Actual Cafes Mod
Hi guys, I've been working hard on this one....
For those of us who play Open For Business in The Sims 2, cafes left a lot to be desired. Sims could come in and "shop" for food which would go into their inventory, but then they'd have to take it home... instead of sitting down and eating it.
The only other option was to run a full "restaurant" with a menu, host, server and more... And we all know that restaurants in The Sims 2 are hard, lol.
But what if there was another way?
Introducing my "Cafe Mod".
This is similar to the idea of "Pay To Play", but instead, its "Pay to Eat". Sims will take a plate of food from a display, pay a certain amount of money either to the business owner or to the ether, bypassing the cash register, sit down and eat it.
That's it, that's the mod 😂 Well, plus a little bit more.
Food does not need to be set "for sale" - if you do that, sims will buy it as normal. Thus it also cannot be "restocked", you need to manually do that (sorry).
The cost of the food has been tuned by me to make a nice little profit over what it costs for the sim to make the food, especially if you make group servings, however this can all be tuned inside the 'Maxis Foods update' in the mod.
To mark a lot as a 'cafe' (or any other venue where you want sims to pay to eat a plate of food) you must place my Cafe Lot Marker:
Which will trigger the mod to activate. Without this, sims will eat free on a community lot as normal. This is found in Misc/Misc for $100.
The lot controller has a few extra functions which can be enabled with the pie menu -
"Toggle Object Model" will toggle through some different models for the object. I converted this item from The Sims 4 cos I liked it (and added deco slots!!), but I've also included a bunch of vanilla Sims 2 meshes -
Cos Teapot!!!
There's also the ability to ban pets from coming to the cafe, unless you want a pet friendly cafe of course -
and you can also toggle a feature called "Eat or Go Home", which will force sims to leave the lot if they're not hungry.
In addition to this, I'm uploading separately some Food Business Improvement mods, which will tie into another upcoming project.
Should you download this mod, it will do a few things: 1. More customers will appear on your lot at every business rank 2. More customers will appear on a non-owned food venue that has the cafe lot marker 3. You'll be able to get away with under-paying your employees a little bit easier 😏 lol
I also highly, HIGHLY recommend to use THIS MOD in tandem with my cafe mods, or barista machines are crazy.
To use this mod, you cannot use the default Sims 2 Decra Chill, as sims cannot interact with food inside of that unless it's "for sale". I have created a custom Decra Chill, Repo'd to the original:
This will keep the food fresh, stop it from spoiling, and sims can pick up the plates to eat. It will also automatically set food to the "served" state if you bulk-make meals with the "make food" option on the fridge, as usually this food still has to be "served" by a sim in order to interact with it (lame).
I added a bunch of slots; 8 on each shelf. The 3 at the front and back are designed for small plates, whereas 2 in the middle row are designed for larger plates to go side-by-side.
There are 3 decorative slots on top; be aware if you place food up there, it will not be kept fresh!
I also took @veranka-downloads's 3t2 Deliciously Indulgent Bakery displays and tweaked them:
I added more slots to the shelves, removed the glass on the front and added fake sliding glass doors to the back instead to simulate how an employee would place food inside, and it won't look weird when a sim walks up and grabs food to eat.
Similarly, I took @jinxxsims's 4t2 Get To Work Baker's Cousin Display and did the same thing -
With cleaner more modern look handles on the back.
I've re-used the GUIDs from the original conversions cos my mod makes them more functional anyway, but yeah you can only have one version sorry.
All displays are found in Surfaces / Shelves.
As I said I have updated nearly all Maxis Foods to have a cost, and included a spreadsheet detailing the cost to make versus cost to eat.
I have also included resources and instructions for how to update custom foods to work with the mod. If a food hasn't been updated, it will simply cost $0 to eat at a cafe.
VERY IMPORTANT: If you have default replacements for the Maxis foods, they MAY not work.
This is because in testing it came to our attention that some defaults have not been created as true default replacements which only override the Mesh and Textures, but rather are a custom food that simply overrides the GUID of the Maxis food.
This will break the Cafe Mod.
If you'd like to use your defaults, you must update them the same way you'd update a custom food.
For my own game, I have updated some of Jacky93's food defaults to actually be true defaults which only override the required resources and will therefore work by default with my mod, which you can download if you want them.
I think that's all I have to say for now, lol.
As always, please report any bugs / problems / conflicts and I will try to solve them!
Downloads:
Cafe Mod - Main files
Some of Jacky's Food Defaults as actual defaults
Better Food Businesses
Items in the mod REQUIRE:
@lordcrumps's Sims 4 Shadow File (will not link cos most of you will already have it, google it if you don't)
Money Globals by @picknmixsims
Enjoy!
Tea xo
