Introduction:

Today’s is going to be very short and sweet. We are going to talk about how to handle fake and negative reviews in your restaurant.  

What do you do about fake reviews? Short answer – nothing. You can’t really do anything about fake reviews unless you know 100% for a fact that it’s fake and somehow you can prove it. There’s usually a way to submit that to either Yelp, TripAdvisor, or Google and they’ll review it. But the reality is there’s nothing you can do about fake reviews, and commenting and saying it’s fake isn’t gonna help. It’s just going to piss people off, and chances are it’s probably your competition.

What to do when you have fake reviews?

Get more real ones! Stop worrying so much about the negative reviews that come in, assuming you do a great job in your restaurant. There’s something to learn from those negative reviews and if we just look at them and say “Well that person’s fake, a troll, this or that” then you might be ignoring the key to your vault. It’s the key to the things that you need to change. Consider it a gift that’s been hand wrapped and given to you to improve your operations.

Let’s just assume every once in a while you’re gonna get negative reviews for things that aren’t your fault. What do we do about them? Get more positive reviews! Think about the hundreds if not thousands of people that eat in your restaurant daily, weekly or monthly that had amazing experiences but you do nothing with that information. With today’s technology, there are a million different strategies on how to do this. Honestly, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be getting more reviews.

For example:

• Simply ask people if they wouldn’t mind posting a review before going home. Ask the question, “Did we exceed your expectations?” If they say “yes” then say something like, “We would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind sharing that with the rest of the world.”
• Put up some kind of a photo booth in your restaurant. They make these photo booths where people take pictures and immediately upload and share their experiences online.
• Use online reputation management software (and similar software). There are hundreds of them out there that help you send out text messages and emails to get reviews.
• Just send an email yourself through your loyalty program. When someone eats at your restaurant, set up your loyal program to automatically trigger an email or a text message the next day that asks, “Hey! Did you have a great experience at our restaurant?” If they say yes, direct them to a review site; if they say no, direct them to a common form so they can tell you what happened.

There’s a lot software out there that can help with this or you can do this yourself. It isn’t hard, so stop making excuses and go get more positive reviews!