How Restaurants Should Respond to Negative Reviews

We’ve all been there: your heart drops as you see someone’s left your business a one-star review on Google or TripAdvisor or something similar.

It hurts. It feels like a personal attack on us. It makes us feel worthless.

Before we go any farther, it’s important to try to separate the personal hurt we feel from the professional hurt. Let me make a really, really important declaration before you move on:

Responding while emotional is one of the worst things you can do.

In the heat of the moment, when the cut is still actively bleeding, that’s when we feel the most riled up to reply. This is a bad instinct. You must control it or risk tanking your business.

The second thing I want to draw attention to is that a negative review is not etched in stone.

This is an opportunity to right a wrong, and if our goal is to mend things, we need to keep our eyes fixed upon that target.

It might mean swallowing our pride. It might mean letting things go. It might mean injustice. But if we’re operating with the mindset of protecting our business in mind, it should make all of this a little easier to swallow.

Side note: I’ve already written a guide on How to Respond to Unhappy Customers before, but it’s primarily geared towards in-person and verbal complaints. This blog is specifically about tactics for dealing with online, public negative reviews. Still, that blog is worth checking out.

Alright. Here are my biggest tactics for how to reply to negative reviews online about your restaurant:

1. Try to getting in touch via phone or email

If you can get ahold of this customer on the phone or via email / messenger of some kind, there’s an opportunity for you to try to fix things privately. This is great because you can offer things above-and-beyond what you normally would in order to try to talk the person off the ledge a little bit.

You demonstrate that you take negative experiences very seriously when you immediately reach out to reconcile.

This also allows that customer to vent (which is sometimes 60% of getting to an amicable solution) and feel heard before you try to fix it. After they’ve unloaded, you can offer a discount next time, a replacement meal, or some other form of make-up that they wouldn’t have gotten automatically.

The goal of responding personally is that you can encourage (or barter) the person to remove their negative review because you’ve fixed the situation.

This isn’t always possible because some customers will be too angry to save. That’s ok. Move on.

In that case or any other where you can’t get ahold of the person who left you that review, move onto the next steps.

2. Consider saying nothing

Yep, this one is one of the hardest to do, but the next best option when you can’t get in touch with the person to fix it one-on-one.

Despite the fact that it feels like the ground is shaking and the sky is falling right now:

Most negative reviews settle to the bottom relatively quickly.

When you respond to a negative review, you actually draw more attention to it.

Only if you can practically guarantee a large portion of your audience is going to see it (and be so negatively impacted that they will opt not to buy from you) should you really take seriously responding.

Saying nothing feels like letting someone punch you in the face and walk away unscathed.

It goes against every human nature instinct, but your business might be better for it if you can let it go and move on.

3. Take inventory of what really happened

Of course, if there is validity to the negative review left about your establishment, it’s best to get to the bottom of what really happened before replying.

Talk to any staff who might know something. Ask an objective third party who might’ve witnessed it for their opinion if you were directly involved.

Whatever it takes, launch an investigation into what happened.

Now, I would say it’s dangerous territory to ever accuse a customer of lying. Most customers are not out to get you, despite how it might feel. So if you’re going to deny that something happened, you should have some fairly solid evidence as to how that could be so.

The bottom line is: a negative review should cause you to analyze the situation that led to that review. In the end, it might be doing you a favour.

4. Sleep on the response you’ve drafted

We’re going to assume that by now, you can’t get ahold of the person directly, you can’t bite your tongue, and you’re convinced that the accusations are questionable at best. You’ve drafted up your response and you’re getting ready to post it.

Stop. Wait. Save as Draft. Read it with fresh eyes.

Go the extra mile and get your business partner or spouse to also read the review.

What you’re not trying to do is get completely even. What you are trying to do is offer clarity, and apologize wherever it makes sense to do so.

Even if it’s just for the customer’s negative experience, and you can’t validate any of it, there’s alway something to apologize for. And it goes a long way in making you look like a reasonable, forgivable human being to find something to say sorry for.

5. Shorten it a little more, then post

Lastly, we’ve reached the point that it’s almost time to hit publish on your response.

The last thing I advise you do is shorten your response just a little bit.

Chances are you reiterated something (if your name is Aidan, this is especially true) that could be said once and left there.

Liars often make big excuses. Short responses with simple explanations tend to come across the most honest.

Very rarely does the poultry you’re butchering in the kitchen suddenly come alive, knock over a giant stock pot of soup, catch on fire, circle the kitchen setting everything else ablaze, and that’s why you got so distracted that you burned the buns you had in the oven.

People can see through a fake alibi. Keep your response succinct.

In conclusion:

Restaurants are run by human beings. People make mistakes. That’s ok.

Most reviews will at least have a mixture of truth and exaggeration. Make sure you know how you’re responding to each part.

A single negative review won’t sink the ship.

But: many negative reviews will. To prevent getting more than your fair share, learn how to respond in a way that is respectful and courteous, no matter the accusation.

The average person will forgive a lot of bad reviews if they see more positive ones. Ensure you’re doing your best to keep the positives rolling in, and you’ll be ok.