On food bloggers and restaurant reviews
Saurday, 11 June 2011
Food critics, restaurateurs and chefs who see food bloggers as a “blight” are misguided or in denial. Here’s why.
I know that what I say about a restaurant can affect its business. As a food blogger, I write fairly and honestly and think very carefully about the words I publish, especially when describing a disappointing experience.
I worked in the hospitality industry for several years and have realistic and reasonable expectations when dining out. But let’s face it – you don’t need to have worked in the hospitality industry or be a food critic (which I don’t claim to be) to know when your eggs have been overcooked or that you’ve waited an extraordinarily long time for your food. When there’s a long wait, for whatever reason, how the staff communicate with customers makes all the difference – for example, avoiding eye contact with customers is the worst way to deal with it. Any customer knows how frustrating and infuriating that is.
In recent times I’ve read in the media that some food critics, chefs and restaurateurs detest food bloggers because, among other reasons, they think what we do hurts their businesses – see the articles listed at the end of this post – but frankly, it is naive to think that blogs are a new “blight” or that blog posts do more “damage” than the damage done by restaurants themselves with poor quality food and/or service.
Your customers don’t need to be bloggers to tell others about you
Customers will do what they have always done when they’ve had bad service or food at a restaurant – they tell their friends, their family, their work colleagues. Customers have never needed to be bloggers to talk about restaurants and share their good or bad experiences.
I think chefs and restaurateurs should worry more about what they don’t read on the Internet: word of mouth, from customers to potential customers – the discussions over the barbie on the weekend, on the phone and at the office – because most of us will be inclined to listen to our friends and family when they say, “We went to restaurant X last week and had a terrible time.” We’re just as likely to pay attention to our friends’ and family’s recommendations.
What does this all mean? It means instead of blaming blogs, restaurateurs should improve their training of their staff. It means every dish should be cooked and presented as if it will be “reviewed”. Staff should treat all customers as potential “reviewers”. I don’t mean the certain category of fortunate diner who gets paid to write about restaurants for newspapers or other publications – I mean that every diner leaves a restaurant with an experience, impression and opinion. And he or she will probably share it, whether it’s in a newspaper column, on a blog, Twitter or Facebook, or in a conversation with mates. But none of this is new, and to resent food blogs is to miss the point completely. What the Internet and blogging have done is make the “talking” and “reviewing” that have always happened become more visible, and the feedback of customers harder to ignore. The printed review is no longer the only legitimate review – and one could argue perhaps it has never been.
Yes, some people do write silly, ignorant and unreasonable things about restaurants. That’s not new or unique to blogs either. There have always been silly, ignorant and unreasonable people, and they have been talking and writing long before the Internet and blogs ever existed.
My blog posts about restaurants reflect my awe, enjoyment or disappointment… whatever the dining experience was, good or bad. As it is, most of my posts are positive, as I have more good dining experiences than bad ones. I know my blog has driven a lot of business to restaurants over the years. There’s no sinister agenda to what I do; I’m just a person who loves food and eating, taking photographs and writing.
There is so much potential for free publicity for restaurants on the Internet. Whether it’s good or bad largely depends on restaurateurs and their staff – what they serve to their customers, how they treat them, and how they respond to feedback.
Notes
I’ve been thinking about this issue since reading:
- “Star Anise calls final orders 13 years on”, The West Australian online, 25 March 2011
- “Broadbrush with Rob Broadfield”, The West Australian, Fresh liftout, 26 May, 2011, p.2
- “Driven to distraction”, The Australian online, 23 April, 2011
I was then prompted to write this piece after a recent disappointing dining experience.
Read the related blog post:
Crumpet, East Victoria Park 2
You may also be interested in
- Reader discussion about this post at my Facebook page
- The problem of incomplete service
- My restaurant reviews
I'm TFP, a food blogger from Perth, Western Australia.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
I think you’re absolutely right. Instead of getting angry at food bloggers, restauranteurs should get angry at their staff for having provided such a poor customer experience. Talk about blaming the victim.
What a great article. What I do think, is that they need scapegoats in this business. And the chef’s need to blame someone or something for the poor performance of their business. It used to be journalists and anonymous food critiques.
With the advent of social media and blogs, they can’t hide anymore.
Saying that, I have been in the company of chefs and restaurant owners who have done nothing but embraced this new way of life and bloggers.
I say, if you have nothing to hide, there’s nothing to be scared off, and surely food bloggers shouldn’t be hated :)
Hear, hear!
Chefs and restauranteurs, look at it this way: if and when your food or service is given a less-than-positive review or critique, look at it as free feedback and an opportunity to improve. And really, you too can engage with your customers and have your say if you want – you don’t necessarily need to start your own blog, Facebook page, or tweet, you can use existing forums. If you come across as being willing to listen, learn and improve, believe me, people will notice!
I completely agree with you! Everyone has the right to the best meal produced – no matter how fat your wallet, your links with media or what you’re wearing. I look at blogger reviews more than anything else for where to eat because I know that you aren’t tainted with cross media promotions!
Well said TFP & I totally agree with what Sam said.
Well written thoughts, C. Everyone will leave a restaurant with some sort of experience – good or bad – and the potential to disseminate their thoughts far and wide using whatever vehicle they can. Making judgement calls on people based solely on the communication medium is risky. Some of the blogs (food and otherwise) residing in Cyberspace provide some amazing insights that, for one reason or another, wouldn’t work in a traditional print setting.
All people can do is digest (open-mindedly) as much of this information overload as they can, work out the voices they trust (and/or agree with) and listen to them. The blogger that resides in, say, a small rural hub and has been covering the town’s food goings-on for years (a fictional example, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are multiple cases of this happening) is probably a better source of eating, drinking and doing information than if the MasterChef team or AA Gill passed through town for an afternoon (though I suspect in the case of the latter, there would be some pretty funny observations). On the flip-side, a country journo who’s been dutifully covering food rounds in a 15×4 column for years is likely to have his or her finger closer to the pulse than if Pim T or whatnot had to spend the night in said town.
The nature of the internet these days is that it’s easier than ever (and I suspect it’ll continue to get easier) for people to get the information they’re after. Hard to find books from Amazon or Book Depository. Gundam scale model kits from Japan. Obscure European records from Discogs. Up-to-the-minute news about restaurants in their ‘hood. Some people will be entirely happy getting all their information via 140-characters-or-less bites on iPhones while others will continue to seek the writing of trusted wordsmiths in print (and as a journo that works largely in the traditional print realm, I’m hoping this continues). Right now it’s exciting times for anyone with an interest in food and food writing. Consider the quality of some (certainly not all) of the writers and bloggers residing in both the online and print realms and siding with just one medium just seems crazy.
I agree TFP! I have walked away dissapointed while dining at a few different restaurants.
However it has been in my experience dining at restaurants that what needs to correct it is just a simple case of a few little tweaks. Like maybe better staff training as you mentioned or correctly cooking a dish. Pretty much every restaurant (except for a few) have the foundations down correctly.
As for your word of mouth point, this point is no truer than in Malaysia. As you know malaysia is a food obsessed country so if you are a stall that serves the best rojak for example then the word will get spread around and before you know it you can have a line of 20-25 people waiting to get this one bowl of rojak. I find that this does happen in perth to but not to the same extent.
Great article with very valid points!
I almost removed one of my reviews after a slamming I got from the “owners” and “friends of the owners” (all posting as anonymous of course) over what I wrote about my experience. I gave an honest account of my experience which was mostly good but these people focused on the few not so good things I mentioned and went to town on me personally. People can disagree with my reviews but there is never need to attack a person personally. It all back fired on them anyway as people began commenting that they wouldn’t visit this cafe now because of the attitude of the owners etc towards me! This article has made me feel a lot better about what I do as well. Thank you :)
What is the saying… you have have a good experience and you tell 3 people but if you have a bad experience you will tell 10. Restauranteurs should remember that!
Well, it is always easier to blame it on someone else than to sit down, reflect and improve.
Hear Hear!
I fully agree.
I credit food bloggers with many of the places I dined at all across Australia. I go *because* of learning about them on blogs — there are so many options that blogs helped me discover gems and narrow down a huge host of possibilities.
Every meal should be your best, because your customers have to pay for every meal. Learn and improve or feel victimized and get angry. The choice is obvious. Take the positive from the negative. Feedback is so hard to get so if you get some feedback positive or negative show it respect it deserves.
Great points on food bloggers and reviews. It’s so true that restaurants should stop blaming bloggers and perceiving them as their enemies. As readers, it is of course up to use to digest whatever info we read and make our own conclusions.
Great article and totally valid points. In the case of Crumpet, I can imagine that you felt a moral obligation to tell your readers that the amazingly presented Iced Coffee (with vanilla rock sugar etc) no longer existed, since clearly a lot of people (including other food bloggers) had gone there specifically expecting it after your great review and pics from your first review.
If you only ever mentioned the positive aspects of a venue, people wouldn’t trust your reviews as much. The owners of Crumpet will now hopefully realise just how valued those few pieces of rock sugar were by their customers, and that we’d probably be happy to pay, say, an extra 50c so that we could go “wow!” when our drink arrived. They should be grateful to you for giving them that insight into their customers behaviour.
Most new venues that I try out are as a result of blog posts that I see on Facebook. Without the bloggers, I would just be sticking with the places I already know. I want to know both the good and bad about a place. Maybe I’m happy to wait longer for great food IF I’m not in a hurry that day and know ahead of time that their service is a bit slow. But I want to know that ahead of time, so I’m really grateful to you and the other food bloggers I follow for telling it warts and all.
Well written article!
It’s natural that chefs and restaurateurs blame food bloggers because most of their customers read reviews via blogs before spending their hard earned money on the food served by them. But what they (chefs and restaurateurs) do not know is that there are more than just food blogs. Word of mouth is a powerful tool to get the message across. But sadly, it’s an invisible activity that can’t be seen and hence, chefs and restaurateurs put the blame on food bloggers since they can read what’s written on the net about their appalling services.
That said, I particularly don’t really like / trust invited reviews especially those goody two shoes ones. Somehow, in my opinion, it feels rather fake as opposed to those reviews written by bloggers who went through an actual experience and paid with their own money on the food they ordered.
A well-written & timely blog post, thanks TFP.
Bloggers are simply customers who choose express their experiences publicly online. Others do it around their office coffee machine, around the dinner table with friends or at the local bar having a few drinks. Everyone has an opinion & are entitled to it. As you know, word of mouth is the best form of free promotion. This applies to virtually everything – music, clothing, cars, travel & so on. It just happens that food is a very easy topic of conversation, plus an excellent ice breaker when needed, & everyone has a few favourite places to eat. Most people have enough sense to make up their own mind whether to try a place or not regardless of a positive or negative food blog post.
Personally I feel that, by sharing my dining opinions via my own public blog food sponge, I should at least produce an honest, thoughtful & decently written composition explaining why I did or did not enjoy that particular experience. That includes being quick & discreet when taking photographs (absolutely no flash). Be respectful of the time & efforts of the owners/kitchen/wait staff, even though sometimes it seems like they aren’t respecting you, the diner, at all.
Some other interesting thoughts from Grab Your Fork as well:
http://grabyourfork.blogspot.com/2009/08/10-tips-on-how-to-market-your.html
i agree with you and lots of points made here. they should realise that a good service can create lots more business for them. there are many food places that we regularly go now because off reading them on here and a few other blogs. would never have known about them otherwise.
Fantastic post, and hear hear to the comments above.
I also think that the critical restauranteurs/owners fail to account for the fact that readers can differentiate between bloggers who aren’t balanced in their views and those who are. I wouldn’t waste my time reading some of the rants that pass as food blogs: it’s very clear who takes their food and reviewing seriously and fairly. Similarly, I don’t trust those newspaper reviewers who only have glowing reviews about the places they are sponsored to go to, and I doubt I’m the only one.
And for the record, your blog has referred me to the best food I’ve had in Perth. Restaurant owners should remember that particular upside.
Great post TFP :-)))))
As with anything else, the smart people do the research (taking into account all viewpoints) and then make an informed choice about where they want to eat. Blogging is great for that.
Hey, check out one of the free events scheduled for the Mundaring Truffle Festival this year, Saturday July 30th, 3pm:
“Food blogging and social media. A move forward in food communication or bogged down by amateurs?! A lively debate hosted by food journalist Max Veenhuyzen, blogger turned editor Anthony Georgeff of Spice magazine, and leading restaurateur David Coomer.”