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The Sims 4 Dine Out Game Pack

Management: Customer Behavior and Food Critics

Improve the opinion of your customers by interacting with them. Everyone likes to meet the owner, especially if he throws in free drinks!

Key to the success of your restaurant are customers and your staff's treatment of them. This part of my Dine Out guide exists to teach you a bit about customers, when they'll arrive, and their composition. We will also touch on food bloggers (critics) who can be a positive or negative influence on your restaurant's rating. Restaurant Rating itself and all the factors that contribute to it are found on the Star Rating page.

Getting More Customers

Advertising is worth it for a well-run establishment, but upper packages too expensive for smaller restaurants.

How Many
The number of customers that will visit your restaurant are based upon three major factors. First, your star rating. This one is obvious, as a restaurant with a good reputation is more exciting to visit. Second, advertising to get the word out via 4 distinct packages. You pay for advertisements by the hour, and only during times of operation. Lastly, time of day has a large impact on the types of and quantity of visitors you'll see.

Advertising Packages
Find this under the Restaurant Settings menu. There are four packages available:

• Silver Package: $5/hour ($120/day). This package advertises via newspaper and brings in 20% more customers.
• Gold Package: $10/hour ($240/day). This package advertises via radio and brings in 40% more customers.
• Platinum Package: $20/hour ($480/day). This package advertises via web and brings in 75% more customers.
• Diamond Package: $50/hour ($1200/day). This package advertises via television and brings in double the normal amount of customers.

Because of the cost, the diamond advertising package is not normally recommended. Great players with very well-managed restaurants may make good use of it. It requires highly skilled and disciplined employees, as well as extra perks to increase the customers' eating speed, reduce aggravation about wait times, and a very high markup to benefit from it. The other packages are great but any of these should be considered before use, as you may waste money.

Customer Peak Hours and Types of Groups

Wait time's a big factor, and customers tend to come in waves during peak hours just as in reality. Be prepared!

When Customers Arrive: Hours to be Open
Late-night and early morning are the worst times to be open and waste your Sim's energy, though early birds will come at 6AM. The game's customer spawning system is not unlike real life. Breakfast begins at around 6AM. There's a lunch rush from 11-1, then a good quantity of Sims will come from 4-8PM, with slower periods in between. It's not that you won't get customers if you are open late at night, it's just that you'll get less. If your restaurant is 1 or 2-star it will not see many Sims at all during down hours. A 4-star that can not handle many will still attract a good amount of customers even late at night.

Customer Composition
Generally, you will find that customers come alone or in pairs. Many Sims will come on a date, especially during dinner hours. Aforementioned early birds come for breakfast. One third to one quarter of visits will be a family gathering, meaning you need a larger table for them. Family gatherings happen primarily around lunch and dinner.

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Make food bloggers happy, and they'll write a great review of your restaurant. It's worth 10x the normal value!

Food Bloggers (Critics)
Food Bloggers are most likely to come in the lunch-evening time frame, and are only about 3-5% of visits depending upon the time of day. You should absolutely cater to them by welcoming, checking on the table, maybe comping dessert. I wouldn't make the meal free unless they're unhappy. You can, of course, prioritize food if their wait time is taking too long. Do these things because a food blogger's review is worth 10 of a normal customer's reviews and a bad review can quickly drop your score, but one critic's review could bring you up a whole star rating depending where you restaurant ranks. I have seen more than one critic at a time. It's possible, just not likely.

Best Times to Operate
Given these details, it's best to operate the restaurant between around 11AM to 9 or 10PM to see the most customers arrive. It is a long shift, but can be highly profitable. You'll have some slower times to clear tables, then the peaks will hit. If your waiters get overwhelmed, you could use the manager to clean up a bit and save them some time. Welcoming/checking on tables is not that heavily weighted, just good practice when there's nothing else to do.

The Curious Customers perk gives you an additional social that can be used sometimes - recommend dish. One more way to please your clientele

Too Many: Stop Accepting Customers
This is an instant setting you can toggle by clicking the host station. You can allow new customers by clicking it again when your workers catch up. Selecting this when there are no full tables and the kitchen is already backed up is a good idea. Customers who wait too long will become one-star reviews most of the time, and make a heavy impact on your rating. You can salvage the review of a customer who is upset their food is slow (prioritize it) or had a bad meal (comp it), maybe even throw in a free drink or dessert. However you cannot do anything about a customer you don't get to seat and serve, they'll just trash your restaurant to their friends.

Other Dine Out Guides

• Placing a Restaurant - How to use the new restaurants
• Making a Restaurant - Making a new restaurant from scratch
• Staff - Managing the staff of a restaurant you own
• Run/Own the Restaurant - advice for managing the restaurant as Owner
• Advertising, Customers & Critics Dealing with customers, and utilizing advertising
• Menu Guide, Markup & Food Difficulty - Selecting a proper markup for the restaurant
• Star Ratings - Star Ratings and how they're calculated
• Restaurant Perks - List of Restaurant Perks and their effects
• Restaurant Perk Cheats - Unlock perks without Restaurant Perk Points.
• Known Bugs & Tips for Usability of Restaurants

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Share Tips and FAQs (12)

Our Sims 4 Community is the place to go for faster answers to questions and discussions about the game. Use the form below to share your own experiences and provide helpful tips to other readers. We are not affiliated with EA and cannot make changes to the game, nor fix bugs.

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gecko7937

Do you have any idea why customers keep showing up when you choose the "Disallow New Customers"?

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4

10th June 2016 7:19pm

playalot

No and it seems to be a game bug that will require a developers fix. I haven't had this in my games yet although I keep trying to reproduce it! It's a right pain as it causes you to have to close your restaurant and lose money from the sims that are still eating.
All I can suggest is take out any/all mods and cc you might be using and see if that fixes the problem. Remember to delete the loaclthumbcache.package file from your TheSims 4 folder after taking out your mods but before you try your game again.

Doing a factory reset is probably a good idea too as this really helps to clear out any weird bugs and glitches.
Factory Reset

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0

11th June 2016 7:43pm

Tab

When speaking with customers, what does 'Comp Food's mean?

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3

30th June 2016 4:27am

playalot

Complimentary Food, basically you are giving that customer free food, or his/her meal on the house.

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2

1st July 2016 8:34pm

svdizon

does it affect my rating if i close the restaurant wile there are still customer eating? my restaurant seems to be open more than 12 hours waiting for everyone to leave, making my staff tired and unhappy. a few times my staff quit on me. i tried closing after 5 hours from opening time still not enough time :(

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2

2nd July 2016 4:06am

playalot

Try disallowing new customers after you've been open for about 5 hours and then just close after you've been open for 8. It shouldn't affect your ratings but you will not get paid for any meals from sims that are still eating. Restaurants placed in Windenburg seem to have more problems with the disallowing new customer interaction than other worlds.

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7

4th July 2016 12:06am

Sade Clem

What is wrong with mine is when I open my store customers come in but they don't sit down I don't get it what am I supposed to do???!?!?

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3

13th July 2016 10:19pm

playalot

Do you have a host sim and the hosts station placed in your restaurant? Try opening the restaurant from your home lot and then traveling to the restaurant, this makes the host automatically seat all the customers. Make sure your sim is not standing in the way or interacting with any of the customers until after the host has seated them.
Some Helpful Tips

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2

15th July 2016 7:10pm

DeejDarling

How do you know if someone is a food critic?
Thanks! :)

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0

4th June 2017 4:56pm

Playalot

There is a tag over their head that says 'Food Critic'

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1

4th June 2017 7:12pm

Thahirah

Hi. How can I pay the wages owed? The amount keeps getting big.

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31st December 2017 9:55am

Playlot

This should automatically be paid to any employees as you close the restaurant each day.

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31st December 2017 8:18pm

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