Sims 4 Dine Out Expansion Pack: Perfect for a Foodie!🍴

While the Steam rating for Sims 4 Dine Out EP is very negative currently, I still enjoy and would recommend this expansion pack as a nice addition to the gameplay experience. It enriches the game with the options of dating at the restaurant and running a restaurant yourself, like a small restaurant simulator. This post will explain all the parts of Dine Out. If you want, you can always wait for a discount as I think the original price is quite overpriced for this pack! 🥴

What Can You Do with Sims 4 Dine Out?

Sims 4 Dine Out is an expansion pack of The Sims 4 with its current price at $13.99. This pack doesn’t include a new world, but it allows your Sims to:

1. install restaurants made by other players in the gallery to your worlds
2. dine out and date at any restaurants
3. run restaurants yourself!

In general, it’s a good feature to add to your gameplay and a nice addition to make the game more playable and generate more income for your Sims. As I said in the introduction, this pack is like an add-on simulator game to your Sims 4 base game.

Choose a Restaurant from the Gallery or Build One from the Available Land

To play Dine Out, first, you need to have some restaurants in your world, even if you are not purchasing them. Having more restaurants not only makes your world look more diverse and fun but also offers your Sims and NPCs some more venues to date and enjoy.

Open the Gallery -> tick on Lots -> choose lot type as restaurants -> tick on Dine Out pack only: There’s a wide range of restaurant designs and lots for you to choose and place in your world. If you don’t have Dine Out, you can only place them into the world as residential, and they won’t function as a proper restaurant.

Choose your Sim -> click Owned Business -> click Buy a Restaurant: Through this way, you will be able to purchase any existing restaurants in the world or any available land for you to build from the very start.

Financially Prepare for Your Restaurant’s Grand Opening!

Firstly, you need to install a few things onto your land to make it a restaurant, which includes (with their minimum prices):

1. a toilet: $250
2. a sink: $120
3. 4 dining spots: minimum 2 tables ($225*2) and 4 chairs ($115*4)
4. a chef station: $3,300
5. a waiter station: $125
6. a host station: $100

In total, you will need at least $4,805 to finish the furnishment as required. For the first day of your restaurant, it’s good to prepare some extra for the wages you pay to the host, waiter, and chef.

Check out my other post about how to earn more income in the game without cheating!

1. chef: $7/hour
2. waiter: $2/hour
3. host: $3/hour

You’d better have at least $5,000 for the restaurant opening.

Give Your Restaurant a Good Kick-Start!

When you’re just starting your restaurant and the reviews are below four stars, make sure you’re always at the restaurant during the opening hours. If you’re not present, the star reviews tend to drop, and the restaurant starts to lose money!

As the restaurant owner, here’s what you need to do at the restaurant:

1. interact with the guests: welcome, check on the table, and offer free dishes when they are food critics (they have a ribbon on their head tags)
2. buy more slots for additional chefs and waiters with the perk points to expand your restaurant
3. offer training to your chefs to make them capable of cooking more expensive dishes
4. offer training to your waiters so they don’t spill food and waste your hard-earned money
5. decorate your restaurant to get more and more good reviews

At the start of running the restaurant, prioritize the permanent perks and staff training. These additional buffs can easily increase your guests’ review stars without you greeting and checking on everyone!

Related: a perfect way to generate passive income in The Sims 4, SNBank!

Customize Your Restaurant to Your Liking

Sims 4 Dine Out pack allows many customizations, but they don’t change the basic gameplay of how the restaurant is run. For example, you can customize:

1. the food on your menu
2. the staff uniforms
3. the guest dressing code
4. food price for higher or lower revenue
5. advertisement
6. ingredient quality (perk)
7. and more features from the perk shop

The dressing only impacts how your restaurant looks, while other customization might allow you to generate more revenues or lose more money. However, these adjustments won’t seriously impact your restaurant’s revenue. At its core, the most important thing for the revenue is guests’ reviews, the food price on the menu, and the amount of guests coming to your restaurant.

Have a Romantic Date with Your Partner 🥰

Other than running a restaurant, you can also ask someone out to enjoy a meal at the restaurants available in your world.

The process of having a dine-out is:

Click on the restaurant -> choose a friend or friends to go with you -> request table -> order for table -> add a cake to your table (optional) -> end meal and pay the bill

If you forget to pay your bill and leave, the game will deduct the bill directly from your household fund later.

Drawbacks of The Sims 4 Dine Out Expansion Pack

Short Freshness upon Starting to Play the Game

It will only take you about 8-10 hours of gameplay to know all the ins and outs of The Sims 4 Dine Out EP. The main part of this pack is about running a restaurant because there’s not much to do in terms of dining out with your friends.

After 5 hours of gameplay, you basically will know how to run the restaurant, and the rest is just waiting to get more perks and unlock all the food on the menu to generate more income. The mode of operating the restaurant is pretty fixed. There’s not much change in the way of running it after you set the restaurant operating properly.

In this sense, I’ll say the fun and freshness stay in the first 10 hours of getting the pack. After that, it functions mostly as a way to generate some more money for your Sims.

The Pack can be Buggy

This is also one of the most common complaints about Dine Out on the Steam reviews. The bugs I’ve encountered so far include guests all taking off their clothes and turning naked at the restaurant, and very low restaurant revenue when my Sim is not physically at the restaurant. There are some other bugs as well, but the bugs so far are tolerable for me.

Considering the amount of time you can spend exploring this pack and the bugs included, I think it’s a bit overpriced at $13.99 and recommend you wait for a 30% discount for this pack.

FAQs

What can you do with Dine Out in Sims 4?

With Sims 4 Dine Out, you can place restaurant lots from the gallery into your worlds. The pack enables the restaurant lots and allows your Sims to dine at the restaurants. It also lets you run as many restaurants as you want. To be your own boss!👠

Is The Sims 4 Dine Out worth it?

The price to value is at its best when there’s a discount of more than 30%. Because the pack only guarantees 8-10 hours of freshness and excitement of playing it, it would be more of a deal to buy it at a 30% discount.

If you enjoy restaurant simulator games or running your own business, Sims 4 Dine Out is worth the try. It’s a nice add-on to the base game!

Does Sims 4 Dine Out come with a world?

No, it doesn’t. Sims 4 Dine Out only provides you with functional lots and options to dine out at restaurants and run your own restaurants.

Conclusion: Sims 4 Dine Out

To summarize, The Sims 4 Dine Out is an expansion pack that enables the restaurant business and the dining out option. It doesn’t come with a new world, but it offers an additional way to run your own business and entertain your Sims. The pack is a nice addition to the base game and incorporates a restaurant running simulator mini-game into your Sims 4 base game. In my opinion, it’s a great pack to have to give the whole game more diverse career, income, and outing options. 🍧