Small Business - this or that?
I'm finally upgrading my game by adding a few small businesses to most worlds, and not limited to Nordhaven. I love the fact that SB actually doubles the number of lots as long as we are willing to add several functions to each lot, and in some cases also build higher. On most community lots there can be a living household, and most residentials can provide some SB that can be visited when playing other families.
My goal is to add more businesses to visit. I have plenty of households already. I want each new SB to provide reasons for active sims to visit that lot, being a shop, have fun, socialize incl. dating, and perhaps building skills or support their interests for storytelling. The lecture feature seems nice, but I suspect it might take a higher ranked business to make the teaching good, financially.
I changed a few lots and I keep getting back to a few questions - this or that. I might build a small business, but after completing the build, I realize that there are too few reasons for other played sims to visit as customers. Because I play rotationally building a business takes forever, so it's more fun to focus on the visiting aspect. I'm not sure I understand the SB concept fully, so I would like to learn about other simmers' experience.
#1. Charging customers
When do you chose charging per hour, and when is it better with once entrance charge? I tend to prefer charging per hour, but it requires customers to stay a while. If they pay only once, it would be better for my business that customers don't stay for long, but rather allow new customers to arrive. I also use per hour for shops, because my visiting sims would not stop by to buy anything if they need to pay a bigger entrance fee just to enter the shop. But I'm obviously missing something: When would it work better to charge customers just once?
#2. Build two houses or two stories?
Do you normally let the owners live upstairs, or do they reside in a 2nd building on the same lot? I tend to mix the two, vertically vs horizontically, and I keep thinking it would be better to separate them better.
#3. Tagging the rooms?
I normally restrict access to the private rooms, only, and perhaps also to the employee rooms. But some times I just leave the general business room untagged. Is this wrong, must they be tagged for business to work propperly? The reason I leave the business rooms, is that I often include some customer activity outdoors, like a pavement serving, or a small garden/park. Should they all be built as rooms in order to be seen as part of the business?
#4. Is there a way to set an object not for sale?
When placing items on surfaces, they automatically get set for sale, even if the business is not a shop and buying stuiff is not a customer activity. Occasionally I want to turn off "for sale" on a specific item. Is there a way? I placed a group serving in a cake display counter, and it got set on sale, as expected. Moving this item to a dining table will not remove the "for sale". By storing the serving in a fridge instead, moving it to the table avoid the "for sale". I think dining tables are excepted, but are there other ways to avoid the "for sale"?
#5. How to avoid "eat until you drop"?
We know sims gauin weight quickly, so I was a bit upset noticing that serving a group meal made the one c ustomer eat again and again until the serving was empty. The fact that the cupcakes were poor quality had no effect on this. Eating food is a customer activity, but with a total of 5 different activities I was expecting less focus on just one of them. Is there a way to serve food to customers (not being charged, but helping them staying) without the same sim eating again and again? Could it be trait specific (Foodie?), that it might not happen with every customer?
#6. What features gets easier when SB rank builds?
I play on rotation, so it will take years to build only one customer star. What bonuses that come with higher rank do you find most useful and worth reaching for?
Okay, enough for now. Pls comment on whatever quote you like, or add more even.
