
A few negative online reviews early on can hurt a restaurant - elorant
https://news.osu.edu/how-a-few-negative-online-reviews-early-on-can-hurt-a-restaurant/
======
Traster
What I'm not getting about this is how you check cause and effect. How do you
know bad reviews cause restaurants to stagnate? Call me crazy, but maybe
restaurants stagnate is because they're bad. They also get bad reviews because
they're bad and people might not go to the restaurant becaues it's bad.
There's no explanation in this article of how this is overcome. Also, they're
talking about 0-4 reviews and 5-10 reviews. I could imagine that's the sort of
number of reviews that restaurants' family and friends could be leaving when a
restaurant opens.

~~~
readme
Have you ever worked in a restaurant? I've worked in multiple.

There's a reason Karen is a meme

There are a real lot of very entitled people in the world that will complain
on review sites and their opinion is not really justified. The only barrier is
having an account and picking a number of stars.

In the past you had to be a restaurant reviewer, like you worked for Zagat or
something, so there was a barrier to entry.

The same thing can happen to Uber and Lyft drivers too... If you are very
unlucky and your first ride gives you a bad review pretty much forget about
it.

~~~
jay_kyburz
Can we stop calling these people "Karen". I'm sure its very hurtful to all the
people actually called Karen. We tread so carefully around race and LGBTQI
issues, but all of a sudden its OK to start labeling entitled assholes
"Karen". I don't get it. We don't need a new word for it.

~~~
gerdesj
I sort of understand where you are coming from but my name is Jon and I'm
British. Jon, here, is short for Jonathan.

I'm aware that John is an Americanism for the bog (toilet/WC.) John Doe is a
person whose name is unknown in the US. A rubber johnny is just one nickname
for a prophylactic. My mum used to call me Jonny or Johann or even Johannes as
a sign of affection.

I'm not so sure that Karens are offended by the term Karen. You see, very few
Karens are actually Karens.

~~~
jay_kyburz
I don't see why we need to create a new derogatory term using a persons name.
It's not even very descriptive.

People didn't start calling a toilet Jon because they wanted a label for the
sterotype of an entitled asshole.

I guess its a form of virtue signaling. You have to be cool and know meems to
know what calling somebody a Karen even means.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Why do you feel that you need to be able to see the point of it for it to be
ok or non-offensive? Maybe you don’t see the point of it, but others see their
own point and don’t have to justify it.

Should every possible characteristic a living entity can have also be a
protected class?

------
Havoc
And that can happen quite easily.

e.g. A work team went out for an event and got genuinely atrocious service.
i.e. Legitimately worthy of a 1 star review. Fair. Shit service, shit review.

...except somehow they hyped each other up to ALL do so. So that party of 20
left 20 bad reviews.

I wasn't part of that but when I heard about it I couldn't help but think
about this effect. One table having a bad time (happens) might have just
killed an entrepreneurs dream. :(

~~~
aspaceman
That is a brutal and amazingly petty thing to do. I would stay far, far away
from whoever got folks to do that. They sound cruel.

~~~
nikanj
They served 20 people poorly and got 20 bad reviews. How is that brutal or
petty?

~~~
Swizec
The difference is that it’s a one-off event.

Say you have a bad day at work but usually you’re awesome. This happens to be
the day 20 new coworkers see you for the first time. They all tell their
manager.

Do you deserve to be ostracized forever because you bombed one presentation to
a vocal minority? Or should that be balanced against your amazing work on
other days?

The Algorithm just sees those 20 bad reviews. It doesn’t know about your other
amazing days.

In the case of a restaurant another dimension comes into play: Serving a table
of 20 is a logistical nightmare compared to serving 10 tables of 2. This is
why large parties usually call in advance and get a prefixed menu. The
restaurant would also ensure extra staffing for that time.

~~~
nikanj
People lose their jobs all the time for a single tweet or customer
interaction.

~~~
Swenrekcah
Which is actually terrible and not examples to copy.

------
cutenewt
There are so many fake or manipulated reviews across all sites -- Yelp,
Amazon, Uber, eBay -- that I just don't trust them anymore.

Unfortunately, we are addicted to having someone filter products and services
for us, even if they are manipulated.

I'm dying for an alternative to the 5-star review, but seems like there's no
end in sight.

~~~
js2
Even if the reviews weren't fake, most people just don't share my taste, or at
least, aren't very discerning, or are complaining about something other than
food and service.

We have poor to mediocre sushi restaurants here in Raleigh, NC if you judge
them by the quality of their fish. Now, I'm not saying I'm a sushi
connoisseur, but I've been to high end sushi restaurants in major cities
(Atlanta, NYC, LA, Miami) and I know what we're getting here isn't even close
to premium. But people review some of our restaurants and say "this is the
best sushi I've ever had."

But you know, you go to these restaurants and see what most people order and
they are rolls with insane amounts of sweet sauce on them and sure, they are
pretty to look at, but if you're looking for say, an edible piece of Uni here,
you aren't going to find it.

This is a country where people think Olive Garden is good Italian after all.

So anyway, I ignore the star reviews and try to find a review where someone
took a few minutes to describe what they liked and disliked. One or two
reviews like that are way more valuable than the ratings and it's usually
pretty easy to spot the fakes.

Specific example. This place has mediocre sushi, a menu that hasn't changed in
years, and their service is often slow:

[https://www.yelp.com/biz/yuri-japanese-restaurant-
cary](https://www.yelp.com/biz/yuri-japanese-restaurant-cary)

But they treat us like family. I'd never have found that out from Yelp
reviews. No, on Yelp you find people complaining that they don't offer BOGO or
the parking lot. Other people say it's the best sushi they've ever had. You
won't find a review that says "typical neighborhood Japanese restaurant where
they treat regulars like family. The service can sometimes be slow and it's
not premium fish, but there's a variety of competently made sushi, and decent
selection of non-sushi Japanese and Korean menu items. After a few times here,
they'll probably start comp'ing you dessert."

Here's a Yelp review from another Japanese restaurant in the area:

> I used Uber Eats to get delivery and it was delicious. Sushi is generally
> really good or really bad. Not much in between. The disposable chopsticks
> were the cheapest I've ever seen. Those could definitely be improved.

That's a 5-star review. I mean, come on.

See also: rotten tomato audience scores.

~~~
koolba
Why is it so hard to get good sushi fish outside of major metros? Doesn’t it
all get deep frozen and transported like that anyway?

~~~
Larrikin
I suspect the same reason it's fairly difficult to get high quality sushi fish
as a regular consumer, the high end markets buy it all up.

But you also have the problem that OP described where people literally have no
idea what quality actually taste like so they can get away with selling
mediocre fish. Nearly all fruit in the United States is another example. My
cousin by marriage was born abroad and he absolutely refuses to eat his
favorite fruit, mango, because so much of it is outright trash and even a
"good"mango sucks in comparison

~~~
js2
Wait what? I grew up in Miami and ate mangos off the tree. I've also had store
bought mango and Ataulfo (Champagne) mangos from Mexico. I don't think I'm
missing anything with the store bought mangos. So I think that's a bad
example.

But, there's a variety of pineapple you can only get only in Hawaii that's way
better. And I've only ever sourced really good key limes from friends and
family trees in Florida.

Store bought tomatoes are also usually shit, but you can get ones from the
farmers markets and road-side stands.

~~~
Larrikin
I can't specifically speak to mangoes since I haven't tried them in that many
places, but melons in the United States are outright terrible in comparison to
anything I had when I lived in Japan. They cost more but you're pretty much
guaranteed quality. A relatively inexpensive melon in Japan might be about 10
bucks but its going to be as good as the best melon you can get in the crap
shoot at the grocery store. When you start moving up in price the melons
basically become so good that they are an out and out replacement for any kind
of high end dessert. Theres no need for ice cream, yogurt, honey, etc because
the melon is just that good.

~~~
js2
What kind of melon? We have fantastic watermelon here if you get it in-season
and local and I've been pretty happy with cantaloupe and honeydew. A lot of
problem is Americans have no clue what in-season fruit is and don't buy local.

NC has a bounty of fruit and vegetables available locally grown:

[https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/central-north-carolina-
planting...](https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/central-north-carolina-planting-
calendar-for-annual-vegetables-fruits-and-herbs)

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
"Melon" (メロン) in Japan always means honeydew. $100 is a perfectly normal price
for a high-end melon (Yubari etc) and the record is over $20000.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-melons-cost-
price-s...](https://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-melons-cost-price-so-
expensive-japan-2019-6)

That said, the pricy melons are usually bought as gifts, not eating yourself.
Compare with eg. high-end whiskey.

~~~
js2
I'm very happy with my $3 honeydew in season so I don't think I want to ruin
that by having $100 melon. Ignorance is bliss!

(I'm also pretty happy with $30 bourbon compared to what single-malts are up
to these days.)

------
keiferski
The main issue with review sites, in my experience, is that I end up being
hesitant to try new restaurants which don’t have a large number of reviews or
even one really bad review. They may be delicious but there is always a
hesitation factor; “Do I want to spend $20 and risk the food being awful, or
do I want to go with the safe option, the place I’ve been to a hundred times?”
This problem didn’t really exist prior to review sites, but somehow I don’t
remember being all that bothered by it.

It makes me think: new restaurants would benefit from a sort of insurance
program. I would be willing to try far more new restaurants if I had a
guaranteed way to receive my money back in the event of disappointment. Just
like insurance, the less times I use my refund, the lower rate I pay per
month.

/just a thought.

~~~
Aachen
> Just like insurance, the less times I use my refund, the lower rate I pay
> per month.

Huh, what insurance works like that? If you pay a rate based on how much you
used it, you might as well pay for the thing you're having the insurance pay
for. I get that such an insurance will catch outliers still (saving you from a
big boo-boo) but that's the only kind of thing insurances are for: big boo-
boos (chance events that cost you disproportionately much compared to how much
reducing the risk of them to zero would cost, like surgery or your house
burning down). If you use it for frivolous stuff like, say, covering for a $10
meal, imagine the overhead, the management costs of all those claims, the
arbitration, and the little you get out of it unless you order at a shitty
restaurant and get unlucky nearly every time because you travel a lot for work
and don't know the good places around -- oh wait, in your model that means you
pay more anyway and it's not worth it, so every subscriber is really only
lining the manager's pockets.

Just eat mediocre food for once or order elsewhere if the food is actually
inedible. The lack of repeat custom is surely worth more to a restaurant than
refunding those ten dollars you're sour about.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Huh, what insurance works like that?

Yes. For example no-claims bonuses on car insurance means you pay less if you
claim less.

> If you pay a rate based on how much you used it, you might as well pay for
> the thing you're having the insurance pay for.

No. For example say my car insurance is £500 or something. It goes down £50 a
year every year I don't use it, due to no-claims bonuses. But it's still less
than paying for a major accident out-of-pocket that could cost £5 million.

------
croissants
Since we're talking about it, my usual method for finding restaurants in new
places is to ask people and then go to online discussion forums. Some cities
have specific ones, like LTH Forum for Chicago.

If not, I visit more general food forums like Hungry Onion. Chowhound used to
be a great resource for this, but they got bought or something and the
community withered. A lot of them moved to Hungry Onion.

I also have a few bloggers I follow. Ulterior Epicure is a good name if you're
interested in "high-end" food. The guy is not a "collector" like a lot of
restaurant bloggers, which I like.

That combination is usually enough to get a list of interesting-looking
places. Yelp tends to just not have much information in my experience.

~~~
splonk
For California, it seems like the SF Bay Area Chowhound refugees went to
Hungry Onion, but the LA people went to Food Talk Central. It's pretty
unfortunate, since CH really was a good resource back in the day, and now
neither site seems to have critical mass.

These days (well, not the past couple months) I tend to get more
recommendations from industry people. I sit at a lot of restaurant bars and a
server who isn't too busy is usually happy to chat. As a bonus, I get way more
than my fair share of free drinks and tastes of interesting things.

------
softwaredoug
I have always wanted to give a restaurant an anonymous “tip” instead of a
public review.

Like privately: “hey, we love you guys, just FYI the croissants have seemed
stale lately. Just wanted you guys to know...”

My hypothesis is most just nod and always say everything is “fine” if prompted
for feedback. But you’d get more honest feedback if there was a way to
privately “drop a line” to your favorite restaurants.

(I hate writing reviews. I know even minor negative feedback will have a bad
impact on someone’s personal business.)

~~~
andreareina
Tell the staff, or better yet ask to see the manager and tell them.

------
nabla9
New restaurants can change in quality very fast.

They might start with everything being fresh and high quality ingredients,
then when money is tight in one month the quality sinks either temporarily or
permanently.

Increasing popularity can also decrease quality. More people more work. If
people start coming because restaurant has been discovered, quality matters
less afterwards. It tastes good when everyone says it tastes good.

------
Nasrudith
Dumb question - what if the early resturants with early bad reviews are simply
bad and death spiral? I didn't see efforts to narrow down actual quality.

Granted would require controlled attempts of opening under different names at
different locations to try to see if a somewhat random starting review really
drives it or confidental information from a chain resturant's attempts to
expand by the same leadership.

------
omega3
I see the opposite happening as well where the high reviewed restaurants can
ride the wave of popularity for a pretty long time whilst reducing the portio
sizer, replacing free drinks with high margin ones, replacing more expensive
ingredients with cheaper alternatives, increasing the wait times before the
new lower reviews start to propagate.

------
AdmiralAsshat
It's kinda hard to tell from the article whether "negative" means one-star or,
like, three-stars. Because yeah, there are quite a few people who tend to
overreact to a less-than-ideal experience where they feel compelled to leave a
one-star review because the check took an extra ten minutes to arrive. And
surely anyone with a shred of empathy would cut a brand new restaurant some
slack if it's not perfect on the first week.

OTOH, people seem to think you're being mean if you leave a 2-3/5 review for a
restaurant, and at some point we should acknowledge the fact that some places
are just _mediocre_. And if I go to a thoroughly mediocre Italian restaurant,
I don't think it's mean to leave it a mediocre rating, because the average
person should know that there are four _better_ Italian restaurants within 15
miles they could go to.

~~~
splonk
5-star rating distributions are heavily bipolar - maybe like 80% of ratings
will be 1 or 5. This is part of why some systems end up switching to thumbs
up/down. I don't like it much, but empirically, it's how people seem to use
rating scales.

I semi-joke with friends that I wreck the ratings of things just because I try
to use the entire scale, so my 4 star "pretty darn good!" rating actually ends
up lowering the average.

~~~
rocqua
Back when I looked at the netflix challenge, the baseline above which
improvement was barely possible was:

Per person find their average rating, and score movies not by ratings, but by
how far the rating deviated from that person's average.

I think that approach got me to 92% accuracy. More advanced math gave me like
another 2 percent, with the winner of the challenge having gotten 96%
accuracy.

My point being. A very basic recommendation engine system should correct for
your 4star is pretty good habit.

~~~
splonk
Agree that it's very simple to do some basic corrections from individual
distributions. I just think it's relatively rare to see any of this in the
wild (and when it's there, there's often pushback from people complaining
about the process).

------
raz32dust
Of course bad reviews can hurt a restaurant. That's what reviews are for. I
think the problem is two-fold:

1\. The ranking algorithm is bad. A simple average is very naive, but many
site use just that for ranking. There needs to be some standard accredited
algorithms to do rating rankings - which take care of factors like this.

2\. Online marketplace makes a wider variety available to users. This
automatically ensures that more and more sales go to the highest quality
restaurants. If there is a 5-star restaurant you can order from, why would you
try a 4.8-star one? There can only be a few "best" restaurants, and everyone
wants to eat their food.

------
nathanyz
I think this holds true for anything where reviews are easily viewable and a
common part of the buying process.

I would bet you find a similar problem with Amazon products that can get sunk
by just a few negative reviews early on.

~~~
TwoBit
That would explain why a lot of new Chinese clone products start out the gate
with 5-10 obviously fake five star reviews.

~~~
Animats
Yes. Search "Medical mask" on Amazon. Lots of vague, enthusiastic 5-star
reviews. Then read the 1-star reviews:

 _Link advertised as Medical Grade, CDC approved, CE certified but the box
that the mask came in didn 't have ANY of the advertised verbiage. On top of
that, box had had non-sterile printed & non-CE (non certified). FRAUD
advertisement!!_

 _Ordered these believing they were medical masks as described on this page.
What I received was clearly labeled "Non-Medical Masks" and had a different
part number than the number listed here._

 _Ad said masks were made in USA. They are made in China._

 _I bought a medical mask and when opening the package it says NON-MEDICAL-
MASK_

 _I ordered these, because they said they were FDA approved. I received a
different brand that is not._

Only the 1-star reviews matter.

------
umvi
Just like a few early downvotes can hurt a comment (at least on reddit).

Now maybe the comment really is poor quality, but sometimes it's a really
clever joke that goes over the initial downvoters' heads

------
reagent_finder
Egg-and-chicken debates aside, I can absolutely see this. In any reasonably-
sized town or city you'll find a dozen similar establishments a walking
distance away. So while you might debate picking between the 3.5 and 4.5-star
ones, the restaurant with 1-2 stars is just not going to draw a crowd.

------
habosa
If I was a restaurant starting up I’d just buy my first 20 reviews. Tell
customers they get a free appetizer if they leave a review on Yelp (any
review, any stars).

Sucks that’s the world we live in but it’s so obviously true and it’s the best
investment a new restaurant can make.

------
nomad543
Public reviews should be outlawed unless some form of credential system is
created. The review system is another example of how the tech industry is
unable control their urge to inconsequentially behave like if they were gods
with complete lack of empathy.

------
dilandau
To one who understands complex systems theory, this is completely
unsurprising. All the emergent phenomena (fake reviews, pandering to
Instagram, faux-chic, aspirational minimalism) in turn create more reaction,
more phenomena.

If we ask ourselves: were online reviews a good thing? To me clearly no.
Authenticity has been the price.

------
MiddleWinger
This does not apply to restaurants in small towns.

------
mkhalil
Create two restaurants with the same exact look, menu, appliances and prep but
different names and Yelp/Google entities. Enter bad reviews in one, and see
what happens. That's how we would be able to tell if its the reviews or the
restaurant that hurt the restaurant.

An aside: With this mesh of human and company rights [whether or not you
agree], does a company -- like people + GDPR -- have the right to be
forgotten, or not exist somewhere they wish not to?

~~~
slim
a company does not havr the right to be forgotten

------
sbassi
Brace for GPT-3 based reviews.

