[foodpump]

The crinkle cut carrots did it for me, the hard boiled? eggs confirmed it again. Pictures don’t lie, and I am grateful for honest pictures.

That being said..... It’s undisputed that Yelp does not have editors, whatever goes, goes. I think they call this a “ logorythm”? I became painfully aware of this 12 years ago when my business was reviewed The creator? of the Yelp review wrote a four-pager, lashing out at the architect of the building, building material choices, impact of the building on the neighbourhood, butt-tum, ahh, well, the ( deleted) reviewer failed to comment on the food, pricing, service, and decor of my business. And this dreck gets published? Hey, you don’t like what I make, that’s an honest opinion and I’ll respect that. But to complain about the architectural impact of a 8 unit commercial, 45 residential unit building? Wrong platform, try Architects anonymous. Editor please? Of course the icing on the cake was when Yelp emailed me with a special offer to remove the negative review fo a low, low price of $499.

I’ll hop off my soapbox now....

 

[foodpump]

Basically there are two camps of reviewers. The first group are the non- professionals- people who are genuinely interested in your business, see it as welcome addition to their neighbourhood, die-hard food connoisseur, etc. These are the reviewers you want. One of the best ( and well written) reviews I had was written by a retired trial lawyer who just though my place was a nice place to have coffee with his wife and really liked what I had to offer.

The second group are the professionals. My definition of a professional is someone who earns his/ her income solely from his/ her profession—they gotta make buck from you either directly or indirectly. Now, yelp et al are businesses and they gotta make a buck and they do this by advertising, which makes you the advertising client. Once the reviews for your place come in, and they will be consistently high until you are contacted, you will be “ hit up” to advertise with them, or gawd forbid engage in some kind of a “ rewards program”.

The indie professional blogger deserves special attention, because once online media has discovered and posted about you, you are on their radar and become their lawful prey. Unless you are a mega hotel it’s not worth actually coming down and checking your place out, no, they’ll contact you and tell you they’d like to do a review of your place, so could you reserve a table of four for this Saturday at one? Oh and by the way we have X followers and readers of our blogs/ websites and since we are helping you develop your business, whatever we order is on the house. Outright refusal will result in indignation, veiled threats of retaliation and a repeat request. You’re in between a rock and a hard place because there are a lot of these people, and the more online presence you have the easier it is for these people to know you exist and hit you up. Catch 43, you could say.... Whatchyaneedtodo is check out their blog. Then you write back and tell them you’d be delighted to book that table BUT, you need a disclaimer on their blog informing their readers that the review was partially or fully sponsored by YOUR business. 99.99% of the bloogers don’t do this, and this is one of the few cards you can play.

Been there, done that, don’t have the t-shirt, but I still have a case of logo’d aprons in the garage....