How do I feel about Yelp? Hmmm. If I’m really honest, I would say we have an intense love/hate relationship.
Kasa Castro and
Kasa Marina are blessed to have excellent Yelp ratings — “people love us on yelp”
— and many new customers find their way to our doors via Yelp. For this, I am grateful and LOVE Yelp.
I also LOVE Yelp when we get reviews where people get our concept, appreciate our passion and recognize the food’s authenticity and quality.
And even though one of the hardest things on this planet is to receive negative feedback, we carefully study feedback as it allows us to learn what we are doing well and ways we can improve. We also get to see how my staff is doing in delighting customers.
For all this, I also LOVE Yelp.
However (and you knew there’d be a however)….there are times when I want to tear my hair out, throw my laptop out the window and scream to no one in particular: “Come and say that to my face!” Or “Go get a life!” Or “What in the world are you talking about?” and “Clearly you are a vicious competitor posing as a Yelper!” (Whew, that felt good.)
Those outbursts are aimed at the small minority of Yelpers who have no idea about the topic that they have a strong negative opinion on.
My favourite examples are:
“The naan didn’t taste like naan.” –> That’s because we don’t serve naan. We serve roti.
“Why are they serving Mexican black beans?” –> We don’t serve black beans. We serve black lentils (daal). There are dozens of different types of lentils.
“Why are there white people serving us Indian food?” —> We live in the United States of America!
And my favourite most hated comment: “It’s Americanized Indian food.” –> It’s homestyle Indian food, different to what people may have tried before.
There isn’t much to do during these moments. My first reaction is to fume and feel hurt and disappointed that people don’t realize their flippant remarks affect the hard work and love that we put into our business. Eventually I get over it, read the review again to see if there is useful feedback and remember why I love Yelp.
But I do secretly wish that I could concoct my own 1 to 5 star rating of these handful of ignorant yelpers based on the following criterion:
1 – How cute were they?
2 – How funny were they?
3 – How cheap (with their tip)?
4 – How clean (did they buss their table)?
5 – How polite?
But who has time for that? I just get back to trying to delight each and every customer… and the love/hate relationship with Yelp continues…
