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Tifa's main occupation is as the owner of 7th Heaven (or Seventh Heaven), a bar in the Sector 7 slums in Midgar. It seems to be a popular place; as Tifa herself puts it,  "I can make a drink just as good as anyone else. Everyone says, my drinks taste the best!".

Wedge also states that the "good food and drinks" is what makes the bar "so famous". He even adds that it's Tifa's fault that he's so fat, for always letting him taste her food: and seeing as how he is practically obese, I'm guessing she really can cook well. When you get to 7th Heaven for the very first time, after your first mission with AVALANCHE, Barret goes inside and starts shooting around, making a lot of people leave (it's not like I would stay): this must mean Tifa does have quite a few costumers.

Like many other locations in Final Fantasy VII, 7th Heaven has a secret - not to us, players, since the truth is exposed to us the very first time we enter the bar, but to everybody else who isn't a member of AVALANCHE, conveniently including ShinRa - its basement functions as the faction's hideout and headquarters. This basement can't be seen from the outside, and can only be reached by riding on the arcade game to the right - to go back to the first floor, you can either ride it again or just climb up the poles, which is exactly what Barret does. Either way, only a member of AVALANCHE will know how to go there, and I don't think it's easy to guess, because if it was, ShinRa would have found out about it long ago - either that, or they're just plain dumb.

All we know is that Tifa is taken to Midgar at the age of fifteen by her Martial Arts instructor, Zangan, after the incident in Nibelheim involving Sephiroth (read more about it here), in which she gets badly injured. She ends up staying even after recovering, and eventually opens the bar - though the game doesn't state exactly when, how, or why.

Seeing as how 7th Heaven is home for all the AVALANCHE members and Marlene (Barret's 4-year-old adopted daughter) and how the little girl stays there with Tifa whenever her father goes on a mission, I wouldn't think the place is too dangerous, but, then again, the notion of "danger" in Midgar is a little distorted - as is the notion of responsability, I guess, since when you go on your second mission (to blow up the No.5 Reactor) with AVALANCHE, Tifa joins your party and leaves Marlene looking after the place.

7th Heaven is eventually destroyed along with the rest of Sector 7 in Disc 1, when ShinRa blows up the support pillar - at once, they managed to destroy AVALANCHE's hideout and blame the whole explosion on them, so that everybody else in town would hate them for killing innocent people (ShinRa truly is almighty). It was their intention to kill all the members too, but that part didn't work out so well, as only Jessie, Wedge and Biggs end up dying - Tifa, Barret and Cloud manage to survive, and so does Marlene, who is taken by Aerith to her own house in Sector 5 before anything happens.

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