It hardly seems necessary to write a blog about how to avoid Yelp: Step 1: Uninstall the App from your phone, Step 2: stop visiting or clicking on links from yelp.com. Done!
That two-step solution is unlikely to work for the 176 million unique monthly visitors to Yelp. It also is not the intended response from our critique about Why Yelp Restaurant Reviews Should Be Your Last Resort. Truthfully, Yelp can be a valuable source of information and we will dedicate the final part of these three blog posts to discussing how Yelp could be improved. However, Yelp cannot be the only source of information when deciding on where to eat, especially when there are so many other sources of better information.
Taking the lens of personal networks, Yelp exists on the fringe of social closeness or trustworthiness.
If you are a very discerning reader, maybe you read Yelp reviews from people from your community or you start using the brand new features that allow you to align the Yelp App to your lifestyle, diet, interests or other preferences, but even this will only bring you one step closer to aligning to your affinity groups rather than the general population.
Taking the advice of the general population is not always a bad thing. When the service provided is of an objective nature, the general population may indicate a valuable preference. However, in matters of taste, you should put added weight to the opinions and recommendations of people you know and who know what you like. Ideally, when making a decision about where to eat, you work from the inside out. This is the true way to avoid Yelp.
Your Inner Circle
If you are dining alone and you know the world of options, there is no need to consult Yelp or any other source of information to decide where to eat, unless you are particularly indecisive. When you don’t have good information on the world of possibilities, the course of action should be to consult with those that you trust personally on food options and work outwards until you have sufficient information (including consulting online sources, as we will discuss later).
The situation is trickier when you have multiple people involved and are looking to converge on a choice. The biggest mistake in these situations is failing to consult with the other diners before making a decision. The preferable course of action is to gauge every diners’ opinions and then make a consensus choice. With two or even three people, it’s fairly easy to go back and forth in messages or conversations and reach an agreement. As parties grow beyond three, the ability to converge gets increasingly difficult.
This is the exact situation that Sujjest solves. In Sujjest, each participant is able to brainstorm and provide their own recommendations. Voting further allows participants to indicate which dining options they prefer and there is no limit on the number of options that can be voted on. A decision is made only after the group shares their preferences and a consensus is reached. Sujjest cuts out all the back-and-forth messaging that makes large group decisions unwieldy. Even if you choose not to use a dedicated decision tool, it is common courtesy to ask the other participants where they would like to eat.
Getting Input
Sujjest is perfect for group decision situations, but there are other cases when you want input from people who are not part of the decision. In these cases, asking for input from your existing networks is valuable. Once again, you would want the information coming from the people closest to you who know your preferences and can speak to the situation.
Close friends and family may be only a phone call, text or Snapchat away. Gathering from larger pools of close friends and acquaintances can be relatively easy through social media including Twitter and Facebook. Within Facebook, making an appeal for recommendations is asking for personal reviews. The recommendations that your friends and connections leave continue to live on that business’s page and influence your network on future decisions. This creates a rich ecosystem of information, but can leave out some of the nuance of a personal recommendation directed toward one person’s tastes.
There are also times when the input from your own network is insufficient or slow — for example your network may not know the neighborhood you are in or haven’t kept up with the latest restaurant openings. In these cases, you need to branch out farther in your networks and look at your communities, trusted source and affinity groups.
Your community may refer to your physical proximity, in which case Nextdoor has become the easiest social platform to know what is well-liked in your neighborhood. It may not be well curated to your tastes, but it is a good indication of popularity and wide appeal. Local food writers and bloggers can also represent your local community. Professional food writers try to be as objective as possible, by experiencing the restaurant and even dishes multiple times to get a sense of quality. Sites and publications like Eater.com or Seattle Magazine that create listicles of the best places for a particular food type or neighborhood can also be inspiring resources.
Alternatively, your community may be less location-based and more associated with affinity groups and congregating with like-minded patrons. The restaurants themselves may support causes such as environmentalism, LGBTQ rights, combating homelessness or other positive efforts. Choosing to patronize a business that supports your shared beliefs can be a great way to further a cause and build community. (There is an app available in New Zealand and the UK that allows users to find businesses that are doing good called CoGo: https://nz.cogo.co/how-it-works.)
Searching the Universe
There are also situations where there is no guiding information from your inner circles and you have to trust general information. Common situations might be looking for a restaurant while on a road trip or trying to find the closest restaurant with half-decent food. These are situations that can call for Yelp, but there are other general information tools that have done the job better.
Google is starting to look like the Yelp replacement, as it brings the power of its search engine, the quality of its maps and the ease of leaving review. Google’s location services generally track where you go and prompt you to leave reviews of places you have been, whether they are businesses or not. This easy integration has made it simple to leave a star-rating or a review. Most reviewers leave 5-star ratings and nothing more, but these ratings are probably as reliable as Yelp’s.
Other rating sites offer slightly better quality of reviews than Google, where anyone could leave a review. Opentable reviews are available only after you have dined at the restaurant where you’ve completed a reservation (plus the reservation system is very robust). TripAdvisor specializes in reviews from tourists and travelers. There are plenty of reasons why the reviews on TripAdvisor are bad, but it does allow ratings on multiple characteristics which could be helpful when looking for a romantic outing versus a family dinner.
With all these sites, users must exercise caution and read through the reviews to gain an understanding. Sampling multiple sites and other reviews should be enough to point you in a generally safe direction, although it will almost always be less enjoyable than a recommendation from a personal connection.
Eating as a Shared Experience
Dining out should be a joyful experience. Even casual restaurants and hole-in-the-wall spots can be great when the experience is shared. Short of being able to dine out with your friends, you can follow up on their recommendations and share the joy (or let down) of the experience and bond over it. Sujjest is one way to start the conversation, but simply reaching out by text or email with a question about where to eat can rekindle a connection with a friend. By following the recommendations of a search engine or ratings aggregator, we deny ourselves the connection made by eating food together and sharing knowledge with those closest to us.
When have you followed the restaurant recommendations of friends to great success (or failure)? What experiences would you have never had if you didn’t follow a personal recommendation?
This is part 2 of 3 on why Yelp sucks … the oxygen out of the conversation about where to eat. Check out part 1.
