Are "pure"stores possible?

[Zordah]

I had a 24h general store up and running and turning a profit and noticed there was a large demand for liquor.

So I opened a liquor store next to it, stocked it with 65% liquor and the rest was beer, soda and juice. I also removed all beverages from the general store so people have to go to the liquor store.

Now even staffed with minimal staff to avoid losing customers to full checkouts this liquor store is consistently making a loss as the profits are eaten up by staff wages. If I lower staff then the customers cannot get served and leave without buying anything. Liquor and beverage demands are being satisfied with the store so it's not a case of low sales.

Now I know I can put some impulse buys near the door to the store (like electronics goods) but that feels too much like a cheat. Like how many liquor stores do you see that sell products other than beverages?

Is it possible to have a pure store that is providing T3 products to make a decent profit without resorting to gaming the system with impulse buying?

[DannyBoy]

I had the same problem, not just with alcohol but also fresh meat/fish, sometimes it will make money but it seems to fluctuate dramatically even after being operational for weeks. Have you tried increasing the profit margins manually? I don't recall if they go up to 200% automatically at tier 3. You may also need to keep a little alcohol in your general store, to satisfy tier 1 demand. I'm not entirely sure but I think the alcohol purchased in speciality stores will only satisfy tier 3 demand.

[Zordah]

This is what I mean. Here is my liquor store with less shelves than before as I was in the process of rearranging layout but as long as I am not running out of stock on shelves this shouldn't be an issue having less shelves.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=921485888

i have 4 cashiers to try to meet demand and not lose any customers to long queues.

Next to it is a wine store which is basically the same thing but with Wine as the main product.

Satisfying all 3 tiers of beverages

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=921485907

[DannyBoy]

How experienced/fast are your cashiers? My liquor and wine stores only needed 3 to run somewhat smoothly. Also again check to see what the profit margins are for each item, because I know some items don't auto scale up to 200% at tier 3. The only other thing I can suggest is stock levels, maybe they are buying too fast and the shelves become empty later in the day preventing sales? Other than that you may just have to wait it out for a few days to see if more customers come in over time. There are only some speciality stores that can make a decent profit on a constant basis whist others tend to go up and down, which is similar to real life I guess.

[Zordah]

Hmmm maybe cause they were recent hires. At this stage I've sort of given up on them and building a Restaurant instead since I keep missing a lot of opportunities there apparently.

Maybe they will surprise me and ramp up later on as population grows. It's just disappointing as Liquor was a large unsatisfied demand according to the needs view so I thought it would earn a lot more than it does currently.

[Zordah]

Just as a side note - I was reading the old updates and 0.1.8.1 had

"A store that focuses on one single product (specialty store) will satisfy demand for all 3 quality tiers for this product."

[DannyBoy]

Yeah some tier 3 stores are just not worth it right now, mainly food/beverage related ones it seems. Get cracking on a tier 3 jewlery store for something a bit more benificial. Good to know about the tier 3 store satisfying all tier demand though.

[TTV/PJMC1986]

Sometimes specialist stores can't operate 24/7 til later in the game as just not busy during early hours. Try 9am-10pm for liquor store.

[Greymantle]

The liquor store seems to be off my profit margin is way to small campared to my food store / fast food. I run only 3 cashiers and a clerk with a 10 hour shift and get only a 10% profit...bah...Not worth it. This is with a bus stop and one road access open.

Update: I added one more bus stop and had the store open from 13 to 24 and I set a record for profit at 34% with 5 days in a row now over 20%.... Not the best and it seems liquor needs a bit of tweaking.

[Zordah]

@MegaGaming yeah my wine and liquor stores are open from 6am to 10pm already

@DannyBoy I was able to set manual profit margins of 200% for wine and liquor but I left the other beverages at auto margins.

I have 2 cashiers in my wine store and I was losing customers due to queuing. It made $98 profit.
I have 4 cashiers in my liquor store and I didn't lose any customers. It made $56 loss.

From what I can see I had less customers go through the wine store than the liquor store (from the needs window 31 sales of wine vs 48 sales of liquor yesterday). Now I guess that doesn't include the soda, juices etc but the hourly sales charts shows the liquor store was more popular with customers.

It just doesn't add up....

[Zordah]

OK, here's a question, In the liquor store I have 9 shelves, 8 fridges and 3 checkout counters. They all list a maintenance cost of $1 a day so why was yesterday's maintenance cost in the liquor store $119 for the day?

[Zordah]

The next day I set my remaining beverages to 200% profit margin and the wine store made $79 profit and the liquor store made $230 profit!

Is there any downside to setting 200% profit at this stage?

[DannyBoy]

No downside yet, as far as I'm aware. But I'm guessing in the future customers will react to different prices and your overall sales will likely go down. But as of right now it doesn't seem to have an effect. As for the maintenance cost, I have no idea. I do know doors also have a maintenance cost but that's just $1 each. Maybe it has something to do with the stock you purchase. I've noticed you can set your desired stock load when you manage your storage, I've personally never bothered changing it but maybe try lowering it from the default 69% and see if you notice less maintenance cost?

[Zordah]

That make sense. I already have stock load set about 30% in the store rooms. If that really is cost of goods for restocking then it should have it's own counter and not maintenance.

Next time I'll raise the stocking load level and see what it does to the maintenance cost.

[bamlink]

In addition to a large general store, I have many speciality stores, all making profits. I have a liquor store, a meat and fish store, a cosmetic store, a jewelry store, a book/toy store, a clothing store, a shoe store, a lingerie store, a men's store, a drug store, an electronics store, a games/video store and a fresh food store (might be a few more). The key is to keep them small, minimize personnel, limit hours, focus on Tier 3's, and up the profit margins to max.

Also, I found that once you open the road connections, everything makes a decent profit (except the bowling alley).

[Greymantle]

Originally posted by bamlink:

In addition to a large general store, I have many speciality stores, all making profits. I have a liquor store, a meat and fish store, a cosmetic store, a jewelry store, a book/toy store, a clothing store, a shoe store, a lingerie store, a men's store, a drug store, an electronics store, a games/video store and a fresh food store (might be a few more). The key is to keep them small, minimize personnel, limit hours, focus on Tier 3's, and up the profit margins to max.

Also, I found that once you open the road connections, everything makes a decent profit (except the bowling alley).

The problem with this is when they bring in factors to keep you from putting proftis on max. This is why I leave the defauts and try to make it work.