When a story about a waiter refusing to serve customers starts picking up steam online, it usually involves people rushing to insult the server and his employer. But this story is getting quite the opposite response from the public. [More]
restaurants
Waiter Praised For Refusing To Serve Family Who Insults Child With Down Syndrome
By 1.18.13 — Updated: 4.3.13
Yelp To Include Health Dept. Ratings For Restaurants In Some Cities
By 1.17.13
While restaurant owners and customers quibble over the veracity and worth of reviews posted on Yelp, the site will soon be adding some information that is both helpful to consumers and harder to dispute — health department ratings. [More]
Fewer Younger Adults Eating Out While More Baby Boomers & Elderly Hit The Restaurants
By 1.16.13
There is a stereotype that young adults tend to eschew home-cooking in favor of dining out. Sure, it costs more but there’s no clean-up and it tastes better than what you’d make at home. But a new study says that more adults in the 18-47 age group have been choosing their dining room over restaurants. [More]
Get The Latest News Headlines… With Your Restaurant Receipt
By 1.10.13
Because you weren’t already getting enough news from your TV/radio/computer/phone/electronic highway billboards (and occasionally newspapers and magazines), someone has come up with yet another way to provide you with the latest headlines — your restaurant receipt. [More]
It’s Not A Good Idea To Tell Customers You Don’t Care If Their Food Was Inedible
By 1.9.13
It’s no secret that Yelp can be frustrating to restaurant owners, and that some in the business have made their hatred for the online review site very clear, but it’s probably a bad idea to go on Yelp to tell a diner you don’t care about the quality of your food. [More]
This Is The Kind Of Message Restaurant Employees Should Be Leaving On Receipts
By 1.7.13 — Updated: 1.9.13
Regular readers of Consumerist know that some restaurant workers feel obliged to use the receipt as a way to mock customers or angrily vent their frustration. But one Red Robin manager has figured out receipts can also be a way to win over a customer. [More]
Clean Bathrooms Are “Most Important Marketing Job” For Restaurants, Says Expert
By 1.7.13
Anyone who has sat through marathons of shows like Kitchen Nightmares and Restaurant: Impossible is fully versed on all the disgusting things possibly lurking under dining room booths and every other nook and cranny. One food service expert says too many restaurant operators ignore the mop and bucket to the detriment of their businesses. [More]
Restaurant Owner Posts Completely Reasonable Response To Negative Online Feedback
By 12.13.12
No, that isn’t a sarcastic headline. After being lambasted by readers’ comments on his recently opened eatery, a Washington, D.C., restaurateur did what some of his foodie kin could not — issued a restrained, thoughtful and apologetic response. [More]
Friendly’s Staff Fails To Live Up To Restaurant Name, Writes “100% Sh*t Show” On Receipt
By 12.12.12
A New Hampshire family says that after a night out to eat at Friendly’s didn’t go so well, a restaurant staffer decided to express their inner feelings through the increasingly preferred medium of the restaurant’s billing system, dropping the phrase “100% sh*t show” at the bottom of the dinner bill. [More]
Guy Fieri’s Times Square Restaurant Is Apparently A Hit With Irony Lovers
By 12.11.12
How can a flashy new celebrity chef-connected restaurant survive an overwhelmingly negative review? If it’s Guy Fieri’s Times Square restaurant — Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar — it can probably get by for a while just with customers who’re curious to see if it can possibly be as bad as it sounds. The ironic set has money to burn, after all. [More]
Are You A Small Business Or Restaurant Owner/Manager? We Want To Hear From You
By 12.11.12
If you own or manage a small business or restaurant and feel like you might want to help out (even anonymously) on an upcoming Consumerist story, here is your chance. [More]
Restaurant Offers 50% Discount After Employee Labels Diners As “Fat Girls” On Bill
By 12.10.12
To every restaurant manager in the entire world: Sit your employees down now and tell them that if they ever use the “customer name” field on the POS system for anything other than the customer’s name, they will be fired. Because yet again, some moron thought he was being hilarious by using that field to insult his customers. [More]
This Restaurant Really Wants You To Know Why It Can Now Require $10 Minimum For Credit Card Purchases
By 12.7.12
Rather than your typical hand-drawn sign letting customers know that they must buy at least $10 worth of stuff in order to use their credit card, this restaurant goes a step further and (sort of) cites the law that gives it the right to require the $10 minimum. [More]
Restaurant Celebrates Bad Yelp Reviews By Broadcasting Them In The Restrooms
By 12.6.12
While there are all the horror stories of businesses turning on negative Yelp reviews, there’s at least one restaurant that seems to be taking the bad and turning it into something amusing. When it comes down to it, some of those reviews are downright dramatic, and the gastropub’s owner figured he might as well have with that: His restaurant pipes in audio of voices reading those reviews in the bathrooms. [More]
As Economy Recovers, Americans Are Drinking More Alcohol
By 12.4.12
It looks like Americans’ spirits are up — or at least the sales of spirits to Americans are up, as a new survey shows that people are buying more beer, wine and liquor when they go out to eat. [More]
State Says Restaurant’s Church Bulletin Discount On Sundays Isn’t Discriminatory, But Needs Work
By 12.3.12
Is a promotion offering discounts to customers who bring in a “current church bulletin” discriminatory or unfair to people who aren’t religious? One Pennyslvania restaurant won’t remove or re-word their 10% off promotion for churchgoers, saying that it’s helped business on Sundays. It has, but it also got the attention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. [More]
Travel Channel Host: Yelp Is A Forum For Uninformed Morons To Take Down Restaurants
By 12.3.12
Since the first food critic bashed a prehistoric cook over the head with a rock, chefs have been trying to appease these evaluators, some of whom had the pull to sink an eatery with a few nasty words. So what happens when not only everyone becomes a critic, but when the place they post their criticism becomes a go-to source for finding grub? [More]
Chef Who Said Customer Must Enjoy Vomit Apologizes & The Two Are Now BFF
By 11.29.12
As is so often the case with hastily posted outpourings of vitriol on Facebook, the chef at the Boston restaurant who called an unhappy customer “fat” and said she must enjoy vomit if she knows what it tastes like in order to compare his food to the substance, has apologized. Or rather, someone has apologized on the restaurant’s Facebook page. [More]
