I today like to send my sims to a mini mart or to a grocery store in the community, a little lost detail in the sims 2, I wish was in The Sims 3 is being able to see and build the inside of a grocery store and actually walk your sims inside to do the shopping instead of sims going into a rabbit hole and picking out ingredients for your home, also technically you don't need to go grocery shopping in the sims 2 at all you could just buy a new refrigerator or, order groceries on your sims computer, or phone.

but I used to do that ordering by phone, since ordering groceries online in the sims 2 often causes the sims computer to explode for some reason. in the sims 2 game.

but today I'd rather send my sims to the grocery store, even though it is sims pay more money for groceries in the physical store then online or over the phone. Buying a new refrigerator is a last resort for me, it's also more expensive then just filling the refrigerator when it's empty in the sims 2.

Also you can have your sims actually run a grocery store with the sims 2 open for business expansion pack installed, But that can get annoying fast when you need to constantly select the owners household in order to restock the neighborhood grocery store, so I today prefer a CPU owned grocery store right now how about you?

So how do you obtain food for your sims home, do you use buy from refrigerator mods or do you actually get groceries for your sims in the sims 2 and how to you do it in your own game?

Usually my Sims go to the shops. I don't know what you mean about it being dearer in the shops. In my game (highest EP OFB) food seems to cost 2 Simoleons a unit whether you buy it from an (unowned) shop or get it delivered. But if you get your groceries delivered, you also have to pay a hefty 50 Simoleon delivery charge. So going to the shops is cheaper, and most of my Sims can't afford to waste money. My Sims check the contents of the fridge before going to the shops, and then only buy as much as they need to fill the fridge. Going to the shops also gives them the opportunity to meet other Sims and generally enjoy an outing. Often Sims who have gone out to buy food, go on to buy clothes, dine out, and maybe visit a nightclub.

Of course, if you buy your food from an OFB owned shop, the prices are set by the shopkeeper, and can be either cheaper or dearer.

The only time most of my Sims would get food delivered, would be if they ran out. Usually they keep track of how much they've got in the fridge, so they stock up long before they run out of food. The school in New Desconia does get regular food deliveries, but you wouldn't expect the head teacher to go to the grocers to buy food for all the school dinners.

I've never even thought of buying a new fridge -- that would be too cheaty for me. I mean I couldn't do that in Real Life, so my Sims don't do it either.

My Sims suffer from no-grocery-store-a-phobia. They just order everything online or by phone and I like to pretend that the delivery person is the equivalent to Uber Eats.

... grocreies? They don't even cook or eat most of the time
(My story/picture sims, at least - I keep their motives perma-max'd, as it's such a pain having to deal with motives when posing sims)

The times I've had to deal with groceries, I've either had my sims order them regularly, or used a mod to fill the fridge so I don't have to deal with the delivery scenario.

It's been a while since I sent my sims to a community lot. Back when I did, I tended to like the lots that put all the things you can buy into one lot, so I didn't have to visit a bunch of them. Nowadays my sims do as much of their shopping as they can from home (mostly via mods - primarily clothes), and for the rest I don't really care much.

You should start sending sims to community lots, it's fun and that is what they are there for, I use a skilling mod so I can gain skill points on community lots so when my sims have a day off they go to a community lot, of course I build a TON of community lots in my game as many as houses and apartments to be exact,, I used to be just like you until I got more creative I used to keep my sims home 24-7 and only took them to work, now I take them everywhere I build. But somedays they stay home like if my sims need to work or something.

Community lots are great mood builders for poor sims who have small homes or few possessions. Plus sims should go to community lots to meet locals and chat therefore meeting other sims in order to happen the next job promotion and skill levels. Community lots like spas and bathhouses can be essential for sims with low hygiene and comfort. and social and my spas even have food to eat to make my sims trip to the spa always refreshing, when sims need more needs I take them to the spa, the town fair, the arcade, the restaurant. if I want to buy new things I take them to stores like video game and market and grocery and jewelry stores.

If you got the expansions installed you might as well use them, come out, get out of the creative hole, I was in shoes for a LOOOOOng time now I still am breaching out of the sim/creative restriction zone that I had for years before like you today. Forget the sims 1 base game I needed to forgot it, where at one time all you could do in the sims was build a house and go to work those days are over this is the sims 2 with expansions.

unleash your inner creativeness your free now go and take care

My sims also don't tend to go to community lots. Sadly I just don't have the time anymore, I try to go through my rotation as fast as possible to progress my hood and community lots tend to slow me down. I do mean to focus more on community lots and I've been trying to slow down and enjoy my game, but then I go months without playing and feel bad and just want to visit as many sims as quickly as possible

They usually get groceries through the phone

I've got reasons I don't usually play community lots, and it has to do with how I play the game, and how the game is handled and saved when you use community lots. The main reason is that don't work very well with the way I prefer to do pictures/storytelling, so residential lots are my preferred lot type (even for what would normally be community-type lot settings).

Plus, on my old simming computer I had a very large amount of CC and just loading the game took ages (I don't expect that after reorganizing my CC and playing on a new computer). Loading in and out of community lots took freakin' forever, and was one of the things that could potentially send the game into a crash or pink-flashing. I really didn't want my game to crash in the middle of a photoshoot on a community lot...

Anyways, I mostly care about buying clothes, and my sims can do that on a home lot with a mod (it's also less annoying). Anything else, if ever necessary, can usually be accessed via some kind of mod, too. There aren't a lot of reasons for going to community lots the way I prefer to play the game (I find them rather annoying for storytelling purposes, but for regular gameplay they can be fun for socializing purposes and for being actual places you can go and not rabbit holes like in the other games - I tried out most of the lot types in my early simming days, when I did more regular legacy-type gameplay, and they have their uses).

(Back to groceries, now that I've seen it mentioned, I think I've on occasion cheated and bought a new fridge if I haven't bothered to deal with ordering them. I also try to make sure to save leftovers so sims don't have to cook so often. Lately I've played a bit of TS4, and there it's leftovers all the way, and also stocking fresh food to up the quality of the food - mostly because I nearly always have at least one toddler and younglings in the house, and holy cow, leftovers make them so much more easy to take care of. What you pick up from earlier games, huh? Now, if only TS2 toddlers could eat leftovers...)

Sometimes delivery will be on sale in the sims 2 only charging you $400 + $50 a total of $450 Simolean's indeed if you have a more expensive refrigerator then you can pay $650 and get a fully restocked refrigerator, other wise $600 at the physical store will only partially restock a larger/more expensive refrigerator if it was completely empty when you left

not to be confusing groceries from an unowned sim community lot cost more then ordering online or by phone unless you always order by phone because sometimes in my game the online/phone delivery is $150 cheaper then at the store but that is not always the case. however the game will never tell you when there is a sale in the sims 2 unlike in the sims 3. But Delivery can often be cheaper then in store if you don't use it vary often.

More expensive maxis default refrigerators have more food compacity then the cheaper refrigerators, I don't have any custom refrigerators in my game so I can't comment on custom refrigerators.

I really love the delivery van and delivery NPC, so I do use that a lot, especially if sims are too tired to go out. But my main neighbourhood does have a supermarket, so I often take sims there too. Then they go for a coffee or burger on the way home. In real life I am amazed and delighted that now, 17 years after Sims 2 was released, I can finally order groceries to be delivered in England, a place where it was even difficult to get a pizza delivered pre-pandemic. So you bet that I'm ordering groceries all of the time, so that I don't have to go to the shops, which are no where near as nice as my sims' shops! They don't even have Myshuno for goodness' sake! Later I order the burger too (don't even have to go out for that any more), and then shut all the curtains and lock the doors and play sims. I'm not lonely. *sob*

I try and remember to send my Sims to community lots sometimes but never for groceries, that's always ordered over the phone lol. Maybe I should actually send them to the grocery store ...

I use this hack:
BO - Reward Catalog because among the other uses it has, you can use accumulated aspiration points to buy food with.


Once those points are used up, and the fridge is still low, I make the pixels go to the grocery store, making note of how much they need to buy to fill it up. I don't make them buy $600 worth of food anymore, using instead the calculator of how much they need to get to fill it. Far cheaper that way!

I don't do home delivery, because they don't live in a place where there's any fast food. (Either the modern game or the medieval one)

Hoods don't last forever and I think you should enjoy the game more and not rush through it, there is no rush in the sims 2 go at your own pace, it's YOUR game enjoy, take in the sights, pretend that you are on vacation in a foreign country called Sims world, enjoy relax, nobody is rushing you right?

I don't only play the sims I also play other games and listen to music as well. And visit with my family too

I try to keep track of my sims food supply level, when it comes to the single or double digits I send one of my adult or teen or elder sims to the market. In real life most people go out of their homes for groceries still, only rich people in my local area actually get their groceries delivered, so no deal for real life unlike in the sims for us in the USA in the Detroit Area at least

There is if, like Bigsimsfan12, you are 9 months pregnant and also have a toddler. Then, playing time is short! If you are on a community lot and you go into labour in real life, you're not going to be able to save the game there!

If labour is as long as it was last time (36+ hours) I might actually get a good amount of play time in after sending the toddler to my SIL's house

But yes, I only really get after the toddler goes to bed, in which case I'm lucky if I get 2 hours of play time before my bedtime. My game takes about an hour to load so most of the time it's not worth even turning it on and if I do, I don't want to be wasting it on extra loading screens. I'm very jealous of the simmers with grown up kids.

Don't you wish though, sometimes that you had some kind of mod to shorten labor, like in the game? 18 hours length of pregnancy? Wouldn't that be cool, and none of that physical stuff-just spin around, and out comes baby!

I have heard it said that the after the first baby, labor is usually far faster and less painful. I don't know if it's true (never having had a child) but I sure hope it is in your case!

Well I wish @Bigsimsfan12 great luck on her real life pregnancy, I hope everything goes well

I've got a fridge patch in right now so they don't have to shop for groceries like I do though I would send them out to the service center forfood if that patch was removed and I even have another patch that makes groceries cheaper like it would cost 2$ for each basket of groceries when that hack is installed.I just have them walk to the lot and thy come home after a day out and get returned at the time they left as if they stayed out for a day.

I have playable sim run grocery stores and my sims buy groceries from them. My fisher family runs a fresh fish shop. Other farms have roadside stalls at home and many of my sims will have a small veggie patch at home as well. Food production is an important part of running an integrated hood.
No deliveries. Maybe once a grocery store is large enough to buy a delivery van and I do sim surgery on the NPC delivery person then they could have groceries delivered but the shops are not large enough yet for that.

As I'm gradually finding ideas to populate my medieval fantasy world with, I'm gradually realizing that (were I ever actually to play this world, and not just build things for it!), I'll want to have all the food actually grown or harvested somewhere in world... medieval farms and markets and such certainly seem like a worthy undertaking, and it raises a greater possibility of famine (or at least the appearance of one!)

Sims in my game all buy from owned businesses, almost everything they need. The mall is also available. (I like my sims to visit community lots).
Ordering food is not illegal in my game, though - it is very handy when you did not check the fridge and it is empty just when a party has to start

My sims rarely buy groceries. If they have fresh food in the fridge they never run low on food. Most of my sims are farmers or hunters (thanks to Sun&Moon).

Most of the time, I sell the fridge and buy a new one.

I personally love making my sim go grocery shopping, although I wish your sim could take a little from each objects (a third from the produce section, a third from the fridges, a third from the floor unit) before checking out. Imagine having to check out all your frozen food before you could get your fruits or vegetables?

Also, nothing beats free grocery store hot dogs that the townies grill up!

I will admit that I have used that option a couple of times as well