drink for sale too *including the reward potions* for sale in your retail store.
(so far i only check the emotional potions from completing mixologist aspiration but i assume even young age potion could be sold at the store)
I haven't test it with Marketable yet but the Smoky Hot drink that cost $125 sold for $900-ish (at 100% markup)
The emotional potions sadly only sold for $200 while making them cost $1000 so I'd advise against selling those except you want to set up for passive retail store.

here's my tips for setting up "passive" retail shop:
- Do not worry about stocks, any item you mark for sale will be restocked automatically. So while your normal "Bakery" might need multiple cakes on display / freezer to accommodate all customers, you only need one to set for sale.
- Another neat thing about the freezer is that you can decide how much you want to buy much like when you order upgrade parts from computer. If you miss having a grocery from old sims, you can set up mini grocery if you like.
- The price used however will be whatever the price set by the owner so be wary not to put it on 100% or your new household might not be able to afford it. Your owner sim don't get any passive earning whatsoever, so set the price accordingly.
- You don't need to hire employee. Even if your owner sim didn't hire any, the game will spawn retail workers to tend the business automatically so don't worry about that.
- Here are good items for sale in the passive store: Any collections items to help other sims finish the collection quickly, Herbs made with herbalism, All gardens products (perfect quality is recommended), All drinks and meal, Emotional decor
- All buy mode items that can be bought without unlocking however makes poor passive store since buying straight away is much faster and cheaper. The appliances could be upgraded first before you set it for sale but right now, i'm not sure whether the upgrade sticks or not after restocking. Only do this if you are dead set on role playing.

[Pam]

All these tips are great! Thank you, everyone. If some of you would like to share screenshots of your business, I would love to see them.

[wkoziol]

Pam, I have 8 sims running 8 different businesses.

I'd suggest that rather than running one of the businesses that came with the game, you start small -- a small building with 3 or 4 items for sale. The sims go for furniture. While selling the books that your sims write, the paintings they do, the donuts they bake, etc. sounds like a great idea, I've found that my money-makers are the bookshelves, the easels, and the tables and chairs that I also have in the stores.

I haven't tried hiring employees yet -- everyone on the official forums is complaining about how they don't work.

There are perks that increase the speed with which you can ring up a customer, restock, etc.

I suppose the fun is in setting up your store and improving the way in which you run it. Also, if you enjoy creating outfits, the clothing stores are fun.

Also, I noticed that the heavy bag and the treadmill sell really well but for the weightlifting machine I haven't sold one yet.  As for the employees, they are still really useless and I bought all of the remainder packs out there for a Christmas present to myself and I've tried everything like removing all of the mods, custom made content to fully uninstalling everything and reinstalling everything fresh.  Also, I've gone as far as reinstalling it all fresh a second time and started a new first game.  One would think of having these expansion packs out for a year the major bugs would be fixed by now.  I can see having issues if it was the "core" game but for an expansion pack to have so many bugs/glitches it shouldn't even be heard of or if it does happen within a month have a patch that at least fixes the huge bugs.

[Happy]

I don't recommend restocking items, since you need to pay the exact same price as it was sold for when it is restocked (e.g. 125 for a sofa and restocking cost 125 as well) so you should just remove the sold sign and buy or make something else in place of the sold item. Hope it helped!