I wanted to post about and expansion pack called The Sims 2 Open For Business, and to hear what kind of things or shops that the community has come out with over the years on this old game. I would like to open up a bakery but I never done that, for those who do not know this expansion pack enabled sims to purchase community lots, and even hire and fire employee from around the city or sim town you have your sims living inside. You can also open up a home business and have your sims work from the comfort of their own home, or house as well as buy a community lot. Open for business also lets you build any kind of store or industry you want to enabling you to have more realistic cities, you can even open up things like a hair saloon or barber shop as well with the given expansion items. or a custom office complexes.

You can charge any sim money for staying on any privately owned. HOURLY Or THEY cannot use the lot SIMPLE.
if you want to make force your sims to pay money to stay at the gym or something. You can

One of my Neighborhoods got this cool sim named Lenny Duke, now Lenny owns this large city GYM, and only his household can use the GYM for free, But you can also give free admission to any sim you want, as well as long as you are controlling the household with the owned community lot or the business owner. When my other sims from other households come, to use this facility they have to pay Lenny's household $40 an hour just to use the lot. and each and every sim that uses that property adds $40+ more to Lennys's households pocket. also other SIM that I don't current control also add money to Lenny as long as they are signed into Lenny's ticker booth. Lenny's GYM is a vary great profit maker, because sims love to workout on the "UNIVERSITY EP" treadmill for hours and hours. But this household worked up enough money to afford this $65,000+ GYM LOT

In the same neighborhood I got this family that owns a toy factory and store, they build all the toys in one room and sell them in the next, all the living essentials are in other rooms of this factory house, my doors are set to lock to I don't have customers going into my private sims household. This family has a 5 star business and to get started you need to help all your sim customers this game takes practice, but running a business with The Sims 2 OFB features is vary fun, and worth every but of your time in my own opinion.

Also helps to have the community skilling mod package or else the Sim GYMS don't give your sims body career points

You can open whatever kind of business imaginable with this EP installed, included a "toilet store" like LGR did a YouTube video of a long time ago.

Also with sims buy any other sim in the game the game saves their inventory. Meaning sims can buy things from one store and take them home with them, and to load them onto the other saved sims. Put them into there homes or yards, and use the objects built in the sim factories. and shops that would otherwise be hidden objects without you unlocking their hidden analysis. There is robots in the sims 2 OFB EP and the only way to get to them is to force your custom sims to build them, but first you cannt build them unless your sims get the skill to build them before they show up in this expansion pack/game.

It's a lot I haven't played with yet, just built, but based on an idea for a cat café, like one I visited in real life. One half of the location sells coffee, food, merchandise, and the other half is a big room to play with cats. Since I don't think you can have cats on community lots unless they're in display stands, it's a home business for a cat-lover sim, with the business on the first level and living quarters on the upper level.

Vidcund Curious has an electronics shop called Curious Robotics (it also sells robots). There's a basement for the employees, and then two levels of sales items.

Francis Worthington III wants five top level businesses, and currently has three (one level 10, one level 8 and one level 5). He runs a clothing shop, and art shop (all from buy mode, he's not keen on painting) and a flower shop that includes flowers from the flower bench. For the next business I'm tempted by a hairdresser...

Gallagher Newson loves tinkering and I'd like him to run a garage - anyone know any good CC/mods to use? He can fix up the Freetime cars and sell them, but it would be nice to do some other kind of repair work...

True and NEVER use that Pet Pen that comes with The Sims 2 Apartment Life Expansion pack OR "TS2 Complete Collection" for sale in any Business Home or Community owned lot because I did and all I could hear was a puppy howling non stop and I could not even delete the pen, or the puppy inside of it I put for sale. I could not even feed puppy I felt horrible, angry, and annoyed, with this scenario because. Both my lot and basally my entire neighborhood, I built, from the ground up back then had un-fixable corruption. Or at least? I didn't know how to fix it at the time I believed at that point? my neighborhood was actually totaled from this scenario, I still am pissed to this day about that. :

(edit) maybe that CRTL SHIFT C combo and then typing in that "boolprop testingcheatsenabled true" in the textbox would have helped now that I think of it looking back. For those of you who do not know sometimes you need to use the "move_objects on" cheat in order to delete stuck objects with stuck states. but that tactic didn't work for me back then on this either, so with that pet pin so I gave up back then.

I just found out how to run a restaurant, first you setup a restaurants in a community lot form, by placing a restaurant podium, a large 2 block white stove, and a sink or a dishwasher, then set up tables with chairs or a an eating counter with bar stools and dining chairs. that is how you normally setup a CPU ran restaurant, or café. the kind of café or restaurant I am talking about required Nightlife EP or Double Deluxe or Complete Collection installed as well as Open For Business EP.

To run a custom Restaurant or café you first buy that community lot then hire 3 OR 4 employees AND ASSIGN JOB's to at least 3 or 4 sims from your household a position is the easier way of doing this, because employees can quit at random, making your business completely un=operational You need 1 chef 1, Host, 1 Server, and maybe at least 1 dishwasher, you can appoint 4 sims to do the work. But if you want people to work their while you take other sims their you MUST hire at least 3 or 4 sims to do the work for you, and then the business pretty much takes care of itself, better to get to know all your employees so they don't get up and leave at random, because they will and you can't stop them either.

Also a good idea to place a ticket booth so your sim can make more profit off a Restaurant or Café.

A private restaurant. I will test it but I suspect that having very few seats reduces the staff spawning. eg A single seat non-owned restaurant might only spawn one employee who takes on every role when and as required. host,chef,server,cleaner.
only diner: Mrs Fancy 'I don't dine at home or with other people.'
I'll make a bunch of 'test-urants' to find out gradually increasing the chair numbers from 1 to 100.

Edit: already mentioned in the wiki that its *tables* that change the number. which actually makes more sense.

Not too long ago I took stock and gathered info and pics on all my owned businesses so this is a timely thread! I was a bit slower to get into the OFB functions but I do love them, they are a great time-sink for sims you just don't know what to do with. It's even more fun when the businesses integrate into the larger community of the hood in some way. Thank goodness for cc creators and modders to widen the variety of businesses as well. I have so many other ideas yet I haven't implemented into actually businesses like a cat cafe, a vineyard, a therapy office, butcher shop, and fireworks stand to name a few.

@LauraBow - I was batting around the cat cafe idea, between a home and community lot. The solution, I think, for a cat cafe community lot is to have your sim like adopt a bunch of strays and then take the cats with them to the community lot cafe so the patrons can play with them, maybe then your sims can offer to sell the ones that click with the customers if you want that function for sims to get cats. I have a cat cafe in my city in RL and I love it <3

In my siggy, Careers and businesses for sims

Cafe and resource list https://modthesims.info/showthread....644#post4830644

School https://modthesims.info/showthread....717#post4831717
https://modthesims.info/showthread....418#post5219418

Salon and clothes https://modthesims.info/showthread....367#post4833367

Post Office https://modthesims.info/showthread....142#post4836142

Police Station and Fire Station https://modthesims.info/showthread....958#post4840958
and post 308 https://modthesims.info/showthread....818#post5133818

Library https://modthesims.info/showthread....358#post4844358

Restaurant https://modthesims.info/showthread....337#post4846337
(The OFB glitch has been fixed by Chris Hatch https://simfileshare.net/download/2614227/ and in a different way by https://modthesims.info/d/615566/bu...outfit-fix.html I use Chris' fix, his method fixes the employee as they arrive at work pausing the lot briefly)

Greengrocers/supermarket https://modthesims.info/showthread....773#post4869773
and https://modthesims.info/showthread....368#post4945368
https://modthesims.info/showthread....693#post5464693

Photo Studio https://modthesims.info/showthread....804#post4876804

Bank https://modthesims.info/showthread....970#post4882970

Fishmongers https://modthesims.info/showthread....150#post4921150

Aquarium https://modthesims.info/showthread....664#post5140664

Hospital https://modthesims.info/showthread....023#post5213023
https://modthesims.info/showthread....284#post4838284 I have updated it quite a lot since.

Pizza https://modthesims.info/showthread....907#post5465907

Laundromat https://modthesims.info/showthread....766#post5472766

Plus lot of great posts by other members on here.

thank you for sharing these links and the topics with us on this thread I greatly appreciate it @joandsarah77

Also I done a discount store I called a dollar store before and the business grew to 1-5 star almost instantly, it was my most successful business ever in the sims 2. to explain it I sold hard drive's, drill and bits, arts supplies, and small statues as well