Some I build, some I download. Although even if I download I normally tweak so much I wonder why I downloaded. Check my signature for my business thread. That is my old Integrated hood. or if you check my page here at MTS you will find lots that I have uploaded.

well my sims LTW is to sew 300 items so its her most wanted thing to do... I do open my shop everyday cause I also sale outfits just from the rack.. but man the self sewed outfits go away like warme Semmel! Her son now got the golden badge too so he can be a sew slave too... double production

I'd say in any retail business, take the wholesale perks whenever possible. By reducing the buying price of your stock, they increase your income without you having to increase your selling prices. Without them, margins in a Sims business ore ridiculously tight. I would say to only take the cash perks if you absolutely have to -- i.e. If you can't pay the bills or feed your family. It may also make sense to take the cash to reduce or clear debt, if you've had to borrow heavily to finance your business. I'm pretty sure that the wholesale perks, also reduces the cost of materials in a business based of crafting.

Right at the moment I'm wondering how to run a restaurant as a profitable and successful business, since, as a result of @justpetro' s contest, Amanda Hunt and her son Tyler have arrived in Monopolis (near Veronaville) and opened a restaurant they have named "Ample Sufficiency". So far they've only opened for one day, and they're still at Rank 0. Maybe not surprising since Tyler, acting as waiter, spilt food on the first two customers he served. When I first came to MTS back in 2012-13, there was a thread running about Sims 2 owned restaurants. The consensus seemed to be that it was almost impossible to make a decent profit running an OFB restaurant, since diners always came singly, leaving all the other seats at the table empty.That's probably why I've never had an owned restaurant until now. But now that the Hunts have opened one, I feel I have to do my best to help them make it a success.

My business tips:
When starting, have your sim make the craftables at home before they arrive at the business. Then they can work the till, restock and sales alone, until the shop gains rank and gets busier, at which point you can hire.
I always hire the cheapest sims- you don't necessarily need them qualified when the business is new, as you will have few customers and your cheap hire will gain badges as they work.
I never bother with break rooms- if the employee is tired, send them home and close the business. I find that having employees rest is ineffective and a good way to lose money. If you make sure they are paid fairly they should be okay to work until they are tired.
Say goodbye to any customers who have already made a purchase, or who have no intention of making a purchase. If they start looking at an item and then lose interest, they probably aren't going to buy so ta-ta!
Say goodbye to argumentative or mean customers who disturb your good customers. Make space for another buying customer!
If you are selling craftables, also put some higher priced catalog items on sale to gain money. You'll make more on selling a TV for cheap than you will by selling a toy robot for expensive. I like to sell vases alongside my flowers, computers alongside my bots, object d'art alongside my pottery and doll houses and video game consoles alongside my toys.
I can never make restaurants profitable, they are really difficult for a new business as you need so many employees! Good for family businesses where you have a lot of unpaid labour available.
If you really want to make restaurants work, try adding a bandatron (ticket machine) and something fun like a dart board. That way you'll earn when customers aren't eating.
Hair salons are great as you just need a chair and one person to make it work.

A staff room is good for family members to freshen up before going home. Time on a commlot is free. Visitors of course are terrible at choosing an effective way to refresh themselves. You often see visitors going home for motives. I have some personal mods that help a bit, but visitors are still not good. You can call staff to eat, and they then will do it without dithering.

I don't know what they were thinking about restaurants. They do not work. Food is too low value. There is a long turnaround time on a restaurant. The host's job is practically useless. I can see how food value was raised, possible to rebalance things. If you go to the Jacquet's bakery of plastic cakes (they can be fixed), you see how food used to cost about half of what it does now if you place a new cake.

What works on a Shop 2 (Electrono Ticket Machine) business is a food stand or a university cafeteria. They are about the same, but the latter looks cheap and sells poor man's food. It will not make money itself, but visitors will stay happier on the lot for longer to dance or ride a sphere or what not. Visitors are terrible at cooking by themselves, and may start a fire. You can't cook for them, as it does not look proper and the food spoils quickly. Coffee does not work. It can be used, but visitors will hate that their bladder is drained. I have statistics on my Food Stand, and it tells the bitter truth of how (not) much money is made, not including expenses on the staff.

Somehow there is a flaw (or can be triggered sometimes) where once the club is at rank 10, visitors won't leave anymore.

WOW I lost stars cause my sim froze at the cashregister and the whole item borked so they were standing around waiting and couldnt find the cashregister for a while and got angry > like an in game hour later they found it but still couldnt form a proper line

There is a fault with the cash register that is rarely triggerable when the customer has to walk a long time to it because of blockages or when the shop is very large or with stairs and multiple doors. It might also be possible with some pushed actions. Customers register on the register immediately before they have walked to it. If the cashier doesn't receive them in time, the fault occurs. I addressed it partly in my Cashier Responsive mod.

If you want to make an insane amount of money start a home business with a ticket machine.
Add a hot tub, one or two White Rabbit Bubble Blower and a couple of toilets. Lock the door of the house so they don't come in.

I have only been running this for a week in game time and it is already Rank 7 and valued at $35,000 and rakes in about $1,500 a day set on ticket prices at $12 you could easily raise the ticket price at this level.
A couple of visitors raided the garbage bin as they were hungry. I added the BBQ but they don't seem to be using it.

One question if I am playing another household how can they visit this home business, I can't seem to find the option.

Fishing: start the fishing when the sims are young, some of my families take their kids to the local pond over weekends, and some of my kids have silver badges already. By the time they are going to Uni, the gold badge is already required.

Fishing can make money, @jonasn. A jumbo trout sells for an amount equal to the starting pay in sim careers, a rainbow trout sells for the equivalent of the daily pay of a Level 9 - 10 job! The secret is to catch enough of them, and it happens often enough once the golden badge is earned.

The recipe for any small business imo is the same: Don't stock a 1000 products, have as little staff members as possible (use the free family labour), don't keep the business open for more than 2 hours at a time (Go home, rest, have fun, come back later for another 2 hours) and keep the expenses as low as possible.

My most successful business sells lights. Every townie needs a light in their lives, from a table lamp to a floor lamp to a ceiling lamp.

Why two hours? People can last for over 8 hours. Even the ones with comfort melting away can go for 6 hours.

How do you display your fish?

Just as an experiment I decided to get Sally to run her Garden Centre for as long as she could. I removed the Snapdragon that I had in there as its a bit of a cheat.
Reached 21 hours before Sally started to complain she was tired. She cooked food at home and took a few meals with her but only ate one meal although a customer ate one as she was slow getting to the table . She needed to use the toilet once and shower once. A handheld gaming device would have helped with fun but found someone to throw a football with her. Comfort is also something she needed, I suppose a more comfortable toilet and change the shower to a nice bath would help.

I will say she has most if not all the slower needs decay perks and learnt Lifelong Happiness from a bookshelf

I have added the start and end screenshots

They can't. That's one problem with home businesses.

The standard Popularity people with "aries" or "gemini" type personality are great at running a shop (and running within the shop). I think their motives go down slower if they have satisfied their wants in the past week, which is another freetime thing. Angela Pleasant and "her gang" can go on forever without running out of energy or comfort. Business makes it hard to satisfy wants, however. They usually want something like "make a sale to X" who has already left the lot, and when you are drained after work, you can't go on a date.

Lol, at those toilets visible. Build an outhouse in the corner of the lot.

There is a little bug with motives on business, which is like a cocurrency issue. When it comes to restoring them from a Motive Transport memory token, it can't do it because the token is already deleted. It is fixed by keeping the memory token for a short while. So you usually start with fresh, mostly filled motives and bladder halfway.

I hired an employee who demanded to be paid €107 and couldn't do any work. Amazing. I want to spam about it.

Sims are not people. It also gives them time to do other things.
I have tried the 8 hour thing when I started playing, deciding that one of my sims is going to be an artist. Poor thing painted for 8 hours a day and was permanently exhausted.
My Sims open their shops for 2 hours, then spend around another hour to clean up and restock (if needed). My shops are small, and this way only the minimum staff is needed.

Fish does not spoil in the game and sells like anything else. I think I used the magic tray on tables, the OFB shelves, etc. in the past, but I have used a prettier cc one (I think it was made by Princess Bliss, not 100% sure) for some time now, because it is a shelf that looks like a fridge. You can put them one the floor as well (but the penquin may gobble them up before you can sell them).

I have them run for 5 - 6 hours or when stock is out... Well I always cheat comfort, sleep and fun up due my game running at half speed but need decay is normal... otherwise my sims would have to sleep three times a day.. So my sim can work from morning to noon from home... go from noon to evening to her bussiness, come back and work from home again from noon till 10pm >: D

Also are those big blankets you can sew bugged in general? I have like 5 in my inventory but I always have to redo the ster for sale cause it always says I have no more of them... dude I have 5

Why? They don't undress when they pee, they sit on the toilet in their trousers and top or whatever outfit they have on.
If your viewing settings are Walls Cutaway, you are watching them pee so why not other Sims

Because "sims are not people" two hours fly past in two minutes, which is very short time to do anything.

Are your sims cattle? Why are their toilets and items behind a fence?

I open as soon as I can in the morning and close so they can get home for dinner most times. The most profitable shop being the music store, she is still by herself at rank 6 and rakes in approximately $14 thousand a day. I always play with need perks ticked, that is all.

My only level 10 in this hood is the farms home produce stand. Again I mostly just send one sim to man it, closing once the 4 shelves are empty which only takes a couple of hours. Even set at expensive their fish and produce flies off the shelves. I keep an eye on it as sometimes townies need help and normally I would tell a family member to run over and help them as my sim is way too busy on the till.

Normally the owner of the place is used to be the one who does everything while the employees do the rest. It is better to start with a few employees so that the business is profitable, but there comes a point when you need them. My favorite business is restaurants, but the sims 2 are very versatile and you can do so many different types of businesses. I want to experiment a little more with business. It is one of my favorite expansions.

Edit: Now that I read more about how difficult restaurants are, it is true, but I really like that it is really possible to make them work and require so much effort, also that distribution and playing for a long time is the key. It's something very realistic. I still remember the first restaurant that I managed to get working, it was in Belladona in one of the businesses, I think it was a toy store or maybe the flower shop (?), I'm not sure, but I renovated it from the inside. Restaurants are arguably the most reliant on bonuses and popularity and an initial investment, so they're kind of a gamble, just like in real life. xDD

Yip, but once they are fairly good at selling, they sell a lot in those 2 hours. Plus, I can always open the shop again later in the day if I feel like it. Sometimes they open 3 times a day.

Its not my idea I stole it from the layout in the Veronaville Market, the fence separates the floorboards from the earthen area where the plants are I thought it looks cool/different/unique/fun . Their toilets have walls between them but still have a fence and gate access. I changed the Resistall Astro Divider for a normal toilet and no one seems to mind.

I like the idea of putting an earth section indoors for selling plants. I have been thinking how to display plants that seems realistic, but didn't think of having soil under a roof. I told you that I'm not a creative builder. I know that, for example, fish might not spoil, but still looking for ideas how to show them in a plausible way.

It sucks that when objects are restocked, they won't snap back into illegal slots without a global mod to enable it. I can put all sorts of stuff on displays, but then it is replaced by an out of stock sign and won't come back if prevented by weight, size per shelf, or category.

Here is the link to the one I use: https://princessbliss-sim.tumblr.co...ted-to-make-for

You can sell the plants from the garden catalog straight from where they are planted. I put fences around them in my game, making that my sales area.

I'm sorry if I missed it, but has anyone mention the need of townies. Townies are needed for success since they have a wide range of income.

Also, determine the average funds of your fellow neighbors. If all the households in the hood have §5,000 and below, they are NOT going to buy §20,000 cars. Be mindful of the type of business you're running in the neighborhood. Kind-of like real life. Starbucks won't be in a neighborhood with an average annual income of $15,000 and below. The market isn't there. The last thing low-income residents are concerned with is overpriced sugary coffee latte.

I wish they knew what they really needed when they came shopping. They're happy to spend all their money on lattes or used TVs. And when they're out of money, they come to the shop, show crossed over money symbol, and our relationship drops as if it was our fault.

Somebody should marry those townies who are richer than a burglar, richer than a Diva even.