Out of 79 million people who patronize restaurants, 46% claim that they are more likely to choose restaurants with positive online reviews1. That’s almost half of all restaurant-goers. Meanwhile, even a half-star increase on Yelp makes the business 30% to 49% more likely to fill up during busy times2. Clearly, reviews are top contributors as to whether your business prospers or fails, making them arguably more important than traditional marketing.

Restaurant reputation management should be a key focus in running your restaurant, as it helps your business thrive. We discuss the importance of reputation management for restaurants and offer tips below.

Reviews can impact whether or not your diners walk through your door.

Responding to reviews, both positive and negative, pays off.

You can monitor your restaurant reputation yourself or outsource the task.

Maintain a positive online presence and take notes on where you can improve your customer experience.

Restaurant reputation management is the process of reviewing and managing your business reviews on social media, review platforms, forums, and even local newspapers and radio stations. It is a simple task that will make or break your business.

A strong reputation drives business. Ratings are the #1 way people decide on a restaurant, and this does not appear to be changing anytime soon. 34% of diners choose where to eat based only on restaurant reviews. Meanwhile, 40% of 18- to 24-year-olds say they check Instagram at least occasionally before trying a new restaurant.

For example, the last time I was in Florence, Italy, it was impossible not to notice a line that snaked down an alleyway and out to one of the most famous piazzas. The line was there every day from open until close.

A Google search on All’Antico Vinaio brought up 40,000 Google reviews and a 4.5-star rating. The tourists in line were from multiple countries all over the world, yet everyone had read the same reviews—the square was bursting with panini eaters. On closer inspection (and many paninis later), I assessed that the empty shop directly across the alley with no line at all offered far superior vegetarian paninis than the one with 40,000 reviews.

Online reviews get lots of views. The potential reach of any one review can’t be overstated, so you should strive for the overall dining experience of your restaurant to be a positive one. This boosts your visibility and broadens your customer base.

Recently, I wrote a review on a local restaurant—the first time I’ve posted to Google reviews. I found out from this experience that Google keeps you updated by email about how much engagement you’re getting, if you are getting responses to your review, and how many people have seen it after certain milestones. I was shocked to see that after only one month, my review had been read over 2,000 times!

Managing your restaurant reputation is easy; follow these simple tips to create new daily habits.

Respond to reviews quickly and with a personal touch. Customers like to hear back from the restaurant, especially if it’s a negative review. According to a survey by BrightLocal, the majority of customers (93%) expect businesses to respond to their reviews; further, 34% expect the response within two to three days of posting.

Reply personally or through a dedicated team member to reviews under four stars. Anything under four stars will hurt your brand and your overall star rating. 33% of people will not eat at a restaurant if it has fewer than four stars on review rating sites. Restaurants with the most four- and five-star reviews jump to the top of the list over the competition.

Your company can have hundreds of five-star reviews, but unfortunately, human nature causes most of us to pay attention to the lower ratings instead. Make sure to give the low ratings personal and professional attention—invite the customer back and apologize for their poor experience.

Make a template for responses. This will streamline your process saving you time in the long run. Each response should have:

A greeting to the reviewer

An acknowledgment of the experience, good or bad

A call to action, usually to return for another meal

A sign-off or signature

For more inspiration and suggested scripts, read our guide to handling customer complaints.

While it’s easy to stick to the obvious restaurant feedback choices (Yelp, OpenTable, and TripAdvisor), don’t overlook Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. Comments and photos from friends and associates have a huge impact on where people decide to eat.

Facebook restaurant guests are more likely to leave higher ratings than any other site, and almost three out of four customers say they have made their dining out decision based on reviews or images off of Facebook. Compared with all other industries, X users engage with restaurants the most.

TikTok is another hard hitter—with over one billion users, it’s a marketing gold mine with little or no upfront cost. Over 30% of TikTok users say they have traveled longer than they typically would and 28% say they’ve spent more money to get to a restaurant they found on TikTok. Of the total users, 38% say they have patronized a restaurant after seeing it on the app. Of the restaurant owners who used it, 78% saw a return on investment within six months.

The beauty of TikTok is that you don’t have to pay for ads. It’s a boon for small businesses. More than 75% of businesses post content organically. Out of all the businesses using their services, 72% claim TikTok’s service is overwhelmingly valuable.

Leaving reviews yourself, paying for them, or having family members leave them on your business may permanently and negatively impact your Yelp listing. This includes offering rewards, freebies, or discounts in return for reviews. Yelp will likely find out when customers put this information in their reviews, which will lower your search ranking or put a consumer alert on your page.

But, when a guest is particularly happy with their experience, it won’t hurt to ask them to jump online and leave a review. Some guests appreciate small and medium businesses and like to help out; 10% of customers say they always write a review, so you can try to nudge the satisfied ones in this direction.

Take a look at your total online presence—try to see it with fresh eyes, or get an employee or consultant to give you feedback. Make sure your Google information is up to date with current hours, website, menu, and phone number. Check out your website and see if your articles are fresh, readable, and up to date. Review your business listings on OpenTable, Yelp, etc., and update them with your latest media pictures and menu.

Running a restaurant is no small task; you already have your hands full with employees, payroll, managing the front and back of the house, and helping out customers. Restaurant reputation management will likely be the task that falls by the wayside during your busy day. Delegating this task to a PR firm or a reputation management company will save you a daily headache and countless hours in the office. A small investment out of your marketing budget will give you a better return on investment than any other marketing type.

Another option to streamline your reviews is to hire a service to consolidate all of your reviews from every website and automate the process of responding for you with AI. This service can save you hours a day responding to each individual site and will ensure that you don’t forget about any outliers. Just make sure the responses are individually tailored and don’t sound generic.

Some platforms you can check out are:

If you decide to manage your restaurant’s reputation yourself, create a master list with each site to check and all of your passwords in one place. Facebook, X, Instagram, Yelp, OpenTable, TikTok, DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, Tripadvisor, and Google Reviews are just some platforms that need to be monitored. Don’t allow any of them to fall between the cracks. It’s impossible to say exactly how much influence each individual site holds, but we know from the numbers that even a half-star drop can significantly impact your business negatively or positively.

Reviews can not only tell customers where to eat, but they also highlight what a company is doing right or wrong. If reviews consistently mention slow service time, figure out if the hang-up is happening in the front or the back of the house. Monitor your ticket times, streamline your cooking processes, or staff a food runner to ensure hot food is being delivered quickly. If the service staff are getting in the weeds, have the bussers deliver the first round of drinks, help with pre-bussing, or cut down table sections.

Conversely, if your reviews are always talking about the friendly service and great experience they’ve had, use this information to raise morale by praising your staff at the next shift meeting.

An employee from Frankensons in Las Vegas reached out to Keith Lee, a TikTok restaurant influencer with over 8 million followers, inviting him to the restaurant because it was struggling to pay rent. Lee went to the restaurant and gave an honest review of their food, rating each menu item at least eight out of 10. The restaurant saw an uptick in sales as soon as a few hours later.

A massive influx of customers came, with some driving all the way from California and Utah. Frankensons now has over 400,000 followers on TikTok and is no longer in danger of closing down.

Restaurant reputation management can seem like a complicated task. These are the most common questions I hear from independent restaurants attempting to manage their online reputations.

Restaurant reputation management is a phenomenal tool that can lift your business to heights you might have never dreamt of. It’s an exciting time we live in—you don’t have to break the bank paying marketers or filming commercials that are costly for most small businesses. All you need are some teenagers to post a video on TikTok raving about your brownies, or a happy couple after their anniversary meal to write a review about how great your steak was. Just stay on top of it and keep it positive—and your business can soar.

PYMNTS ↩︎

Learning from the Crowd | Anderson and Magruder ↩︎