You’re hungry so you decide to go to that new place you have wanted to try. You go in and eat something new, something different from your usual meals, then the time for you to let the world know how this new food place did, has arrived. Or at least the world that is your followers. If you’re elite on Yelp then the amount of followers can range from hundreds of followers to thousands. And they are all there to read what you think about the new food place. To follow your advice should they go? Should they avoid the place at all costs? Is the new place the place for them to spend their hard earned money?
All the answers to their questions are given by you. They all have their notifications on so when you post your review, they can be one of the first people to read it. So for that small or large circle your review has a lot of power a lot of influence a lot of meaning. But for the restaurant it carries even more importance. If it’s a bad review and you have a small following then its ok your impact is minimal, just another unsatisfied customer. On the other hand if you’re Elite on Yelp and have a large following, the impact of your review is substantial.
With one review you can potentially affect the restaurant in a very important way. That bad review could potentially mean a loss of profit. A loss of customers, and those customers have been lost without even walking into the restaurant. Your review alone was the whole reason why they never even bother to go there. And restaurants know this and have ways to try and avoid having a bad review from any of their customers.
To the restaurant any customers could be a factor in losing new customers in an already fragile restaurant economy. Some restaurants go as far as posting signs asking you to let them try and fix the problem before you post a negative review. Restaurants know that a bad review can affect them in an expensive way.
The real problem that restaurants face and can’t really do anything about is our personal opinion. They can’t do anything about our personal taste, our taste buds decide what we like and dislike and the restaurants can’t do a single thing about that. They can cook a plate to perfection, hitting all the right temperatures.
Using all the right portions plating it like it’s about to go into a photoshoot and it can all be ruined by our taste buds. An ingredient in that perfect recipe can be something we don’t like and that will ruin our whole dinner experience. And once we feel like our dinner has been ruined we jump on our social media and let our whole following know that we hate the place.
We start to point out all the little things that we ignored until our night felt ruined. We start to notice the wait for the table was long. The waiter took a few minutes too long to bring the appetizers or the drinks. All of a sudden everything is horrible and it’s all due to something the restaurant can’t fix, our taste buds.
That’s why we need to keep in mind that our words have that much power and can affect a place in a big way. We need be careful what we type. We need to make sure that what we say in the reviews is correct or at the very least make sure we say it’s our personal opinion. If once that’s clear your followers still want to avoid that place or still want to give it a try then it’s entirely their decision.
