Yelp is the worst

Here are some bad Yelp experiences that Gerard Leary, owner of Sweet Avenue, has had:

• Really bad Yelp reviews mistakenly left for his business—everything about the reviews made it obvious this wasn't his business. But there they sat, pulling his rating down.
• When informed there'd be a wait to be seated, possible guests have threatened to leave him a bad Yelp review if they weren't allowed to jump the line.
• And, of course, Yelp has relentlessly tried to get him to claim and manage his business listings (i.e. pay them).

If you've spent any time in the industry you've experienced Yelp-related stuff as bad or worse than this. So what should you do?

Gerard has arrived at a Zen-like solution: ignore it. All of it. Spend your time, money, and—most importantly—emotional energy on other aspects of your business.

Check out the interview clips for more about how and why Gerard decided to totally ignore Yelp:

(And if you've got a Yelp horror story that you'd like to share, please reply to this email with the story!)

❓ Why should I do it?

Imagine this world: your customers order their beers as soon as the server/bartender arrives. No samples, no back-and-forth. Customers just order.

That’s the world you can have if your Print Menus include full beer info. It equips customers with all the info they need to make a decision, leading to much faster order times.

Time savings is always helpful in general, but speeding up order times helps in some key ways:

• Incrementally increase sales (more customers have more time for a 2nd round)
• Turn over tables more quickly
• Make life easier for staff

❓ How can I do it?

You could do this manually. Google the beers you serve, copy what you need, and drop it into your menu document.

• Data on the top 50 producing craft breweries was released. Here's a summary of the report. Yuengling wins!
• Beer "whales" are going extinct. This one's for the beer snobs and related services out there. Punch ran an interesting story about how the culture of chasing down limited or hard to find beers has dwindled.
• It pays off to accommodating increased employee expectations. Nation's Restaurant News interviewed a few restaurant executives who reported a clear return on investment on investing in people. The folks interviewed aren't exactly readers of this newsletter (they're corporate), but if they're saying this, they've done some research about it and found it to be true.