HL_Gastro — Gastronomy Career (Chef / Bartender) [SFW] 0.1.0

Straight up, before you download: this one is SFW. There is no adult content in 0.1.0 and nothing here needs WickedWhims. An optional adult layer is on my plan for a later version, but it does not exist yet — do not download this expecting it.

This release is free and public from day one. If you want to support the next version, my Patreon is at patreon.com/HomeLacter.

Yes, chef.

HL_Gastro is a full active gastronomy career for The Sims 4, built on top of Dine Out. No rabbit hole: your Sim travels to a real restaurant, puts on the venue's uniform and works a real shift.

You start at the bottom. Four jobs in the same restaurant:

• Host. Welcome the parties at the podium and show them to their table.
• Busser. Check on the tables, clear the dishes, keep the room presentable. No orders yet.
• Server. Take the orders and serve the food.
• Kitchen Assistant. The chef hands you the station for one shift.

Every one of those is a real post of the venue: the mod puts your Sim in the job Dine Out already has — host, waiter, chef, bartender — with its uniform and its native interactions.

Then you choose your path at level 5:

• Chef, six levels from Commis Chef to World-Renowned Chef. Your restaurant is fixed for the rest of your career, rated one to five stars. The fancier ones unlock as you climb, and they tip better at closing time.
• Bartender, six levels from Amateur Mixologist to Renowned Bartender, in a bar, nightclub or lounge.

The shift is yours to run. In Manual mode, the default, you decide when to do each step with the game's own actions: check up on a table, take the order, serve the plate when the pass rings, cook each step at the station. Rather watch? Flip to Automatic and your Sim works alone.

What else is in the box

• A medal at the end of every shift — bronze, silver or gold — based on the goals you completed. The thresholds come from the real score of that shift's goals.
• Work tones: work with care, full throttle, chat with the staff. Custom moodlets and custom career messages too.
• The owner shows up to praise you or to scold you.
• In-game settings: pick your restaurant and your bar, switch the shift control, and decide whether the venue puts other waiters on the floor while you work.
• English and Spanish built in; every other language falls back to English. A translation kit and a debug add-on are separate downloads.

Requirements

• The Sims 4 + Dine Out and Get to Work. Both packs are required.
• At least one Restaurant lot in your save. Dine Out does not place them by itself, so drop one from My Library. The mod tells you in game if there is none.
• A Bar, Nightclub or Lounge for the Bartender branch.

Install

Unzip HL_Gastro.zip into your Mods folder — the zip already brings its own HL_Gastro folder, so you end up with Mods/HL_Gastro/HL_Gastro.package and Mods/HL_Gastro/HL_Gastro.ts4script, together and one folder deep. Enable Script Mods in the game options and restart. Delete localthumbcache.package if anything looks stale.

Downloads

• HL_Gastro.zip — the mod itself (package + ts4script) plus the README. This is the one you need.
• HL_Gastro_Debug_addon.zip — cheats and a support log. Optional, and handy if you want to report something.
• HL_Gastro_Translations_Kit.zip — 16 ready-made language templates and the instructions.

What is tested and what is not

I would rather say this on the page than in a bug report. The four starting jobs are tested in game, and so is the chef station flow, because that is the level 4 shift. The star-based tip of the Chef branch and the whole Bartender branch are not tested yet. They ship in 0.1.0, but I have not run them in game, so if you go down either of those roads, reports in the thread help a lot.

Known issues

• Like every active career, switching households or travelling with another Sim mid-shift ends the shift early.
• Loading a save made mid-shift lets your Sim do the first step alone; after that it goes back to manual.
• "Take Order" works on any customer — the order that gets cooked is the one that was actually waiting.

What's coming next

Plans, not promises. None of this is in 0.1.0:

• Cooking skill that actually goes up while you work, and skill requirements to get promoted.
• Boss interactions: get praised, get scolded, get fired with a story behind it.
• Food critic nights, unlockable recipes and qualities, and a say in the menu.
• Happy hour, theme nights and private events for the Bartender.
• An optional adult layer with WickedWhims in a later version.

Credits

Built with Sims4ForgeStudio. Translations are welcome with the kit — I ask for reciprocal credit and a link back to the mod's official page. The cover art is AI-generated; the screenshots are straight from the game.

— Home Lacter