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Frustrated With Online Reviews

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indie_pizza

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Six months ago we decided to take a huge leap to fill a badly needed segment of our local restaurant demo. We moved to a cool new location and took our pizza restaurant and expanded into a full service Italian restaurant and pizzeria. We continued our food concept of cooking from basic ingredients as much as possible and created an amazing menu of Italian dishes and steaks. I love our food and I’m proud of every dish we send out.

We started with an amazing group of cooks who took my concept to heart and we created an incredible menu believing that it was better to spend money on labor prepping dishes on our own from base ingredients, rather that reheating frozen food and re-plating it. I easily spend 60-80 hours a week in the restaurant doing prep work, cooking, serving tables and as a delivery driver. Our in-house, at the table, response is amazing. The food is great, huge portions, great value, etc. We’ve struggled with serving staff and staffing for a wildly inconsistent dinner crowd.

I’m proud of the food we put out. Proud of the service staff we now have in place. Proud that we aren’t greedy on our pricing and try to have a casual Italian restaurant when the town doesn’t have anyone but us, but has identified it as a huge need. We’ve already outlasted every Italian restaurant combined that has opened here in the last eight years.

How do you motivate your customer base that (I’d say 95% thrilled about their dinner) to post online reviews, rather than the 1/2% that are looking for anything possible to complain about.

Google reviews: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?q=the … 2546525749
Urban Spoon: http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/182/1623956 … ia-Emporia
Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-verona-gril … ia-emporia (Notice the first complaint was our opening weekend. The second one appears to complain about our steak size being larger than expected, but charged the same price because of a typo in our mailed our menus. This is also a Black Angus Superior steak, the highest, USDA grade steak, for under $15). Something seems off here.
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheVeronaGrill
 
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  1. glad to know Emporia has your place. I will stop in next time I’m in the area!
  2. ‘fresh’ Mozz is not the same as whole milk mozz. Call it ‘100% REAL CHEESE’, get with Evco to get the official ad campaign going from the dairy group…the real cheese campaign, does that make sense?
3). Make sure all those complaints are valid, then address them in-house. Try to contact the complained, offer them a meal IN-HOUSE only, and see what happens.
  1. don’t deliver steaks or pasta or mashed potatoes. Just don’t. Emporia isn’t big enough that people should whine about going all the way in, and the college kids won’t be ordering much besides pizza anyway. Steaks and potatoes don’t deliver
    well. You are setting yourself up for problems.
Were you part of the KC Pyramid Pizza bunch?

Steve (now in StL)
 
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Well, you can try playing the game of having your friends and family post reviews or at least mark that they “Like” you on Urbanspoon. Don’t be surprised if majority of your friend’s reviews get caught in the Yelp filter though.

Also, some customers can be smarter than we give them credit for. They will suspect something is up if 10 five star reviews come through in a week when you’ve only had 3-4 in the last 6 months.

I tried to solicit reviews when we first opened and it really didn’t have much effect on anything. The reviews came in at the same pace they do now. Now, I think I use them the way I’m supposed to. I monitor the sites, get mad when someone doesn’t like me and then take the criticism and figure out how to grow from it.

BTW, I gave you a like on Urbanspoon.
 
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I understand there will be complaints. I expect them and we do comment cards with guest checks that have given us a tremendous amount of insight and allowed us to make some great changes in the last few months. It’s just frustrating that the only people who comment online about us are not a fair depiction of what we really are. I just wonder how many thousands of dollars in sales we’ve lost from people who take these reviews at face value.

I can’t think of a way to motivate more people to comment without it looking like we’re trying to skew the ratings.
 
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Regarding Yelp, you can try posting an offer on the site. I’ve used “Mention Yelp when ordering to get a free cheesebread.” This is free and will hopefully draw some of the Yelpers into your place. I’m not sure how many Yelpers there are in Emporia but if you can get one in there, they will Yelp about it (good or bad).
 
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((just an aside . . . . Black Angus Superior is not a USDA grade of beef. Prime, choice, select, and further down are the only grades I have ever been trained on or found in my research. Black Angus has often been used as a brand instead of or to avoid the costs of grading. Be careful advertising “Black Angus” anything as USDA graded unless it has a USDA stamp and one of their grades on it. If I am wrong, do please send me your documents as I want to be up to date))
 
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Nick is right with the Black Angus comment. Prime, choice, and select are your 3 main and then they have I think 2 lower rankings for “Other” uses. Pink slime comes to mind. Black Angus is a type of cow and nothing more. Graded the same but some restaurants get customers to think that by saying Black Angus it is the best. I prime BA might taste and be better than a prime regular cow of the same cut. The problem is when you sell a Black Angus select grade steak for prime pricing and the customer is basically cheated into thinking that “Black Angus” is a grade higher than prime.

Now that is cleared up… I see a trend here on the TT. These sites will be around and to the people that read them the 3 bad reviews will stick out over the 300 good ones. Let it go! I have said before and say it again…just make great food and people will come for it and pay more for it. I dont go to a place because of online reviews. I order what sounds good and not by getting all hyped up over brand names or other peoples comments. Yes I might try a new place sooner if a friend says it was good…but I like to make up my own mind. Step one…CLEAN! Inside, parking lot, entire place… I am not saying spend your last dime on decor…I am saying HEALTHY CLEAN! Then great service and great food. Those 3 requirements do not depend on other peoples thoughts or impressions…they are all up to you the establishment. Give me what I want and I will pay more, come back often, tell others how great it was, and tip nicely to boot!.

Just do your 100% best and it will all fall into place. You will always have those that only know how to bitch and complain. So let those go! :idea:
 
Yelp, Urbanspoon and Google Places all allow an owner to sign up for an administrative account, claim their locations and then reply to comments as the owner. You need to be in the store to take a phone call to do it… I keep putting this on the back burner - I really need to get that loose end tied up.

Anyways. Once you’ve gotten set up, you can apologize for the problems, explain how you’ve taken steps to correct them and then invite them to give you another try. Even if they don’t, you still put forth the image of being an involved and caring owner/operator. That’s gotta be better than just leaving those complaints dangling out there.
 
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