Total agreement. I went to eshticken pizza in hoffman estates and really liked it. They make a no carb pizza crust out of chicken that was really good.

The first review I read was a 1 star review complaining that they wouldn't deliver a pizza 2 miles out of the posted delivery range.

The same skit came to mind when I read that, too.

a pizza crust made out of chicken?? WTF?

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

When you go out on Saturday, try the new Fish McBites. I recommend a seat away from the playlot as it can get loud on the weekends and totally destroy the romance

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

The other First World Problem Of Doom that I love to read in Yelp reviews is "the food was great, but once they found out I had a Groupon [or some other deep discount from the internet], it was like we weren't even there!"

Well, imagine that!

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Yeah, but that's a valid criticism -- Groupon customers should not be treated differently, at least according to the original concept...though it seems that many places now just offer Groupons as regular sale promotions rather than as a loss leader to introduce new customers that will return and pay full price.

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The Groupon model fucks restaurants hard, though. I can understand their bitterness. You're a Lebanese guy running some hole in the wall practically by yourself, and for the tenth time some bohemian-bourgeois from Roscoe Village comes in brandishing a half-off coupon you barely remember signing off on, and she wants a ton of food, and oh, you just know she's gonna Yelp about every little detail.

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I actually think Yelp can be useful if you know what to look for. Assuming there are a large number of reviews then you can get a pretty good feel for a place. It's easy to ignore the reviews which have no bearing (such as the examples sited previously) & a couple of negative comments offset by numerous positive feedback won't deter me from a visit. However if you see the same complaint over and over then there is likely some validity to it - which a heady owner or manager can use to improve their business. This is particularly true when you see a pattern within a recent time-frame. If the 5 most recent reviews all have the same complaint then it should be taken to heart.

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“How do you get to be president and you’re stupid?” Donald J Trump - 4/10/25
When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace turns into a circus. - Turkish Proverb

Groupon and Restaurant.com can help by bringing in new customers who would never have given the establishment a chance otherwise. If their experience is good then the restaurant benefits from the deal. It's just another method of advertising.

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“How do you get to be president and you’re stupid?” Donald J Trump - 4/10/25
When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace turns into a circus. - Turkish Proverb

I see McBrides is now offering some deals via Groupon. I'd be interested in his feedback on the subject.

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“How do you get to be president and you’re stupid?” Donald J Trump - 4/10/25
When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace turns into a circus. - Turkish Proverb

That's not entirely true... if you are running a restaurant, you have a fixed amount of service/food you can provide in a night which is constrained by the number of tables that you have. Say you can do 100 meals a night and you are only booking 40 a night ... you decide to run a groupon for 50% off. Let's even assume you have an excellent profit margin of 10%, so for every $30 meal, you are making $3 a person. The groupon rate will cost you $12 a person, but you decide it is a good deal and maybe they'll come back as regular customers. You do the groupon and sell 3000 of them. Now you're fully booked every night which is great, but you need to double your staffing costs to deal with all of the traffic. 80% of your customers are grouponners, so you're turning away 20 reservations a night that would have been profitable. Each night instead of making a $120 profit, you're losing $900 and get to look forward to doing this for another 30 days in a row. In order to make this profitable, you need to convert people into regular paying customers, but you've got a deficit of $27,000 to make up (not to mention the temporary additional staffing costs) and at $3 profit, that means you need 9,000 visits from these folks, and hope that your regular customers haven't been put off by not being able to get a table due to all the groupponers.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

And the grouponners don't come back.

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Yelp theoretically has a super-secret algorhythm that detects and tosses inauthentic high and low reviews from business owners or competitors and their friends. Like Zippy and others have said I usually ignore the one and four star reviews and look at the two and three stars to get a feel for the place. Yelp has become too much like the Deadspin comments section lately though. Too many frustrated bloggers using whatever the topic is to showcase their genius.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

If you are operating a restaurant and know what you are doing, then your food cost should be around 30%. You can price a groupon at a break even level. Good servers can help improve the profit margin by upselling customers to pre-determined specials that make the house more cash. If the customer comes in and buys one drink of any type, then you are making an increased profit.

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All this talk of profit...

Probably wasn't us. We don't order out pizza. The wifey makes it homemade.

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Rick, I wonder how a larger restaurant hasn't sued Yelp or one of the other review sites. As a business owner, you have no way to stop people from posting inflammatory comments in your reviews. Yelp at least gives you the ability to respond to criticism, but isn't the damage already done?

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It seems like user generated content keeps you off the hook. That's lucky for bigfan or the resident Meatpants groupie would be suing him for my comments.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

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I would have thought Hochberg would view that as a positive review.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

MEET WHATEVER-THE-FUCK-HIS-NAME-IS, CREDIT SCORE SOMETHING-OR-OTHER.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

I'm glad Hockberg is really like that and not just an act for the ads.

He's the Ed Debevics of refinance!

No way.

I'd just sue you.

How many know-it-all, argumentative New Yorkers can there be?

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