Restaurant Feedback

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kyleb

Final Approach
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Jun 13, 2008
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Marietta, GA
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Drake the Outlaw
How do you leave an online, constructive, review of a sub par restaurant without coming across as a jerk? One of the semi-upscale restaurants near us is always a disappointment. SWMBO is the one who usually wants to go there and always leaves less than pleased (I'm less than pleased going there in the first place). The place *should* be good. Right location, right space, nicely put together, good clientele. But... poor food (Why does the chicken taste like fish? Because they cook it in the same fryer.), poor service (Why are the tables usually kinda grubby? Because the restaurant is under-staffed and the servers are asked to buss the tables and don't take the time to do it right), just not a well managed restaurant. Independent restaurant by the way. The soft drinks? Usually flat - the carbonation isn't set up right. Just a laundry list of "It only takes 10% more work on someone's part to make the restaurant about 50% better."

And forget about a manager cycling the room and checking in with customers...

So how do you communicate all of that without totally crapping on the restaurant? I'd like the place to improve, not for it to close its doors...
 
Ask ChatGPT to re-word it for you in the way that you want?
 
This is going to sound like me being a jerk (again), but why would anyone go back to a restaurant where the food or service was bad?

Running a restaurant is really, really hard. Most don't make it past a year. I don't think a comment card is going to fix anything.
 
eman1200 said:
I’d copy/paste your exact post to wherever you want, google, yelp etc…. You point out some positives and recommend fixes to the negatives. You can usually pick out the bogus reviews from the non-bot ones.
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100% this. ^^^
 
Have you reached out to the manager/owner directly? I’ve done this in the past with some success. They get the message and typically appreciate that you reached out to them before posting an online review. They’re used to folks immediately resorting to putting them on blast online (including folks who were some or all of the problem themselves).

Then if they either give you attitude or fail to resolve the issues, you can do a negative/critical eview with the confidence that they deserve it.
 
Post COVID restaurants being understaffed seems to be a thing regardless of locale. Upscale to dive bar. Finding help is hard apparently.

I hate leaving reviews in public domain. I would probably consider a more direct approach. If the manager is too aloof, tell your server to send em over. Or find or email the owner. Point out the good and that you want them to be successful.
 
Not like they care about reviews, anyway. The rare times that a restaurant manager/owner responds to a Yelp review, it’s almost always a canned response, identically worded to responses to other reviews. They’ll keep doing what they want.
 
I’d copy/paste your exact post to wherever you want, google, yelp etc…. You point out some positives and recommend fixes to the negatives. You can usually pick out the bogus reviews from the non-bot ones.
 
I’m not understanding why you would ever go back there (maybe there aren’t a million restaurants in the area like the dc area) - if the tables are dirty imagine the kitchen!

Anyway, you could send your review to ownership if you can figure out who they are (to bypass local mgmt issues)

Or send it through their website
 
These two items...
kyleb said:
Right location, right space, nicely put together,.....
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and
kyleb said:
Because the restaurant is under-staffed.....
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...are probably related. If the restaurant is faced with a huge expense for the location and the decor, they may not be able to afford adequate staff. The only places they can control cost are in the kitchen and with the floor staff.

If that’s their situation, no review or feedback will help. If you want to try, a quiet, friendly, helpful chat with the manager will have the best chance of getting results.

In terms of quality of food and service, some of the best restaurants we visit are ones that are family owned with rather blah buildings and locations. The owners choose to buy better cuts of meat instead of fancy furniture and waterfront views.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I’d copy/paste your exact post to wherever you want, google, yelp etc…. You point out some positives and recommend fixes to the negatives. You can usually pick out the bogus reviews from the non-bot ones.
Click to expand...
We got it the first time. You don't have to keep repeating yourself
 
I worked at restaurants when in college... one time, I had a conversation with one of the owners as to what makes a place successful... and this is verbatim "you can serve them dog food, but if the service and ambiance are top notch, they will think it is the best meal they ever had.. never leave your customer waiting or wanting..."

My suggestion; lead in with a few positive remarks, then lower the boom as to why you fell compelled to do so.
 
Be factual, with very little emotions in the wording. We had a very nasty experience with a medium sized chain restaurant one time. Really soured us on going there. I wrote a long, but factual letter to client relations at corporate, detailing what went on and the response we got from the staff that day. No response from them after a couple of weeks. Got pretty ****ed, so found the email for the corp president and wrote a short note that I was extremely disappointing with them, in that I had sent a complaint to the relations group and they were not courteous to even acknowledge it. Amazingly, I got a phone call from the pres within two hours, with some info that had really hacked him off when he looked for my complaint. There ended up being a bunch of corporate people fired over it and an almost complete firing of all of the staff at the location I was complaining about.

It's a lot easier to take complaints seriously when they are calm, simply factual information and no significant emotional screeching.
 
I used to be a fairly prolific Yelp reviewer. That is, up until the time I classified a gas station sandwich shop, as a gas station sandwich shop, which, is in fact exactly what it was. The owners of the gas station sandwich shop felt I was being insensitive to them over classifying them as a gas station sandwich shop, and complained to Yelp about it. Then Yelp deleted the review and threatened me with account suspension over "being insensitive and propagating stereotypes."

And I even gave them a good review!!

Well Yelp can perform fellatio on a rhinoceros. I deleted all the content I put in over the years including photos, instructed them to perform fellatio on a rhinoceros, and never looked back.

By the way, Yelp claims they don't take money from businesses to remove bad reviews. That is not true. The owner of the local pub downtown that I frequent pays Yelp all the time to remove bad reviews. It's a fairly common practice. These days I look to Google reviews if I want the scoop on a place.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I used to be a fairly prolific Yelp reviewer. That is, up until the time I classified a gas station sandwich shop, as a gas station sandwich shop, which, is in fact exactly what it was. The owners of the gas station sandwich shop felt I was being insensitive to them over classifying them as a gas station sandwich shop, and complained to Yelp about it. Then Yelp deleted the review and threatened me with account suspension over "being insensitive and propagating stereotypes."

And I even gave them a good review!!

Well Yelp can perform fellatio on a rhinoceros. I deleted all the content I put in over the years including photos, instructed them to perform fellatio on a rhinoceros, and never looked back.

By the way, Yelp claims they don't take money from businesses to remove bad reviews. That is not true. The owner of the local pub downtown that I frequent pays Yelp all the time to remove bad reviews. It's a fairly common practice. These days I look to Google reviews if I want the scoop on a place.
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Had a similar thing with yelp reviews skewing things. My rental has a very complex water softener and iron remover. Had one of the dealers come out to service it. The guy shows up late and then decides the brine tank needs to be cleaned and dumps it in the yard killing the grass. Dude has no clue what he was doing and then says he just does diagnostic and then they send someone else out.

Stellar yelp reviews. Google reviews told a very different story.
 
eman1200 said:
I’d copy/paste your exact post to wherever you want, google, yelp etc…. You point out some positives and recommend fixes to the negatives. You can usually pick out the bogus reviews from the non-bot ones.
Click to expand...

Sac Arrow said:
I’d copy/paste your exact post to wherever you want, google, yelp etc…. You point out some positives and recommend fixes to the negatives. You can usually pick out the bogus reviews from the non-bot ones.
Click to expand...

luvflyin said:
We got it the first time. You don't have to keep repeating yourself
Click to expand...
I think Sac Arrow is a bot. Don’t feed the bots. :p
 
I did this recently. Place was touted as great But the food was horrible. Made worse by the manager trying to push it off. My review was straight to the point. I also heard from friends who had similar experience's after us, so I won’t be surprised when it’s closed or a “under new management “ sign is up.
 
Send a note to the owner with your concerns,and reasons. If no one gets back to you , it worth going back.
 
I personally would just leave the review on Google maps as I like that tool for finding restaurants. I’m sure there’s other tools as well. Personally I don’t like it when there’s a crap ton of bad reviews and the platform prioritizes the 5 star reviews. I want to see the good and the bad so I can gauge the vibe and experience to determine if it’s what I’m looking for. I think Google is playing around with this a bit. I was looking for a restaurant the other day, food and photos were great, probably a 4.8 rating, hundreds of reviews. I got there and it was a takeout only place. Umm I’m looking for something to sit down, clean and cozy, intimate, a bit modern. So that leaves us searching for the next place. It can get annoying.

If the restaurant monitors their reviews, a lot of times they will reply to your review and you should receive a notification of this, and they will usually ask you to reach out. In most cases, I was offered a refund or sometimes even a $250 gift card to come back. Usually it’s a $50 gift card. A lot of corporates have a policy in place to mail you a gift card if you did not have a positive experience.

I also like to leave a review in hopes I will remember if I should or should not go back, since I tend to forget those ones with mediocre food even though the environment and service was fair. I think you are more likely to remember bad service than anything else. Over time you forget the ones with great food too.

Yelp is a pain and not a reliable tool. First, so many of my reviews have been removed, so you’ll only see the positive reviews. Also, Yelp reach out to my business to sell me packages that I’m totally not interested in, and when I said no, they went directly to my team and became a nuisance.

Google is a pretty fair tool in the US, however in other countries they will follow different strategies for allowing businesses to remove reviews. I still remember a big hotel chain that had no heat got me pretty upset paying almost $500/night at a supposedly 5 star hotel to be freezing, and Google never allowed my review to be posted. I changed my review to “I would not recommend this hotel” and that was still against Google’s review policies. Go figure.
 
Ventucky Red said:
and this is verbatim "you can serve them dog food, but if the service and ambiance are top notch, they will think it is the best meal they ever had
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He’s an idiot.

I will eat outstanding bbq at a gas station rather than a piece of over-seasoned shoe leather in a white-tablecloth dining room eight days a week. If I’m going to pay an extraordinary tab, the food had better be extraordinarily good.
 
I agree with those saying your OP here would be easily adapted into a good review.

We've gone to this place multiple times because we really want it to be good..... Unfortunately, despite the great potential, we've been repeatedly disappointed by the service and the food..... These issues have been consistent across multiple visits and don't seem to be a fluke......
 
Half Fast said:
These two items...

and

...are probably related. If the restaurant is faced with a huge expense for the location and the decor, they may not be able to afford adequate staff. The only places they can control cost are in the kitchen and with the floor staff.

If that’s their situation, no review or feedback will help. If you want to try, a quiet, friendly, helpful chat with the manager will have the best chance of getting results.

In terms of quality of food and service, some of the best restaurants we visit are ones that are family owned with rather blah buildings and locations. The owners choose to buy better cuts of meat instead of fancy furniture and waterfront views.
Click to expand...
This. A few weeks ago we found a great little upscale place in Coca Beach. Great reviews and recommendations; when we saw it from the outside we almost turned around - it was that bad. Fantastic meal and service, though. Clearly, they were putting their effort into the food and service, not the building and facade.
 
StraightnLevel said:
This. A few weeks ago we found a great little upscale place in Coca Beach. Great reviews and recommendations; when we saw it from the outside we almost turned around - it was that bad. Fantastic meal and service, though. Clearly, they were putting their effort into the food and service, not the building and facade.
Click to expand...

Sometime when you’re in St. Augustine, try the fried shrimp at O’Steen’s. http://www.osteensrestaurant.com/ Little hole-in-the-wall place, very plain, but they have been in business for nearly 60 years and have made fans all over the country. Fabulous shrimp.

Closer to Cocoa, you might also check out Dixie Crossroads. https://dixiecrossroads.com/
 
Half Fast said:
Sometime when you’re in St. Augustine, try the fried shrimp at O’Steen’s. http://www.osteensrestaurant.com/ Little hole-in-the-wall place, very plain, but they have been in business for nearly 60 years and have made fans all over the country. Fabulous shrimp.

Closer to Cocoa, you might also check out Dixie Crossroads. https://dixiecrossroads.com/
Click to expand...
Dixie Crossroads is fantastic! Try the shrimp and grits, but you’d best show up hungry. The Old Farts Flying Club’s flight to Arthur Dunn is one that I always make because they go to Dixie Crossroads.
 
Half Fast said:
He’s an idiot.

I will eat outstanding bbq at a gas station rather than a piece of over-seasoned shoe leather in a white-tablecloth dining room eight days a week. If I’m going to pay an extraordinary tab, the food had better be extraordinarily good.
Click to expand...

We are each entitled to our opinions... however in this case, I will take this person's advice. His name was Joey Cabell and he was one of the founders of Chart House restaurants. The point he was making was you need to bring your A game when working in the service industry or any industry where your are dealing with a retail environment.

Oh! I have heard the gas station Sushi is awesome...:):p:D:ihih:
 
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