While one bad review can’t do much to harm the average rating of a large-scale operation like Founding Farmers, it can be devastating-and sometimes job-ending-for employees. I was also being sexually assaulted by two of my coworkers.Īfter starting that job, I stopped Yelping entirely. He was probably right: The shifts were chaotic, packed, and grueling, and the customers, often VIPs or political bigwigs, were entitled and difficult to please. One customer complained that “there were no smiles or joy” on my face that it looked like I was “in prison.” Most of the time, I was commended, but sometimes reviewers would describe me as moody and aloof. Performance feedback was swift and I developed a bad habit of checking Yelp immediately after I clocked out, scanning reviews from guests to see if I’d been mentioned. Pre-pandemic, Founding Farmers received around 1,500 reviews per month on review platforms. In 2019, I shut down Lena’s Lunchbox-I wanted to focus on school also, I lost most of my sense of taste during a nightmare wisdom tooth extraction that fried the nerve endings in my tongue-and started working as a hostess at Founding Farmers, an upscale-casual American eatery located a few blocks away from the White House that happens to be the most-booked restaurant in the nation and the third most reviewed on Yelp. I had a new understanding of the impact of online reviews, from an owner’s perspective, and began to write fewer. My page had so few reviews that even one or two unhappy customers could tank my standing. I never received anything below five stars-I imagine this was because people felt weird about trashing the business of a teenage girl-but I was spooked by the prospect. Then, less than one month after I started school, The Washington Post caught wind of my business and ran a story on the front page of the Metro section, leading to a barrage of orders and more reviews. The year after, when I moved to Washington, D.C., for college, a few things happened: First, I started paying an exorbitant monthly amount for Yelp ads, which pushed my page slightly up the list of local bakeries. In 2016, after three years of writing reviews, I entered phase two of my Yelp career: I created a business page for my custom cake and dessert company, Lena’s Lunchbox. But I never wrote one-star reviews with the intent of being constructive I wrote them to exert agency. As an aspiring food journalist, I used the platform to exercise my youthful writing chops-the lobster tail pastry at Carlo’s Bakery wasn’t “good,” it was “a blissful eruption of cold crème pâtissière”-and as a way to get published. While my subsequent reviews weren’t nearly as cruel, they were rarely for the benefit of anyone but myself. “I left wishing that one of Pizzeria Toro’s fires had traveled a bit farther to the left.”įour Yelpers voted the review as “Funny,” pushing it near the top of the bakery’s “Recommended Reviews” section. “Come here if you’re looking for a dry, disappointing end to your night,” it read. It was for The Cupcake Bar-a bakery that stood in the center of downtown Durham before closing in 2018-and it was scathing. I published my first review when I was fourteen. I started near the top, as a reviewer, and worked my way to the bottom. I’ve frequented three of Yelp’s five factions. Owners cannot opt-out of either Google or Yelp listings. If you Google a restaurant’s name, the restaurant’s Yelp page will likely be sequenced above its actual website. Since the onset of the pandemic, consumers have been interacting with reviews-searching, reading, and applying filters- at a rate 50 percent higher than they were pre-COVID. These days, online reviews loom larger than ever. Eighty-six percent of Americans consult online reviews before selecting a local business, and about 48 percent of people won’t consider patronizing a business with fewer than four stars. Studies show that a one-star increase in a Yelp rating generally leads to a 5 to 9 percent increase in revenue. The best of INDY Week’s fiercely independent journalism about the Triangle delivered straight to your inbox.īoth Yelp and Google reviews are hugely influential on the well-being of small businesses.
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