There’s an Italian restaurant in Richmond, California that doesn’t take Yelp reviews very seriously. The restaurant has earned a lot of publicity by bragging that they will give discounts to customers who give it bad (one-star) reviews. This stance is apparently working out for the eatery, since it is now offering a 50% discount on a pizza for anyone who trashes them on Yelp.
Reading through the newsletter, the owners’ hatred of Yelp and the people who actually post reviews there seems to reach pathological levels. As long as aggressively defying Yelp’s rules and reviewers works out for them, and the food is edible, we suppose it doesn’t matter.
The restaurant’s actual Yelp page is a strange mix of bad reviews angling for discounted food, honest good reviews, and glowing five-star reviews posted out of spite. The restaurant claims that Yelp has removed thousands more reviews from pranksters in search of discounts.
Want a sample of what the newsletter says? While we admire the restaurant’s bold stance on what is clearly an important cause to them,
Yelpers can rely on word of mouth with real friends? Nope, I think we are pretty safe on that one – they don’t have that many real friends…all this time they were a little confused, they thought their followers on Yelp were their real friends. Oh well! Never too late to start making new ones.
Will they write more and more reviews? Probably.
Will they find a girlfriend? Unlikely.
They need some time to process the new situation? Yes!
In the meantime we are taking all the horrible reviews they are willing to write about us – at least we make them useful…each one star is another slap in the face for Yelp. What are they going to do now when they don’t like us, give us a 5 star rating or two? Or maybe a mean 3 stars? The point is, you are f*cked whatever you write!
2100 reviews removed for violation of yelp guidelines, (yes we are the violators and we don’t give a f*ck), other hundreds of reviews filtered, wrong business information, can you can you imagine?.
It’s a Monty Python parody profile of Botto – apparently Yelpers still believe in it!
Knock yourself out.Well, now at least they have a good reason for hating us.
They hate us especially because we are doing just fine, without their approval and permission.
We now have more and better customers.
Just further confirmation that unfortunately a vast number of Yelpers are a useless type of customer (self-titled customer).
Ours is an Idiot Free environment and we like to keep it that way.
Let’s all get a new life this year – we are going to come back to making pizza and you, dear Yelpers, find a job, a hobby, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a boy toy, get laid somehow, or get a pet and see if you have a little bit of integrity left.
We doubt it!
And Steve may hit 1000 reviews, triple wow!
Yelp and Yelpers can read now this article, learn something new and then shove it!
HERE IS HOW WE SCREWED THEM
On the other hand for our real hateful friends we offer 50% off for any one star review they write on Botto. They have a few friends already. Us!
This is the text from just the sidebar of the newsletter, though. There’s more, posted online by a writer for Ars Technica who happens to be on the mailing list.
Yelp-hating Italian restaurant ups its one-star review discount to 50% [Ars Technica]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist