Getting dinged by diners
Portland Business Journal – by Erik Siemers Business Journal staff writer
The microwave in Kevin Hutchinson’s pizza restaurant is for boiling water.
For tea, not pizza.
It’s not a detail pertinent to the operations of his restaurant, Carboni’s Wood Fire Pizza and Pasta in North Portland. But it was something Hutchinson found himself explaining thanks to an unflattering review posted anonymously online.
“That guy who wrote that bad review talked about my microwave and how I take shortcuts. If anyone knows my practice, I don’t take shortcuts. My dough takes three days to make,” Hutchinson said. “I have to back up and explain every little thing on my practice.”
The days when restaurateurs fretted over the words of just a few local newspaper reviewers are gone. Now anyone who enters a restaurant can be a published critic by virtue of the Internet, whether through blogs, message boards, or sites like Portland.citysearch.com, where Hutchinson’s anonymous reviewer left a critique.
For some restaurant owners, the growing multitudes of food critics can be as valuable as free advertising, building word-of-mouth business with each review.
Yet some, like Hutchinson, believe the proliferation of online critiques can be just as much of a threat as a bad review in a traditional newspaper, if not more.
“It can be very damaging,” he said. “They go on a witch hunt and they put you down and that really hurts.”
See full story
http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2008/05/12/focus1.html?b=1210564800%5e1632955
