Restaurant owners to Yelp reviewers: Be considerate!
Restaurant owners to Yelp reviewers: Be considerate!
A negative review on the community site Yelp can hurt a restaurant’s business.
For years, the restaurant industry has complained about what it says is lack of moderation on the site: Anyone can say they had a bad experience, with no consequences.
Now, during the pandemic, with most restaurants switching to takeout and struggling to stay afloat, many owners and workers are saying that a bad Yelp review hurts more than ever, and … Yelp needs to really step up its game.
Joshua Chaisson is a bartender and food industry organizer in Portland, Maine. He said, “A real negative tear-down sort of review can be really disastrous both for ownership and, of course, for the workers themselves.”
And for an industry that lost about $120 billion just in the first three months of the COVID-19 shutdown, every customer counts.
Paulie Giannone, in Brooklyn, who goes by Paulie G., owns several pizzerias. He’s gotten quite a few mean Yelp reviews, like one customer who called a takeout cashier a “hipster window boy.” “First of all, don’t call a man a boy. OK?” said Paulie G. “Have some empathy. In this time for people to be slamming restaurants, who are struggling just to keep their doors open — forget about making money. You know, people should … people should go easy.”
Recently, Yelp posted this advice to reviewers on its website: “Many restaurants are experiencing more takeout and delivery orders than ever before. Be understanding, considerate, and support your local businesses.”
But Chaisson said that now more than ever, Yelp should take some responsibility for what is written on its site.
Paulie G. said most of his reviews are good, and he’s trying to take the knocks with a dash of humor. He recently got his cashier a T-shirt to wear at work.
It reads, “hipster window boy.”
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