Eat & Tell

The Fifth Floor restaurant in San Francisco, which has one Michelin star, pays Yelp $300 a month for such a sponsorship, said Todd Stillman, its general manager. On the day he said that, Fifth Floor’s top two Yelp reviews, including the sponsored one, were raves. But three others in the top 10 were pans.

Mr. Stillman shrugged it off and said he had used bad reviews to correct staff or kitchen problems, or had e-mailed the reviewer with an explanation. “Feedback is good when you’re in the customer satisfaction business,” he said. “If you don’t evolve in this marketplace, you go extinct.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/dining/05yelp.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Give ‘Em A Bit More Rope… Restaurant Reviews

Recently I mentioned how some restaurant review sites, like Yelp in particular, have been used to bludgeon the unsuspecting restaurateur.

The way this allegedly works is if (and when) a restaurant gets a negative review there is very little s/he can do about it…unless they respond (positively) to a sales rep who coincidentally contacts the restaurateur, shortly after that negative review appears on the site. (I won’t even go into the idea of “who” is writing such reviews….and “why”…but you can figure that one out when you check the two sites I mention below…)

This above article was copied from Restaurant Marketing Journal  a very interesting blog

You can read the entire article by cliking This link