Earlier today, we told you about the apparent dispute between a Cleveland consumer and the chef/owner of a local restaurant who allegedly reacted to the customer’s negative Yelp review with a series of nasty, threatening messages on Facebook. Now that diner has reached out to Consumerist to share more of his side of the story. [More]
dining out
4 Of 5 Restaurant Twitter Complaints Made Mid-Meal
By 9.22.14
If you’re looking at someone’s Twitter feed and seeing Tweets like “The soup at Joe’s Soup Shack and Hat Store is the worst!” or “I didn’t order a dead fly with my turkey pot pie! #worstdayever” (because you can’t complain on Twitter without a hashtag), chances are that these Tweets were written before the person even left the restaurant about which they are griping. [More]
Presenting The 9 Most Calorie-Filled Chain Restaurant Meals Of 2014!
By 7.30.14
To some, the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s annual Xtreme Eating awards are a reminder of how some restaurant meals can pack thousands of calories, oodles of saturated fat, and piles of sodium on a single plate. To others, the awards make up a to-try list of over-the-top menu offerings. Both will find plenty of sugary, fatty, salty treats to study with scorn, concern, curiosity, lust, or awe. [More]
Restaurant Menus Remove Dollar Signs So You’ll Spend More $
By 7.15.14
When you read a restaurant menu, you might not notice that there are no dollar signs. Why is that? Removing currency symbols severs the connection between restaurant purchases and real money in your mind, and makes you spend more. No, really. [More]
Restaurant Says Smartphones, Not Lazy Staff, Are To Blame For Slow Service
By 7.15.14
Does it feel like you’re spending an inordinate amount of time sitting at the restaurant table before you actually eat? The tendency might be to blame it on bad service or a slow kitchen, but one NYC restaurant points the finger at customers’ smartphone obsession. [More]
Is It Wrong For A Restaurant To Tell Diners To Remove Google Glass?
By 5.27.14
The culture war (more of a slap-fight) over where and when it’s okay to sport Google Glass continues. A Manhattan restaurant is the latest to get caught up in the fracas after it asked a customer to remove her Glass device while dining, resulting in a burst of negative reviews from those who think the eatery crossed a line… and a backlash from those who aren’t impressed with the headgear and don’t see why anyone would wear one to dinner. [More]
Bratty Kids Top List Of Restaurant Diner Pet Peeves
By 5.21.14
In our recent round-up of Bad Consumers, we questioned the parenting skills of moms and dads who let their kids run wild in stores while the adults are busy doing their shopping. But anyone who has ever had a nice meal ruined when an impromptu game of Hide-and-Seek takes over a restaurant can tell you that these bratty youngsters and their self-involved parents also like to dine out. [More]
Restaurant Adds Surcharge For All-You-Can-Eat Customers Who Don’t Clear Plate
By 5.13.14
“All you can eat” isn’t an open invitation to waste food. That’s the message that one Swiss restaurant is trying to drive home to its lunch buffet customers by charging extra to diners who fail to clear their plates. [More]
Restaurant Allows Customer To Bring In Big Gulp, Then Shames Her About It Online
By 4.22.14
You might think it crass or crude to bring a 7-Eleven Big Gulp into a fine-dining establishment, but if a restaurant lets you have that huge cup o’ soda at your table, do they then have any standing to call you out publicly? [More]
Are You OK With A Restaurant Googling You If It Improves Customer Service?
By 4.14.14
If you apply for a job, you can rest assured that someone will Google your name or look you up on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and elsewhere before hiring you. If you meet someone via an online dating service, he or she has probably (and wisely) made repeated efforts to look you up on publicly available social media sources in order to make sure you’re not a suspected serial killer. But when you make a reservation at a restaurant, you probably don’t expect anyone there to do any research about you. [More]
Pastor’s Website Lets Waiters Vent About Skimpy Tips On After-Church Meals
By 3.11.14
Following last year’s firing of an Applebee’s waitress who dared to post a receipt from a cheapskate customer claiming to be a pastor who gives “10% to God” and thus shouldn’t be required to pay the 18% tip mandated for large parties, a real pastor at a church in Tennessee decided to create a website to remind churchgoers that they shouldn’t stiff their restaurant servers. [More]
Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern Suggests “Crowdsourced Expertise” Over Generic Yelp Reviews
By 3.10.14
Andrew Zimmern, chef and host of Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods, has never held back his feelings about crowdsourced review site Yelp, once calling it a “tremendous forum for a bunch of uninformed morons to take down restaurants.” It’s all well and good to slam the site, but what are people to do when they’re looking for insight on where to eat? [More]
3 Tips To Writing A Yelp Restaurant Review That Is Worth A Read
By 2.25.14
As helpful as crowdsourced review sites like Yelp can be, not every write-up is of use to a consumer trying to figure out whether a restaurant is worth the trip. Sometimes it’s because the review is too vague (“The menu wasn’t amazing” is one I come across too often). Other times it’s too specific (“The napkins didn’t match the table cloths! Never going back!”). And many reviewers tend to let their emotions get the best of them, giving slightly subpar meals a single star or throwing a restaurant a 5-star rating without really thinking about what that score implies. [More]
Where Does The Negotiation Start When You Tip?
By 12.16.13
When you dine out and have to calculate a tip, where do you start your calculations? Everyone has a different method, but in this country most people start their mental calculations at 15% and then increase or decrease from there. Yet we’ve spotted another restaurant encouraging customers to start their calculations at 18%. [More]
The Second-Cheapest Bottle Of Wine Has The Highest Mark-Up & Other Restaurant ‘Secrets’
By 12.6.13
Many of us have been there, especially in our early to mid-20s, on a date and being asked to pick a wine. You don’t want to look cheap, so you rule out the least expensive bottle on the list and opt to spend a few dollars more to seem like a dollar-sensitive sophisticate. Restaurant owners are apparently on to our completely predictable ways, and that’s why you probably just paid a lot more for that wine than it’s worth. [More]
Waitress Who Claims She Got Anti-Gay Receipt May Not Have Donated Money As Promised
By 12.5.13
The saga continues for the New Jersey waitress who became Internet-famous when she claimed she’d been stiffed on a tip by diners who voiced disapproval of her sexual orientation on their receipt, an allegation that has subsequently been discredited. Now comes news that the waitress, an ex-Marine, may not have made good on her promise to donate the money she received from supporters to the Wounded Warrior Project. [More]
Google Patents Method For Splitting Restaurant Bill & Other Shared Expenses
By 10.7.13
Many of us now have smartphones, and almost all of us know how to use the calculator on these smartphones. Even so, not many of us are pulling out the calculator to itemize restaurant bills at the end of the night. It often ends up with folks splitting things evenly — which can be a hassle if everyone is paying with a card — or one person footing the bill and others promising to settle up, which doesn’t always happen. Google hopes to end this awkwardness with a recently filed patent. [More]
