In the bygone era of the traditional restaurant reviewership the methods were established and predictable. A restaurant critic, usually anonymous, would enter the establishment and attempt to absorb the most representative experience the restaurant had to offer. Based upon this single moment, or a series of coordinated dinners, a restaurant is critiqued, gauged against industry peers and rated according to a predetermined system for measurement. For better or worse this review was irreproachable, and the dining public largely subscribed to the assessment as a basis for whether or not they would patronize the dining establishment. Restaurants flourished as well as faltered within this system, as a positive review could effectively sustain revenue and the longevity of the business, while negative reviews often promulgated the notion of a toxic environment that almost inevitably led to the closure of a kitchen's doors. While many of the major print publications still maintain the position of a restaurant critic if not an entire section dedicated to dining itself, these arbiters of taste have found their authority assaulted by the myriad of voices who have lent their own criticisms to the multitude of internet forums aimed directly at the service industry. While the solitary blogger functions to imitate print criticism, it is the proliferation of Yelp and its ascendancy as a creditable source of information that has reformulated the structure by which restaurants are reviewed. Crowdsourced reviewiership and its cacophony of voices has effectively diminished the importance of the published criticism, while establishing a democratic tone for our collective endeavor to find the best brunch.
Established print criticism is still a powerful and effective means by which restaurants are judged within the industry, but the affect of this populist voice is impossible to overlook as it is being concentrated more effectively through the evolution of these forums. In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman succinctly presented the companies platform as, “word of mouth amplifiedi,” and the industry has only seen this amplification grow consistently stronger since its conception. While Yelp was once largely viewed as fraught with inaccuracies, the company has worked well to expunge false reviews and build its credibility with the dining public. The system still has its flaws as evidenced by Michael Luca's oft cited statistical analysis of Yelp's accuracy Optimal Aggregation of Consumer Ratings: An Application to Yelp.comii, in which Luca et al maintain that the simple aggregation of consumer reviews will not accurately reflect the present quality of a dining establishment. However, the fact that the dining public find Yelp to be a credible source of information plays a significant role in informing their choice of a restaurant to patronize, thus it is pivotal in its effect over a diner's patronage and the esteem by which the community holds a restaurant. This influence essentially nullifies the legitimate argument that a restaurant's star rating may not be an accurate reflection of its actual quality, but the industry must pay attention to the criticisms, regardless of how ill-informed or erratic we believe them to be.
Advice is often hard to receive, and when engaged in a service industry that aims to make the customer happy above all else the cook/server/chef does not want to know that they have failed to achieve this fundamental goal. Yelp is at times unpalatable because through all of the hyperbole and seemingly unconscionable demands, the employee knows that they have failed at their responsibility to provide a great dining experience and a cherished food memory to a diner who, regardless of how difficult they might have been, was patronizing the restaurant and seeking a good experience. This failing is perhaps why it is so hard to confront this kind of review, while simultaneously the reason for which it is so often dismissed as amateur and misinformed. But we do not cook for the professional critic who may be an industry veteran, we cook for the regulars that keep the doors open, the couple who is looking to find a new place in an unfamiliar neighborhood, the mother or father who is a stay-at-home parent and looks at restaurants for temporary respite from the constant stress of raising a child. Discussing the makeup of Yelp contributors in the same interview with Rose, Stoppleman states, "If you look at the demographics, they're off the charts, very attractive. They're 22-50...highly educated, high income, and age-wise average in the mid-30s. It's not just young folks mouthing off about McDonald's. It's consumers in major urban metros talking about businessesiii." This is the crowd that is being sourced from and the dining public that pays attention to a restaurant's star rating, regardless of its legitimacy. The service worker must extract meaning from this form of criticism, as it will only help to improve one's own awareness of the strengths and weaknesses that exist in one's cooking, serving, management, or the restaurant as a whole.
Following Pete Wells' now infamous review of Daniel Boulud's eponymous restaurant in which his primary criticism rested not entirely on the food or even the service that his party received but the level of service granted to his anonymous diner, this notion of treating every diner as equal is tantamount to the quality of the restaurant itself. We cannot cater simply to the VIP client, but must treat every diner with an equal amount of respect just as we must treat every criticism with equal weight regardless of its source. To dismiss criticism as illegitimate is to dismiss the values of the client for whom the restaurant seeks to please and profit from, a policy that only functions to expedite the demise of a dining establishment. Instead, the model needs to evolve further to allow for dialogue between the consumer and the producer, the reviewer and the business. Restaurants can effectively gauge demand within the market through crowdsourcing just as the diner assesses his or her options as well his or her experiences, creating a symbiotic effect that does not alienate the producer from the conversation. If reviewership is to move towards a democratic forum rather than a small collection of individuals, restaurants must engage in the dialogue and seek criticisms when offered or suffer for their ignorance. Line Cook (always seeking criticism) For Life
Ian Auger
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