Owned Businesses Idea
I’m not sure if this already exists in other packs but I have the Cats & Dogs expansion pack that comes with owning a vet clinic as an owned business. I have other expansion packs but don’t see a...
Forum Discussion
@GridironGuy88 I think owning a bowling alley would be a fun idea! The types of business you can own and run in the game via expansion packs are:
- A vet clinic, as you know, through 'Cats & Dogs'.
- A restaurant, by owning 'Dine Out'.
- A retail store, by owning 'Get to Work'.
Personally, the option I have gotten the most mileage out of was by creatively using the retail store option. Just use your imaginateion and run with it! For example:
- A car dealership (a debug car lot with valuable cooking/selling plants on the lot and a 'Lice Cold Freezer' where I sell the produce and meals/desserts/baked goods, if I want, through the freezer - plus I can sell toy cars inside the building)...
- A bakery selling baked goods and produce (in the manner mentioned above - and when you use the Lice Cold Freezer to sell from you don't have to ring the customer up!) and items that make sense for the theme...
- A florist - selling flower arrangements (if you have the Seasons Expansion Pack), making them onsite, adding flower plants on the lot to harvest for the flower arrangements; selling death flowers/snacks or whatever fits your theme + clears a profit)...
- Selling clothes or other items from the game at a profit...
And those are just a few examples. Use your imagination and have fun with it!
With the restaurants you can do a normal restaurant, one that specializes in drinks (though you cannot use the lot type 'bar' and own it, it has to be a restaurant), coffee (though you cannot use the lot type 'café' and own it, it has to be a restaurant), seafood, or a particular type of food, etc.
You can also do the trick with a retail store or a vet clinic where you have your household live on the business lot. This is done by having them own a separate residence (or even just an empty lot, which the game considers to be their home), and you direct the household from the business lot, having them sleep, eat, etc. there. Whenever one of them leaves the lot (to go to work, school, etc.) that Sim will return to the 'home' lot, so you can click them at the bottom of your screen and you will see an option to bring them to the business lot... click to do that and they will be back on the lot. I tried this workaround once on a restaurant, but my Sim household started to be a bit buggy at one point in that case, so I'm not sure if that works well for restaurants? However, I have had it work great for retail stores and a vet clinic.
I think that the reason you can't own a business that comes with a different pack (a spa, bowling alley, gym, etc.) is because retail/business owning is attached to the Expansion Packs rather than the game packs. These types of functions are probably a more involved process to create, so they are a larger pack with a higher price tag.
Anyway, it sounds like you may enjoy one or both of these Expansion Packs as well?
@GridironGuy88 , I agree it would be fun to be able to own a bowling alley in the game! 🎳😎
@SheriGR , great tips for retail businesses! And I think you might be right on why we can't own Spas and Bowling alleys ... Either the ability to own a business is tied to that particular pack (like Cats & Dogs and Dine Out), or else it is tied to a general retail store and is tied to Get to Work. Bowling and Spa Day wouldn't fit in either category, and as Game Packs they are much smaller than Expansion Packs, so their isn't "room" for the additional ability to own those venues. 😉 Great observation! 😃If you have a pack that lets you own a business that's not a vet clinic, maybe you could have one that's also a bowling alley? Like a restaurant that is basically a bowling alley snack bar...
I imagine it would be harder to run a spa, though, since I think you need the lot type for the spa NPCs to show up. You could try, though, with a gift shop and hiring a yoga instructor, or having another household member being the yoga instructor. If you have Get Together, you could have a Yoga Club that meets there... Kind of kludgy but maybe it would come close? A bowling alley would be easier because it's not its own lot type...
I love creative business ideas!
Right now I have:
Caleb Vatore in my game is kind of the Paranormal Stuff "Oddity Collector," in that I've bought a lot of paranormal stuff out of debug and sell it in his store. I pretend that my mediums are selling things to him, LOL. His store is still kind of In Progress as he built it for $2K and we're putting the profits into the store, but when it's built up I might put it on the gallery. (I was kind of inspired by Petey Plays It's video.) He also sells vampire tomes, vampire pack knickknacks, plasma packs, and has the Ultimate Vampire Cure chillin' in a bakery case. 😉 He might branch out into werewolf items, too, when the pack comes out. Also his gardener wife grows dragonfruit and sells that as well; TBH that's where a lot of the money comes from. 😉 What he doesn't have is spellcaster stuff, because...
My witches own a magic shop that has all the potions, all the tomes, and most non-fish ingredients... and a dish of ambrosia chillin' in a display case. They also sell dragonfruit, cowplant berries, and the odd fizzy juice. (Again, her wife is a gardener, lol.) There's a lot more Stuff for Witches, and potions don't sell for much but I've had my muggle Sims go buy them.
I also have a Flower Shop that's waiting for my future florist to graduate university (it was built by LilSimsie) and might give my chef a bakery. She owns a restaurant in another save; maybe she'll have both if she can afford it...
Also, I gave Paddywack's Emporium to the S-K-L family, so they run that and Alice sometimes sells her paintings there. I also made Dennis Kim a high level investor, on the verge of retiring, and Vivian Lewis retired from the culinary field.
So... what kind of shop should an alien have? I've been considering letting my alien open a business, but am not sure what we'd sell. Alien Stuff, I guess? She's in the military and is the Hero of Strangerville, but I don't really want her to duplicate the Curio Shop because that just doesn't seem fun. :D
@xochiquetzl_xkvn My Aliens have a collectibles store in Newcrest where they sell items from all of the Sims worlds, but they specialize in items from Sixam. Underneath the retail space, they have a basement where they grow various alien plants and store their other Sixam collectibles. The Glow Orbs seem to be their biggest seller. Regular sims go crazy for that stuff. Since I grow the harvestables on the retail lot, there is no restocking cost in replacing the sold items. It's all profit.
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They even have a rocket hidden down in the basement, in a recessed silo, for an occasional trip back to Sixam. One of my Alien sims is an astronaut. An Interstellar Smuggler, of course ;-D
