Game guide:How to run a Restaurant

In The Sims 4: Dine Out, we finally have the option to Run a Restaurant! Yay! However... it isn't that easy...

There are many things that go into a Restaurant, you have to make sure the place looks great, you have to make sure that the employees are well equipped and you have to make sure your customer (especially critics!) are happy. Here are simple and easy steps on the guide to have your Sims run their very own restaurant!

Starting a Restaurant
There are multiple ways of getting your Sim their own restaurant. Make your Sim pull out their phone and call to Buy a Restaurant or look in the Owned Businesses Panel (which you can find at the very bottom right corner of the screen, clicking the cash register icon) and under the Select an Option you can select to buy a restaurant!

Both options will direct you to the map in which you must pick a empty or residental lot to buy to make it your restaurant. All Restaurants start out with 1 Star Rating.

Plopping one down
If you don't want to spend time building your own Restaurant, you can always plop one down from the Gallery.

In the My Library Section there are premade restaurant lots in which Maxis made, you can choose any of those Restaurants or...

In the Community tab, you can scroll through a large amount of Restaurants made by other players from around the world!

Build it yourself!
If you wanna make it really personal, you can always build the Restaurant from scratch or by selecting rooms from the Styled Rooms catelogy and molding it from there. You can also convert an existing lot to a Restaurant (as long as no Sim occupies it) at anytime using build mode.

When building a Restaurant you must need a list of things:
 * 1 Sink
 * 1 Toilet (they can't go at home)
 * at least 1 Chef Station (1 more maybe needed if you have another chef)
 * at least 4 Dining Spots (They cannot eat on the floor, trust me, i've tried- They will moan)
 * at least 1 Waiter Station
 * 1 host station (preferably at the front of the restaurant, from experience wise)

Transfer Funds
When you have a Restaurant, you must transfer funds to the individual restaurant from your Sims household funds. This will be the money the Restaurant will have, and a percentage of the money will go to the Employees and Ingredients for the food. You can select to transfer funds by the Transfer Funds button in the Owned Businesses Panel and there is a button next to the Household funds to select to transfer funds.

The reason why you transfer funds is so that household funds and Restaurant funds are separate and doesn't affect your household money, also because you can have multiple Restaurants and transferring funds to a individual Restaurant can help you keep track of the funds for each Restaurant.

If the Restaurant runs too low on money you can always transfer more money to the Restaurant but once the Restaurants starts booming you don't have to worry about it running out. This can work vise versa as if your Household funds are getting low you can transfer the money you earned from the Restaurant to your Households Funds.

Restaurant Settings
in the top right corner of the Owned Businesses Panel, you can see the "Restaurant Settings", this will pop up many options of your Restaurant.

There you can change the price markup, the Advertising (this will help get more customers), Ingredient Quality (only if you have purchased the Ingredient Quality Options perk in the Restaurant Perks), The Menu for the Restaurant, the Uniform of the Host, Waiters, and Chefs, and finally the option to set what type of clothing the customer will attend the restaurant in: Everyday, Formal, Athletic, Sleepwear, Party, and Swimwear.

Also in the bottom left of the window for Restaurant Settings is the option to Sell the Restaurant, this is helpful if the Restaurant just isn't cutting it for you and you don't want to own one, Or because you can own multiple Restaurants, selling a Restaurant can help make one less restaurant to manage.

The Food Menu
The most important thing about the Restaurant... the food, mmmmmmm...

There are four categories on a menu: Drinks, Appetisers, Main Course, and Desserts. However you can only have up to 30 foods or drinks in each category.


 * Drinks - Here you can add drinks from a large array of options, customers will choose one of these to go with their meal.
 * Appetisers - Here are some snacks or small meals just to get the customers started.
 * Main Course - the Main event as customers will choose a nice meal to enjoy.
 * Dessert - yummy desserts in which customers will have to finish off their meals.

Employees
Employees! in the Owned Businesses Panel there is a button in which you hover over is named "Manage Employees", this will open up a window in which you can hire non-playable Sims (yes sadly you can't make your Sims be the employees) for you employees.

There are three types of employees: Now, don't be alarmed if the list of Sims to hire all have low skills, nearly all Sims available for hire will be this way, it is your job to hire them and help them raise their skills or if you're impatient, pay for their training which will make them be more skilled the next time you open your restaurant.
 * Host - Hosts are Sims who will be the Sim who shall make reservations and guide your customers to their table, it's important they're good at Charimsa. You can only have one Host.
 * Waiter - Waiters are Sims who take orders from the customers and will deliver the food made by the chefs to the customers table, in their free time they will clean up dishes and cups as well as clean up messes and the toilets. At first you can only have one Waiter but in the Restaurant Perks you can purchase 2 more slots to hire 2 more Waiters.
 * Chef - Chefs are the cooks of the Restaurant and will make the meals, they must have a chef station in order to cook, At first you can only have one Chef but in the Restaurant Perks you can purchase 1 more slot and hire another chef.

Keeping them Happy
Employees have feelings, they're people too!

First things first you have to make sure your employees are ok emotionally, seeing their faces if they're happy or fine is good. It's also important to keep up their mood throughout the day by checking on them or praising them.

You also have to make sure you aren't overworking you Employees, cause after 10 Sim hours they feel like they're working for too long and will complain, this will risk them feeling sad or stressed until you close the Restaurant, if the overworking persists the Employees may quit.

Finally, when an employee does great work for a long time they feel as if they aren't appreciated enough and may quit because the owner isn't paying them their desired salary, promoting them will help them lift their spirits.

Improving Them
Employees at first will have less ability, so it's your job to keep making sure they're improving.

Throughout the day at working at the Restaurant the employee may get higher in their skills which will help them improve next time, you can also make your Sim who owns the Restaurant pay for training, this will make them raise their skills considerably next time they come to the Restaurant to work.

Selecting on the employee you have to option to criticize them, this will help them improve their work performance but their mood will suffer.

Sometimes you just gotta let 'em go
Sometimes an employee will do so bad that you have to fire them on the spot, this is true but there will come a employee with a mean attitude or treats the customers poorly and thus you must fire them if they haven't improved otherwise customers will complain.

it is advised to replace the employee you fired by hiring another one to fill their spot.

Restaurant Perks
The button to open up Restaurant Perks is right next to Transfer Funds in the Owned Businesses Panel, this will open a window to a large array of Perks in which you can purchase to help improve your Restaurant. The Perks can range from adding slots for more employees, to getting special decor and things to help improve Ambience, unlocking special things for the Restaurant such as new interactions, options or items etc.

To purchase Restaurant Perks you'll need Perk Points, and you can get perk points every time you communicate with your employees or customers and when a employee does something well, as well as every time a customer pays for their meal.

Some perks, such as Surplus Harvest, only last for a limited time before you need to redeem them again. They are marked in their description as Temporary. However, the period in which they are good for (i.e. 24 hours) only refers to business hours. Hence If a Sim redeems a temporary perk good for 24 hours at the start of business hours and closes the restaurant down after 8 hours, there are still 16 hours remaining which will be consumed the next time the restaurant reopens.

If a household owns multiple restaurants, the perks earned in one will extend to the other.

Managing your Restaurant
You can open up your Sims Restaurant by clicking the Open button on the Owned Businesses Panel.

When the Restaurant is open your Employees will come to work in their uniform (sometimes they'll be late so don't be alarmed if the customers roll in before your employees are there). Customers will also flood in waiting to be seated at the Host Station, you can see the customers will have a star above their head, this star will have numbers 1-5 on it and all customers will enter the Restaurant at a neutral 3 star rating.

When the Customers are seated then they will order from the Menu and the Waiters will visit the Chefs in the kitchen to tell them what to cook. The Chefs will then get to work as they cook the meal, when it is done, it will be left out in front of the chef station in a metal platter in which a Waiter will come by to pick up and deliver to the customers table, the Waiter will then open up the platter dish and the customers food will appear in front of them, there is a chance a Waiter may drop the food so you must keep an eye out for them for the first few days.

When the Customers have finished their meal they will submit their star rating they have above their head in which will influence the star rating of your restaurant.

Customers and the Star Rating
Customers will have a star rating above their head in which will dictate the star rating scale your Restaurant is at. The higher the rating the more popular the Restaurant is. At the end of each day Customers will leave a review on how satisfied they were, the collective reviews of customers will tell what parts of the Restaurant was great as well as what needs improving.

Customers are satisfied by three things:


 * Meal Quality - The quality of the meal is everything and to help improve this you can make the Chefs work on their cooking skills or make the Ingredient Quality better.
 * Service - The service is everything as the customers see them all the time throughout the Restaurant, improving service is easy as you can check if the Host and Waiter are doing well as well as making sure they're nicer to the customers.
 * Ambience - The Ambience is dictated by how the Restaurant looks and how it sounds, there being too much noise can overwhelm the customers and there not being enough paintings or plants can make the Restaurant feel bland.

Making the customers happy is easy as you can make your Restaurant Owner check on the tables of customers to see if they're okay with the meal and service, this will also make the customers feel special as the Owner is talking to them giving a good review.

If a customer is getting below 3 star rating you can always as the Owner make the chef and waiter prioritise their table so that they work to make their table get the food faster as well as give them comp to the food so they will get cheaper prices or even give them free drinks and/or desserts if they feel the prices are too much.

Restaurant Critic
Finally, there are some customers that have a large say in how good the Restaurant is, influencing the Star Rating greatly. These customers are Restaurant Critics!

Restaurant Critics will come by every so often to visit the Restaurant to try what it is like, they can be identified by a White Ribbon underneath their Star Rating. Helping them feel great at the Restaurant and making sure they get their food and interaction from the owner will improve their Star Rating and thus helping the Restaurant go up a half a star or a whole star.

Working from Home
Thankfully you don't need to attend the Restaurant EVERY time you want to open it up and get the money. If your employees are skilled enough they can work the Restaurant by themselves and so your Sim can spend their relaxation at home just make sure to keep an eye on the profits or the complaints from the employees from working too long.

It is advised to pop in at the Restaurant every once in a while to give personal touch as the owner.

Death and Moving Out
Try to plan accordingly. If the last teenage Sim in your household passes away or your household is moving out while selling the furnishings, your Restaurant will be released back to the community. In these cases, the next occupant can only buy the Restaurant unfurnished, all staff will be laid off, and the rating will be reset to 1.