Why are pubs empty while chain brands and independent restaurants are full?

Perhaps we should rephrase that as 'Do pubs care?' Look at the two photographs below - taken less than five minutes - and 200 yards - apart, one of a pub and one of a branded restaurant in exactly the same price bracket. One nearly full and and one echoing like a barn.

  A great pub with a good kitchen                                                           a chain restaurant

Let's look at their online presences. Do we see any marked difference between the branded chains and pubs?

No - if anything a significant number of the diners at the branded restaurant would have preferred another option - if only they had been given the confidence to choose it. 

So, we could draw one of two conclusions from this - either that reviews don't matter or that pubs need to work a lot harder than restaurants if they are to put bums on seats at lunchtime. Needless to say, we favour the latter - at least as part of a modern marketing strategy, especially in areas of high flows of tourists and or non-residential diners.

Action needed
 
A proactive review management strategy that only involves:

• harvesting email addresses from diners
• inviting reviews to the pub's own website and external sites that have influence - Google, Facebook and TripAdvisor

And what a great asset that list will be during quiet times when your marketing can tempt them back with an offer.
 

Restaurants (and Pubs) - don't get filtered!

Google's filter is now operational on all mobile platforms. If you don't need any web-driven business you may as well stop reading this now, but if you have spare capacity (as so many London pubs in this article did back in 2014) please read on.

It really is very simple indeed. If your establishment has:

• less than five reviews, or
• scores less than 4.0 out of 5 

Those looking for a great restaurant or pub (or hotel, for that matter) will be offered the opportunity to filter you out of search.

Here's an example: 

Let's use a common search: 'Chinese' in 'Chelsea' (note: no need to use the word 'restaurant' in search any more). Here are the results:

  

At the top, just under the map, you will see 'Any rating' in small print and 'FILTER' in block capitals. Click on either of those and this pops up:

Which would you choose? We're betting the answer is '4.0 of course': So let's look at the search results now:

  

The two remaining restaurants, Bo Lang and Hunan, should not rest on their laurels: a single one star review to add to the seven reviews it's already received will drive Bo Lang out of filtered search as well (and a similar small handful will do the same for Hunan).

No less than eight of the ten Chinese restaurants in Chelsea have been filtered (either for scoring at less than 4.0 out of 5 or because they have fewer than five reviews).

Useful for the consumer? Well, we asked a random selection and out of twenty-five people questioned they all thought so. Useful for businesses? Absolutely: providing they score 4.0 or better!

And pubs?

Here's the same search:

Before filtering:

And after:

Of the original three, only the Pig's Ear survives - and then only by the skin of it's teeth - one more one star review from a disgruntled customer and they're out as well. Of the 21 pubs listed that do score 4.0 or higher (out of 65), nineteen score 4.2 or less, dangerously close to the filter's cut-off point);

Never has there been a stronger case for businesses of all kinds to employ professional review management, and to do so before use of the filter becomes an everyday activity amongst your customers, but more importantly those businesses that stand to gain most from mobile search: any business connected to hospitality and tourism.

Asking for reviews can hurt your business

But isn't that just what HelpHound is always saying we should do, we hear you ask?

No - not exactly. Over time a strange pattern has emerged when we look at certain types of business (commonly restaurants and pubs). That pattern is as follows: businesses that actively invite reviews - usually by handing the customer a card - get proportionately more bad reviews than their competitors who don't. Inviting reviews is harming their business.

Why? It's plain human nature again: your guests are more likely to hang on to that card asking them to write a review if they had a poor experience. It's as simple as that.

A tale of two gastro-pubs

We know both of these (they're just around the corner), and they are both great pubs. Which one do you think is packed at lunchtime?

The solution

As ever: is Dialogue. Don't hand out cards for the diner to take home - ask the diner(s) for their email addresses at the table*. Then invite them to write their review direct to you. Dialogue enables you to manage any negatives in private and then get those great reviews to sites that matter. Job done.

*Some are initially reluctant to do this; it's simply a case of how you ask.  The best solution is to say 'We'd like to keep in touch with news and special offers' and then leave it to the guests to complete the card. The advantages of this strategy (besides review harvest) are too great to ignore: getting all guests' contact details (not just the host/booker) for future marketing being the main one.