Successful Bakery?

[Playalot]

So I've decided that I better play with the business side of Get To Work, which I haven't really until now. I started of with a brand new sim, spent a few days at home levelling baking and home style cooking skills. Third day or so bought a business (empty lot) and built a small bakery.
Here's the problem, no matter how many bakery displays/vending displays I put in sims still get pathing issues and I have so many sims in my shop that every time I try to talk up a sale my sim ends up in a mage-huge group conversation which rapidly goes sour due to some mean sim yelling at us all. lol I've made a grand total loss of  $412 as I thought I'd try restocking for a couple of days for the perk points rather than removing the sale signs at the end of the day and doing more baking.
Apart from the amusement of watching the chaos I have no idea how to 1)stop these mega group conversations and 2)earn some real money!
Ideas anyone?

[Tixxis]

Maybe you have too much curb appeal and too many products on sale?
It sounds crazy, but you may want to shrink the operation a little.

[Playalot]

Oh! It's possible to have too many items on sale? Hmm *thinks of the bulging bakery displays* Right then... I'll try removing some. 

@Tixxis , I removed 20 or so plates of baking etc *cough* and instantly I was able to ring customers up. Thanks for the tip. Although part of me almost misses the chaos. 

[ClayMask]

One thing I've found is that if you're talking, the customers don't.  So if you have a bunch of sales interactions queued up, it won't give the customers a chance to talk.

[Playalot]

@ClayMask , great tip! I changed the social to traditional social menu so that retail interactions were one less click away and that's helped. Thanks.

[Playalot]

O.K. Well, now I am able to ring customers up I made a profit of $416. Hmm, not really comparable with my sims real job which brings in over 3k a day. I guess I'll max out baking and cooking etc and see what happens then. The prices on Carl's baking guide look hopeful.

[Tixxis]

It's not a bad idea to higher prices if you feel you're going somewhere. It will give you less customers, but they will buy if you have the time to talk to them.

[dodi90]

Exorbitant price do give more profit per sales. For Illustration:

Super cake (only for example this item didn't really exist)
Base Price : 1,000

Selling at 25% @ 1,250
total sales = 4,
profit = 1000

Selling at 100% @ 2,000
total sales = 1
profit = 1000

While I haven't done more tasting on how long does it take to persuade customer at higher price, I still suggest using exorbitant price to maximize your profit. Serious Shopper helps a lot if you don't use the cheat-ish sure sale as it hasten the process to persuade them to buy. My bakery actually look pretty boring when i play for pure profit as I just sell baked alasaka over and over while slowly raising my baking skill.

[Playalot]

@dodi90 , totally right, the best quality highest price item sold over and over again makes the most money. I had zero fun doing this lol, considering I make my sims eat fish tacos their entire life it was like some kind of weird torture having the most delicious sounding food all over the house!  Still, I have now explored running a bakery. *Ticks that off the list* I actually gave up trying to max out the baking skill and used a cheat, it was more than my patience could bear. Running an art gallery/store was a lot more profitable and fun, in my opinion but I know there are a lot of simmers who love the bakery stuff etc.

[dodi90]

Yes, my main ire with the baking skills is how it take painfully long to master the skill. Since I guess the skill is still bugged and Inspired still do nothing to speed things up. Yeah too bad in order to get the most profit, you still have to do the same thing over and over again and sell it for max profit. Like I said before when this came out, the Bakery that offers all the items is best left for passive bakery.