How to Deal with Bad Restaurant Reviews

After all, you pour your heart and soul into making your establishment a success, so even vaguely negative feedback can be difficult to brush off. But don’t start taking bad restaurant reviews to heart. Keep these tips in mind the next time you’re trawling TripAdvisor, and you’ll stay focused on your customers, not your critics.

Remember that Taste is Subjective

Before you get angry or upset, take a breath and remind yourself of this: one customer’s gourmet is another customer’s garbage, so it’s impossible to please everyone who walks through your doors.

Customers who leave online restaurant reviews also tend to be more outspoken and opinionated than your average citizen, so they don’t necessarily represent your clientele on a whole. For every person who didn’t like your restaurant and took to the internet to tell everyone about it, it’s likely that there are dozens more people who loved it, but have kept their opinions offline.

Respond Promptly, But Not Right Away

Customers love to see that their reviews have been acknowledged, so whether they’re good or bad, you should always try to respond publicly to comments as quickly as possible. If a review has irritated you, step away from the keyboard for a few hours while you compose a calm, objective response.

When it’s time to reply, thank your customer for their business and for taking the time to write a review, then offer a sincere apology, and acknowledge the individual points that they’ve made. Whether or not you then offer the reviewer an appropriate form of compensation is your call, but never ask them to remove their post (or even try to sue them) as it’s against the rules of almost every review site – and won’t reflect well upon you either.

Pay Attention to the Constructive Criticism

While you should usually let the bad reviews roll off you, like water off a duck’s back, there may be some nuggets of helpful information hidden in there somewhere. No restaurant is perfect so instead of getting defensive, focus on the constructive criticism and how you can implement it to make your business even better.

In addition some customers may have tried to address a problem while they were in your restaurant, but weren’t able to for some reason, so taking to a blog or review site may be the only way they can get their point across. If they’re making a genuine complaint, you should take this more seriously.

Encourage Positive Reviews

Since you can’t (and shouldn’t) have negative reviews removed, try to get them hidden among all the positive reviews instead! Ask your customers to leave a great review if they’ve enjoyed dining with you, and over time you should see the lovely feedback begin to stack up.

Don’t be tempted to leave reviews yourself under a pseudonym, as if you’re caught out, no amount of genuine good feedback can save you. And remember, if all else fails, you can always just broadcast your bad reviews over the speakers in your restaurant bathrooms!