How To Open And Run A Pet Cafe In The Sims 4

The Sims 4: Businesses & Hobbies allows you to run your very own small business. The pre-built options in the pack are a pottery studio, tattoo parlor, and café with social space, taking advantage of the new skills. However, with the ability to charge not just for items but also for entry into a building, you can run a business doing anything you like.

Exterior Of Spilled Neon with customers outside.

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If you prefer, you can instead choose from one of the pre-defined businesses, one of which is a cat café. This combines cats and coffee in a delightful way, offering a fluffy friend to cuddle with your coffee and cake.

You’ll need both Businesses & Hobbies and Cats & Dogs to open a Pet Café.

How To Open A Pet Café

The Sims 4 Businesses and Hobbies cat cafe registration.

First, you need to open a small business by paying the $750 fee. You’ll see that Cat Café is one of the default options to choose from. Note that while it states cat in the title you could use any pet, just make sure you have the right amount of space!

The default activities for this type of business are play with pets, drink coffee, and drink tea. You have two more spaces which you can add activities to. Friendly interactions tends to be a good default addition, and can be especially helpful here where pets are involved.

Since there are cats around, we also recommend setting this up so that all infants, toddlers and children are accompanied by a caregiver who must stay at the venue.

What You’ll Need In A Pet Cafe

The Sims 4 Businesses and Hobbies empty cat cafe with counter, tables, and cat trees.

A pet cafe is a great choice, since it is simple to set up and run and easy to manage. Here’s what you need.

A Way To Serve Drinks

The first thing you’ll need is a café counter. The expansion includes the In-Grain-Ed Specialty Coffee Bar for $940. You can serve a range of teas, coffees and cakes from here without the need for extra prep areas.

There are several other counters which have similar functionality, especially if you own packs like Get Together or High School Years, but the items they serve vary a little. Just be aware that you may need a prep area for some of the older counters, and others will serve items such as bubble tea, rather than tea and coffee, so you may need to adjust the business activities to include this.

If you want to charge an entry fee, you’ll need to make sure that you have a ticket kiosk on site.

Somewhere To Sit

You’ll also need somewhere for your customers to sit. Any table and chair set is fine and there’s a wide range in the build catalog to suit all budgets and tastes.

We recommend spreading out the tables, so both customers and pets have space to move between them. Customers who get trapped will become unhappy and this can negatively affect your business.

Toilets

While toilets aren’t essential, having them will ensure customers stay longer as otherwise they will either leave, or worse, pee on the floor. Just one toilet and a sink in a room is fine, as long as you remember to set the area to public.

Pets

Finally, the most important part: pets! You’ll need to adopt or create pets and add them to your household. This means that, without mods, you can have up to seven cats, dogs or horses.

We had five cats in our café, and that was a good number to ensure some were always visible.

You’ll also need to ensure that all pets have access to food as well as any other items required to meet their needs, such as toys or a litter tray.

Two employees talking in a kitchen in The Sims 4 Businesses and Hobbies.

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You’re not paying these people for nothing!

Tips For Running A Pet Cafe

The Sims 4 Businesses and Hobbies a Sim playing with a cat in the cafe.

A pet cafe is easy to run, but there are a few tips which can make it even easier. Here are some tips for making your business go smoothly.

Hire Someone To Run The Counter – This enables your Sim to greet people, talk to them and build your renown much faster. You should also be cleaning up when necessary.

Train Your Pets – If you don’t want your pets to jump on the counters, you’ll need to train them. It’s easier to do this before you open the cafe if you want them to behave when people are there.

Select Pet Traits Wisely – Friendly pets will be more likely to easily interact with your customers.

Use A Pet Door – Having a pet door and staff-only door going into a room where the litter trays and food are keeps the mess away from customers and also allows pets to leave the crowded areas if they wish.

Select Your Pets Wisely – Cats or dogs work best for this but if you use dogs make sure you have more space as they can get large!