Does the caterer work at all?

I had a wedding and hired an insane sim as my caterer. (She was from another family I had been playing, that's how I know her personality) She actually DID cook something, but then she proceeded to party with the rest of wedding guests. She didn't even bake a wedding cake. I clicked on her and there was no option to tell her to work. I thought it was just because she's insane but it sounds like you had the same problem. I really feel that this option to direct your cater needs to be patched in. "Make a cake" "Make a meal" or maybe "FIRE" Something like that. If you're hiring someone to be your caterer, they should really CATER.

Happened to me too. I'll report it as a bug.

I've found the best thing to do if you get a caterer that doesn't do their task, but at the same time is keeping you from cooking, is to run interference with another household member. Have any household member (other than your cook) engage a queue of conversation actions and have your cook make that cake for the wedding, birthday, what-have-you.

Kind of ridiculous to have to resort to this, but the dignity of labor with EA's service sims has always been in question.

The key is not to talk to them. If you do they get chatty. If they do get chatty just right click and rest them with the testing cheat on. They will go back to cooking unless food is already prepared. They will not cook all the time if there is already some food out and leftovers in the fridge.

They don't do anything. I always have my Sim make a bunch of food and either set it out or since the guests help themselves to everything, just leave it in the fridge.

That is what happened at my weddings. The workers, mostly the caterer won't bake a cake and I have the stove, refrig, and cabinets there on the public lot and my sims had to fix their own wedding cakes. I requested that we be able to ask them go back to work. If we pay, then we should be able to start them back to work if they get off track.

I've never had a problem with the caterers, until the first time I decided to have a party with the goals disabled. Don't know if it's related, but that was the only time they didn't cook. They just socialized and partied like a regular guest. I also noticed she didn't have the "Caterer" label over her head.

"Asante;12672963" wrote:

"WarpCode;12672949" wrote:
I have only had one party so far and I made one of the people in my household be the caterer but she didnt cook anything. When I would click on her and make her cook something the activity would show for a second on her action bar then disappear. I made one of my sims friends to be the bartender and she didnt make drinks. I hired someone to be the entertainer and it was an old man who showed up and he died because one of my guests started yelling at him.

That's weird as well... Haven't tried employing one of my sims though... but if they're guests thay CAN cook. Had to make a cake once during a party because the caterer was cooking whatever it was...

EDIT: That party must have been the hit with the entertainer "conjuring" up a creepy wraith... must have been a goth party...

For my most recent wedding, I had my Sim (actually his mom) make the cake ahead of time then dragged it out to the table I had prepared for it. The caterer wasn't the greatest cook -- mainly made BLTs and left two of them on the ground unprepared so my Sims had a lot of cleanup afterwards (plus she broke the refrigerator so my new groom had to fix it), but other than that everything went well -- I finally got the gold medal for the wedding so now I don't have to worry about holding another plum wedding. :o

I've only had one party where my caterer did anything.
My caterer never cooks, my mixologist never makes drinks.
I don't bother hiring them anymore.
There should be an option to click on them and say "go make drinks" or "go make food" or something.

I had a party at the house once. I cannot remember the event. A birthday, I think. The random caterer made a birthday cake, then made tons and tons and tons of salad. The only other time I had a caterer was at a wedding museum venue. The random caterer was Pancake Bob, and he didn't do plum. The bartender did put out tons and tons and tons of plates of chips, which helped. I had the father of the groom eventually bake the wedding cake.