CONFESSIONS OF A DELI OWNER ANONYMOUS TALES FROM BEHIND THE COUNTER ARE THERE ENOUGH RUDE NAMES for Tripadvisor? S**tadvisor seems to be the favourite in chef circles. We started to monitor it about four years ago, probably very late to the party compared to most. As I write this I am sifting through our “Terrible” reviews. We have six. I’d like to say they are misunderstandings or isolated incidents, but most are true and they could happen again. My gut knots just reading things like: “Didn’t see any waiting staff, no greeting, sat there like spare parts for 20 minutes.” We all screw up, either by bad luck or bad judgement. For us, we are weakest when times are slow. On a quiet Tuesday in February everything takes longer – the ovens aren’t hot, the chef’s doing a stock take, only one person is waiting tables – but it hurts to read it in black and white. Then, there are the lies. Our bacon baguette is £5.50. Pricey you might say but it has three large, astonishingly good rashers of bacon and is comfortably top of our earners every week. One reviewer said: “Seven pounds for two pieces of bacon and two slices of bread does
I don’t know if it was a deliberate lie or the bloke forgot he had a coffee as well. Either way, he cost us £1,000s. not strike me as great value”. Factually incorrect and flying in the face of the longest standing customer repeat order. Unfortunately, this was the quote put up next to us in searches for months. I don’t know if it was a deliberate lie or the bloke from Oxford forgot he had a coffee as well. Either way, he cost us £1,000s. Locals don’t use Tripadvisor. They already know their local area – Tripadvisor is for
MODEL RETAILING THURSDAY, 9:30 AM Here we go. Same time, same day, same tiny piece of Wensleydale
visitors. There are 40 restaurants or cafés in our vicinity. We started at #33. The dark and mostly closed tea room across the way that only caters for elderly residents was #11, with only eight reviews across four years. The French restaurant full of china cat figurines is at number #1, with 274 reviews. We aimed to get in the top 10. So, we put our thousands of customers to work, encouraging them with notes on the tables to remind them how special we are and calls to action in our e-newsletters. We couldn’t pay them, but we’ve got enough credit. Their loyalty and love for us is an asset and we needed to make a withdrawal. Let’s be clear what Tripadvisor is really about, though. Reviewers do not care about a perfectly matured Wigmore or your Somerset Cider Brandy Butter on homemade mince pies. It’s about service. A crap chippy that gets its ocean-stripping fish-flavoured batter out in under 2 minutes will leave you for dust. So, if you want to win on Tripadvisor – and we do – greet every customer as they come through the door and smile. And be quick about it.
SOLVING EVERYDAY SHOPKEEPING DILEMMAS. IN MINIATURE.
Mrs Jones, can I tempt you with this new Stilton we’ve got in?
No thank you, dear. I’ll just have 100g of the usual
What is the point? What a nice young man!
FFD says: When it comes to spending and product preferences, your older customers are likely to be predictable and resistant to any kind of upsell or change. It might be boring, or irritating, but customers like these are the closest thing you get to a guaranteed sale and create the base for those big-pocketed weekenders. With kind permission of Geobra Brandstätter Stiftung & Co. KG, Germany. PLAYMOBIL is a registered trademark of Geobra Brandstätter Stiftung & Co. KG, for which also the displayed PLAYMOBIL toy figures are protected.
Vol.20 Issue 6 | July 2019
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