Harnessing Online Review Sites for Bar Success

Ever been bitten by a bad review? You're not alone. But, review sites are much more than an annoyance that we can ignore. In this episode, we dive into the world of online review sites and how to use them for reputation management. Including the vital role these sites play in bringing new patrons through our doors and the undeniable sway they hold over our establishments' reputations.

We tap into some serious data kegs, including studies from Harvard and Berkeley, that show a star's difference can significantly fatten the till. The key takeaway? Negative feedback isn't just noise – it's an opportunity to refine our craft. I'll guide listeners through the maze of review management.

We explore the process of using reviews to polish our bars' reputations. Claiming your business page and responding thoughtfully to every piece of feedback transforms your online presence into a beacon for both old friends and new faces. I'll share my playbook for handling the good, the bad, and the ugly comments, ensuring that your responses resonate with prospective customers and demonstrate the kind of hospitality that will bring them in the door. Cheers to turning insights into action and online reviews into effective reputation management.

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Welcome to the Bar Business Podcast, the ultimate resource for bar owners looking to elevate their businesses to the next level. Our podcast is packed with valuable insights, expert advice, and inspiring stories from successful bar owners and industry professionals. Tune in to learn everything from how to craft the perfect cocktail menu to how to manage your staff effectively. Our mission is to help you thrive in the competitive bar industry and achieve your business goals.

Special thank you to our benchmarking data partner Starfish. Starfish works with your bookkeeping software by using AI to help you make smart data-driven decisions and maximize your profits while giving you benchmarking data to understand how you compare to the industry at large.

For more information on how to spend less time working in your bar and more time working on your bar:
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Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

You're listening to the Bar Business Podcast where every week, your host, chris Schneider, brings you information, strategies and news on the bar industry, giving you the competitive edge you need to start working on your bar rather than in your bar.

Chris Schneider: 0:19

Hello and welcome to this week's edition of the Bar Business Podcast, your ultimate resource for bar owners. I'm your host, chris Schneider. In today's episode, we'll be delving into review sites and how to leverage them to grow your business. Now, I am fully aware that when the topic of review sites come up, there are a lot of different opinions on how to treat them, and a lot of that comes from a place of general dislike or even hate of review sites. And I will tell you right now I have been there myself. There is a lot, as an operator, not to like about review sites, especially when you think back to a decade ago, when there was a lot of conversation about whether or not Yelp was extorting us to sign up for premium services in order to make sure different reviews were featured. Now, today, they say that's not the case. So we're just going to assume that they're telling the truth. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but let's say they're acting in good faith. And let's also talk about the fact that review sites one of the reasons they have a bad reputation is because they don't take down things that are factually inaccurate. So I had an issue with one of my bars where someone put up a review two years after I bought the bar that the bar had been sold and changed from a neighborhood bar into quote a bad rap club. Now, obviously, the bar hadn't been sold. I owned it for just over seven years and this was two years into owning it, so there was no change in ownership that had been recent. There was definitely not a bad rap club. I really didn't change anything. Now, I did have a jukebox, so music changed based upon who was in the bar. But trust me when I tell you there was a heck of a lot more country than rap being played in general.

Chris Schneider: 2:04

So I'm not sure what this person was writing about. And the review was so weird that on the review platforms you can DM people. So I DMed her and I said hey, this is. You know, the bar hasn't been sold. I don't know where you heard this. Why don't you come in and give us a try? Because what you're saying is not reflective of what's going on here. So why don't you come in? And I think I even offered to buy her a drink. Well, she responded to me with something along the lines of you're full of shit and I, like my friend who told me this, but I've never actually been in. I haven't been in over a year.

Chris Schneider: 2:39

I'm just writing a review based upon what my friend said, and so naturally I was a little mad and I contacted Yelp and tried to get the review down and they wouldn't do it. They have no requirement that they have to take down reviews that are just not accurate and in fact turns out there's actually a Supreme Court case that says they cannot be held accountable for what other people write. So a review site like Yelp or Google or TripAdvisor cannot be held libelous in the United States for someone writing an inaccurate review that contains information that's just factually inaccurate. So there's a lot of reasons why our industry is not a fan of review sites, but here's the thing they actually matter. How we interact with them matters, and if we just get angry and upset and annoyed by how these sites operate, by what they're doing, and so we take a negative view on review sites as a whole, we're actually doing ourselves a disservice, because review sites can be a key way to manage your perception in the market, especially with first time customers, people that have never dined in your establishments. Those are the people most likely to care about what the review site says You're regular, that's at the bar five days a week drinking his three Bud Lights that he has every day after work, he could care less about what the review site says. People that come in once a month, they're already regulars, they don't care what the review site says. But the people that could come in the door, the new guests that you need to attract Because remember and we've talked about this before, but you always need to assume that you need to get 20% of the business in the door needs to be new every single month in order to maintain your current sales levels. So we have to work hard each and every month to bring hundreds of new people in the door, and part of bringing them in the door, part of managing your perception online and really being able to pull in those new customers, is making sure you play the game with these review sites. So love them, hate them, think it's a racket? Don't think it's a racket, I don't really care, and that's the bottom line here. All of that is actually irrelevant, because what matters is you still have to play the game and you still have to manage your reputation on those websites.

Chris Schneider: 5:09

Now, when I say manage your reputation on those websites. Let's define what those websites are, because there's a lot of different websites that you can leave reviews on. Now, most of them, frankly, don't matter that much, they're not that influential. But if you're in the US, there are essentially three, maybe a fourth that are really important, and those are Google, yelp, tripadvisor and maybe Foursquare, although I think that's a lot less popular than it was in the past. If you're outside of the US, probably Yelp is not as influential unless you cater to American tourists, and in a lot of regions around the world there are individual sites that are very popular in those countries and that really drive business in those countries and are a first source that people look to for information. So, wherever you are, define which sites are specific to your area and that you need to manage. But for today, we're really going to be focusing on Google, yelp and TripAdvisor, and so let's talk about those individually a little bit here.

Chris Schneider: 6:12

Real quick. Google is obviously one of the first things people see. Something like 90% of all searches on the internet start with Google. So if people Google bars near me or bar in X city or pub on the ocean, whatever they're Googling, that applies to you. You're going to show up and if they're using location services, you're going to show up on the map. So as they move around the town especially if you're talking about someone that's tourist, they're kind of looking at where things are they will see you on that map and see your ratings and reviews there. And they will see your ratings and reviews just on the sidebar if they search for your individual bar. So almost everyone if 90% of the searches coming on Google, we can assume that somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of everyone that looks for a bar in your area online, everyone that looks up your individual bar even is going to come into contact with it first on Google and they will see that Google rating. That really makes it one of the most important to manage. Not saying that Yelp and TripAdvisor can be ignored they cannot but Google is really important. Now the good news here and I forget which I read a bunch of studies before this episode to make sure I had real data to tell you guys. I forget where I read it, but I do think it's true that Google reviews tend to be a little bit higher than Yelp reviews. The average review is higher, so that is a benefit in that the first time someone's going to come into contact with a rating or reviews, they're more likely to be higher. Now, obviously, if you have a three star rating on Google, that's going to be an issue.

Chris Schneider: 8:01

Now, getting away from Google, we go to Yelp. Yelp in the United States is by far the most influential of the review sites outside of Google, and the interesting thing about Yelp is most of these other platforms that have made in other countries and other platforms in the United States tend to be specific to travel, bars and restaurants those sorts of things where Yelp is not specific to any business. Yelp is for all businesses across the board. Now, as we all know, people on Yelp tend to be a little critical. There are a lot of folks that are posting reviews on Yelp that fashion themselves the next big food critic and they're just using Yelp until they get their big break and can write for the New York Times. Obviously, most of them aren't going to get there. Obviously, that means that a lot of people writing reviews on Yelp tend to come in with this kind of attitude or ego about what they're doing. But actually that doesn't matter, right? All that means is Yelp is going to average a little bit lower reviews, but not really low and because the majority of people that use Yelp are not those folks. We all focus on those folks because those are the reviews that make us mad. Those are the reviews that cause us to have an emotional reaction, but that's not the majority of the reviews on the platform. So don't think that everyone on Yelp is evil. They are not. Yelp is actually a trusted source and obviously if you have a few number of reviews and somebody like that posts, it's going to tank your rating potentially, but the goal here is make sure you're giving great service and then you get a bunch of reviews and those reviews get washed out and we'll talk about ways to respond to them and all that as we go along today.

Chris Schneider: 9:50

Now the other major review site that you're going to come into contact with is TripAdvisor, and TripAdvisor is much more of a global phenomenon than Yelp. Tripadvisor is one of the top review sites almost everywhere in the world. Now that means a few things. What it means if you're traveling outside the US, tripadvisor is probably better to use to figure out for yourself what's going on than Yelp. But it also means that TripAdvisor is going to be disproportionately people that travel a lot, so it might have slightly different demographics than Yelp. It's more people that travel a lot that tend to use TripAdvisor inside the United States, as opposed to Yelp, which is more people that see themselves as local guides, local influencers on what businesses are good to frequent Also a TripAdvisor. That means that if you're in a high tourism area, an area with high foreign tourism in particular, you're more likely sometimes to be found on TripAdvisor than on Yelp. If you have a bunch of guests coming to the town that you live in in I don't know Florida, and they tend to be, for whatever reason, your town is very popular with people from Scotland and Scandinavia. Just to pick some random places, they're more likely to look up a bar on TripAdvisor than on Yelp. Now, if you're in a different place in Florida and you're likely to get visitors from the Midwestern United States, again we're going back to Yelp rather than TripAdvisor. There are some differences in who uses which platforms.

Chris Schneider: 11:34

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Chris Schneider: 12:13

I know some of you are still probably listening to this, but terribly annoyed by the way that we're talking about review sites, because you're thinking I still dislike them. So let's talk a little bit about why reviews matter, why the ratings on review sites matter. So, as I mentioned a few moments ago, I actually looked up a lot of studies and the thing is that there are a lot better studies, in all honesty, from the early 20's than the late 20's or in the last two, three years done on review sites, and that probably has to do with the fact that in the early 20's so 2010, 2011, 2015,. In that bracket review sites were really coming into their own and not much was known about them and people were trying to figure out how to do them, so there were more studies done on them. So let's just agree as I give you this data. It is old so it may not be true anymore, but it's by far the best data I could find that shows potential relations between ratings on review sites and guests coming in the door. Now again, this was all done early 20's and it was all based upon Yelp, so it was not studying Google ratings, it was not studying TripAdvisor ratings.

Chris Schneider: 13:33

Bottom line is these are the best studies I could find, but take the results with a grain of salt. It may not be 100% accurate today, but the first study I looked at was one from Harvard and they measured what an increase of one star in average review rating means for sales. What they found was that an increase of one star equals an increase of about 5 to 9% in sales. So if you're doing a million dollars, just for easy math, and you have three and a half stars and you increase to four and a half stars, that should correspond with an increase in revenue of about 50 to 90 thousand dollars, which, when you put it that way, is actually huge. 5 to 9% is a huge increase that you're getting just by managing reviews. Now it's not easy. There's no direct path you can take as a business owner necessarily to get that increase. We'll talk about some ways to leverage review sites and how to manage your profiles on those sites in a moment. But it's really important here just to acknowledge the fact that people make decisions based on ratings and that the higher ratings correspond with higher sales.

Chris Schneider: 14:54

Now that study also looked into which reviews have the most impact in people's minds. So what are the most meaningful, which are going to create the biggest impact on the customer? And, as you might expect, they found that longer reviews have more impact. So the longer the review that someone leaves, the more likely it is to impact the decision of a potential guest, and I think that's pretty logical. But it's good to keep in mind because if someone just puts a one line review, we hate you, it's probably not going to impact your business that much Then if they put in a much longer review going into details about why they hated their experience.

Chris Schneider: 15:34

Now, moving on from the Harvard study, there was a study out of Berkeley. They were looking at if there was a correlation between review ratings and average ratings and reservation availability. So essentially, how booked was a restaurant based upon their rating, and what they found was that a half star equated to about 19% availability. So an increase of a half star on Yale meant that that restaurant had 19% fewer reservation spaces available on average when compared to their total capacity. Now, obviously we're talking about bars, not restaurants. Most bars in the world are not taking reservations unless it's for a large group, so it's harder to extrapolate meaningful information from this that's specific to the bar industry. But it does go to show again and reinforces the Harvard study findings, that ratings and increases in ratings have a real measurable effect on the amount of business coming in the door. And because we know about consumer behavior, we can assume that a lot of that is new business and new business again. We need 20% of the business coming in the door to be new business in order to maintain our sales level. So star ratings absolutely have that impact on driving new customers that have not drank at our bars before in the door.

Chris Schneider: 17:09

Now, final study I want to talk about. This was actually a survey done by reviewtrackercom and they asked a few different questions, but the one that stood out to me was they asked people would you dine in a restaurant with a three star rating and 33% of respondents. So a large number of people a third of all people that took the survey said they would not dine in a restaurant with a three star or lower rating. So right there you have it. If you have a three star rating or lower, you're cutting out at least a third of your potential business. They also looked at all the ratings on Yelp and how they are kind of distributed. Good news is, 68% of Yelp reviews are four star or higher, so the vast majority of reviews are that four to five star range. They're fantastic. Only 16% are one star reviews. Now, on one hand, that means that you're more likely to get good reviews. On the other hand, that means if you're getting bad reviews, there may be a reason.

Chris Schneider: 18:20

And as we move on to talking about how you can leverage reviews to help attract customers and bring in new guests make people that had a poor experience return guests it's important to remember that if you're getting a lot of bad reviews, they're probably right. So don't just assume that every review is somebody with a grudge, is someone that's out to get you, is a competitor, is the person you fired last week. All those things can happen, but most reviews are made in good faith. And if you have 10 reviews, 15 reviews, okay, and you have one of those in there, it's going to skew the data, it's going to skew your star rating. But if you have 100, 200, 300 reviews, one person making a statement is not going to tank your rating. So in a lot of ways, if you have a bad review score, you kind of need to do something about it and figure that out.

Chris Schneider: 19:16

But as we look at how to leverage reviews to help our bars, the big thing is you have to start with a strategy. It's like everything else in your business. You can't just willy-nilly do some things one day, some things the other day. You need an actual strategy and a plan to handle these review sites and to manage your online reputation. And there are a few things you can do and each site's going to be a little bit different. Here we're not going to talk specifics of individual sites, but we're going to talk kind of in general about what you need to do on all of these sites whatever sites impact your business, to be able to have a good strategy.

Chris Schneider: 19:56

So the most important thing, the first thing you have to do, is claim your page. Google, yelp and TripAdvisor all allow the business to claim their page, and what that does is that gives you the ability, a to DM people that leave reviews on some platforms. B it gives you the ability to complete your profile, which we'll talk about in a second. And C it gives you just the ability to track things, see things, understand what's going on and respond to reviews. So it's really important that you claim your page. It's the only way that you have any input into what's happening on these sites, because if you don't claim your page, all that's going to happen is people are going to post. You can't respond. The information on there is put by random people on the internet, not by you. So things like your hours, your address, all that's in the control of other people and really you're allowing the internet to create a reputation for you without your involvement. So you must absolutely must claim your page across every review site that is important for your bar.

Chris Schneider: 21:01

Now the second thing you're going to need to do is fill out your profile. So we just kind of touched on that. But most of these sites you can put in your hours, your website, your social media links, you can upload pictures, you can put in a description of your bar. Anything you're allowed to do, you should do, and the reason for that is you're managing your reputation. When people go and look at Yelp, when they look at TripAdvisor, they can see which pages are claimed and which aren't, and if a page shows it's being claimed, generally speaking, people are going to see that as a bar that cares more about their online reputation.

Chris Schneider: 21:37

So claim your page. Put in good info when you can put in and about your bar section, or put in any information into that profile. Use it as a sales tool. Make sure you're writing it like you write market and copy for your website. Use your brand voice. Give people a feel for who and what you are, and do it in a way that helps to dismiss some of those rad reviews, because if you talk about what you do and why you do it, you'll make an impact on guests beyond that rating, beyond the reviews that they read Now. At the same time, if you put in we have amazing service and every review is two stars, saying that the service is absolute shit, well, that's not going to work. You will not be able to just put in a profile that your service is amazing and then not deliver and have all the reviews say that it's not. But when you say amazing service and 19 out of 20 reviews say amazing service and 1 out of 20 says no, the service is shit, people are less likely to believe that one review. So you have to fill out your profile.

Chris Schneider: 22:48

And the other thing too and I hit on this, but I really want to focus here is you have to upload photos. So we've talked a lot about photos and the need to have high quality photos across all your social media and online. You need to upload those photos. They won't necessarily show as the first photo. You don't necessarily have the ability to control the order in which Google or Yelp or TripAdvisor shows your photos, but you can put up some high quality content, some really good pictures of your food and your drinks that help to entice customers to come in. So make sure you're adding as many photos as you can, in addition to filling out all the text that you can.

Chris Schneider: 23:28

Now, the biggest thing when it comes to managing your reputation online through review sites is you have to respond to every review, and let me say that again every review, not just some good ones, not just some bad ones. Every single review that comes across period, and the reason for that is it shows a level of care about your business, it shows a level of commitment to your guests and you can't respond to all the reviews once a month, because responding to a review 30 days after it happened doesn't look good. To be real honest. You need to carve out a time at least once a week to sit down and respond to these reviews and to really manage the perception of what you have going on online. Now the good thing here is when you respond to negative reviews, you can actually change your guest's view of the negative experience they wrote about.

Chris Schneider: 24:26

There was a survey done that looked at what does a response mean to the person that left the review, and 12% of people said that a response to the review would change their view of the negative experience 100% of the time. So that doesn't sound like a lot. 82% of people said it could change their view of a negative experience depending on the response. So as long as your cordial, as long as you're nice, it will work for you. Now, if you're a dick and you try to argue with what the guest is complaining about rather than handling it professionally that 82% they probably are now going to have a more negative opinion of you, not a more positive opinion of you. So how you respond matters, but the important thing to always remember is that your responses change people's views, and we're just talking right now about changing the view of the person that left the review. The thing that we're more worried about because if you really made somebody mad, if they really did not like their experience which I don't care if you're the best restaurant in the world, the best bar in the world, you have awards for the best service in the world you're going to piss somebody off sometime, because that's just part of the business.

Chris Schneider: 25:43

The real person we're writing these review responses for isn't the person that left the review. It's the person searching to determine where they want to go have a drink that comes across the reviews and reads the responses and says oh, these guys care. Even if you can't salvage the relationship with the guest that left the review, leaving that response to the review builds your reputation with way up more potential guests that will come into your establishment. Now let's talk a little bit about how to respond. So for a good review, essentially what we want to do is thank people for coming in, mention something that they wrote. If they just said, hey, it was great, thanks for coming in, is enough. But if they say, hey, it was great, we really like the cocktails, maybe your response is something like thank you so much for coming in and your kind words about our bar. I'm glad you enjoyed our margarita. It is one of my personal favorites on our signature cocktail list. Next time you come in, make sure to grab a Paloma. A lot of guests that love our margarita love our Paloma as well. See you soon. So we've made a personal connection with the guest. We've given them another reason to come back in, we've invited them back in, but, most importantly, we have thanked them for saying nice things about us to the public on the internet, because they are doing the word of mouth advertising for you right there. Your online word of mouth is that review.

Chris Schneider: 27:11

Now, when it comes to responding to a bad review, it can be a little bit more difficult, and I think every response to a bad review should have four components. But before I go into those again and I said this before but the biggest thing is do not argue with the guest, do not say they were wrong and don't come up with excuses. No one likes hearing fricking excuses. So don't give them some PS of oh my god, we were busy and somebody called off and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No one gives a shit and it makes you look like a bad manager. It makes you look like someone incapable of running your bar. It makes it look like you just give excuses and you're not worried about results. So don't argue with people, which a lot of people don't do, but I see all the time people giving excuses. Don't give excuses. It does not help.

Chris Schneider: 28:07

But the four things that you absolutely want to do when responding to a bad review thank them for their review. It's hard Emotionally, you're not going to like that part, but you need to thank them for taking the time to give you that feedback, if you can. If they wrote a long review and they said, hey, the service sucked, but I really like the food and the cocktails, great, make a positive note that you can connect on with them. Now, if everything in the review is negative, it is this was the worst place ever. Blah, blah, blah. Lots of things about how the service sucked in your drink sucked in your food sucked, skip this piece. But if there's anything positive that you can relate to pick up on that a little bit.

Chris Schneider: 28:46

The third thing you want to do is give them your contact info. Now, that could be your email, that could be your phone number, that can be your personal cell phone number. When your number out on the internet is scary, you would think that you're going to get a lot of calls that are bad. If you're really worried about it, you can just go get a cheap prepaid cell phone at Walmart or somewhere and use that as the quote complaint line, the line to call the boss, and just have that. You don't have to pick up every call that comes in. Of course, if you do, it's better, but that's one way to make sure it's not your personal phone. It's not your actual office phone.

Chris Schneider: 29:31

Now I will tell you right now. I am someone that does business in the internet. My personal office phone, which is in my house, is on the internet everywhere. Hell. If you want to call me, it's 812-994-2202. And I've said my phone number on the podcast more than once and I will tell you right now. My phone doesn't ring that much. As a matter of fact, no one has randomly called me. They got my number from me saying it online or putting it online places. So even if you put your number out there on a review, they may call you and if they do, great. That gives you a wonderful experience for that guest and allows you to recover from the mistakes you made when they came in to the bar. But don't be afraid to put your number out there if you want to do it, or just put your email and give them a way to contact you and then invite them to come back in and give you another shot.

Chris Schneider: 30:30

It's really important that every review we're inviting that guest back in. Maybe they come in, maybe they don't, but again, when we're responding to bad reviews, it's as much about the person we're responding to as it is everyone else on the internet that may come across that review and read that response. So to give you an example of what a response to a bad review could be, you might write something like this Thank you for bringing your recent experience at my Bar to my attention. We aim to give excellent customer service and the 15 minute wait to be greeted by a server at your table is not acceptable. Please accept our sincerest apologies for falling short. I am glad that you enjoyed our cocktails and food, if you would like to personally discuss your experience with me, feel free to email me at owner at MyBarcom, we would be honored if you gave us another chance to show you that our service can be just as good as our cocktails. Thanks, chris, owner. And that is cordial, it's professional, it's polite, it's apologizing and accepting that you screwed something up, pointing out what was good, inviting them back, giving them a way to reach out to you. It's a really nice, cohesive review response that is going to put a good, well as good of a spin on that negative review as possible. Now there's one thing you may or may not want to include in your response to a negative review and, frankly, when I read what other experts put out about this, the ideas are all over the map and that is offering something for free, saying, hey, come back in, we'll get you a free app dessert. Hey, come back in, I'll buy you a drink.

Chris Schneider: 32:17

Now, my opinion on it is not cut and dry. I will tell you right now. I think sometimes offer of something for free can be great. Sometimes you're just inviting people to leave negative reviews to get free stuff, and I think you have to make that decision on a understanding of your bar and your clientele and an understanding of your personal risk profile with opening up that door. Personally, I am not a huge fan of the idea of offering something for free to everyone that leaves a negative review. I think it sets a bad precedence. In general, however, if it works for you and for some people, it works great, and I have definitely heard from some experts in this space that always recommend responding to negative reviews with an offer of something for free. That rarely do people take them up on it. But I think we all have a gut reaction that people will just abuse it if we start doing it. So you can do it or not. Just think about your clientele and whether or not you think that that will be a positive thing to do or a negative thing to do. You can try it out on a few, see what happens. But I would be doing you all a disservice if I did not mention the idea and say that some people really like the idea and some people really don't like the idea.

Chris Schneider: 33:38

Now there are a couple more ways we can leverage review sites for our marketing. One of those is that we can use reviews as testimonials. So when you have somebody that says something really great, write it down, take a screenshot of it, because when you need a testimonial for your website, when you're making a new menu and you want to talk, put out Facebook posts and talk about how great something is, if you just had a review that says, oh my god, you've got to go try this shrimp taco this bar has, you can use that when you post about your shrimp taco as a testimonial about how great your product is. So mine all your good reviews for testimonials. Something that I really recommend doing is to just keep a Google doc or a Word document where you copy and paste everything good that's said about you to that document. That way, you always have a record of these testimonials and when you need a testimonial to fit something specific that you're trying to promote, you have a resource to go to that gives you a quick and easy way to search and find out if you can get that testimonial that fits what you're marketing just perfectly.

Chris Schneider: 34:50

And finally, one of the ways to leverage your reviews is to track the trends. So something I would recommend that you do is to create a Excel or a Google sheet that you put review information in. So maybe the date, the review, maybe a link to the review so that you can pull it up easily, the star rating and if they mentioned issues with certain things or certain things were great, you can have columns that are cocktails, food, what have you different pieces of the business and then just use a plus sign if they said something really good or a minus sign if they said something really bad. And what that allows you to do is to track what reviewers are saying, because if everyone says, hey, I love this bar, but the bathrooms are gross, well then you need to clean your bathrooms more. If everyone says the cocktails and the food are great, but the service sucks, well then you need to work on improving your service. It's a way to get a really good feel for how the public views your establishment and, rather than get mad about what they're saying, rather than have an emotional response to it. If we track the data, we can see patterns and we can optimize our business so that we fix those issues that people are seeing in it, or we can see where people are saying a bunch of really great stuff and know that's an area that we want to focus on, that we want to continue to capitalize on. If everyone loves our rum drinks. Well then, maybe we need more rum drinks. So use the data that comes from the reviews to make sure that you're optimizing your business and making your business as great as it can be, based upon what your customers are telling you that they want.

Chris Schneider: 36:35

Hey there, bar owners, it's Chris Schneider, the bar business coach. Are you tired of the daily grind and ready to skyrocket your profits? I've got the solution. With my coaching and consulting services, we deep dive into menu management, team empowerment and business optimization. Instead of slogging away in your business day in and day out, washing dishes, covering for employees and working 60 plus hours a week, picture this a thriving business that runs like clockwork, whether you're there or not, letting you enjoy the successes that you've dreamed of. Let's make it happen. Visit barbusinesscoachcom to schedule your free 30 minute strategy session with me, or you can book a session just by clicking the link in the show notes below. Together, we will turn your business into a profit powerhouse, because at the Bar Business Coach, our only goal is to help you spend less time working in your bar and more time working on your bar. So just a few final thoughts and key takeaways for this week.

Chris Schneider: 37:35

Review sites suck. I don't think anyone in the industry particularly likes them because of the negative aspects they can have on our businesses, but they're a necessary evil and they're a game you have to play. You ignore them at more peril than diving in and dealing with them on a regular basis. Ignoring them is not the answer. The answer is to get involved, leverage them, respond to your reviews Always. I mean this Always. Make sure that when you respond to reviews, when you're showing your face online, when you're using the internet as a way to build your brand which is what a response to a review on a review site is you're using your brand voice, you're being cordial, you're being polite, you're not giving people excuses, you're not arguing with people, but you're giving them a better experience. You're showing yourself in a very good light. And finally, make sure you actually look at the reviews. Make sure that you put together the data that's coming out of the reviews, because that will show you trends in your business. That will show you trends in your reviews going up and down. Maybe you're getting better, maybe you're getting worse. But I can also. If you keep information on where complaints are, where compliments are, that can help you understand great areas of your business to focus on and areas that are ripe for improvement. So that about wraps us up for today.

Chris Schneider: 39:08

If you enjoyed today's insights, make sure to like, subscribe and leave a review. If you want to gain more insights, join the Bar Business Nation Facebook group for ongoing conversations with me and other bar owners. That group has been growing a lot recently, so there's some fantastic conversations that are going on there. I highly recommend joining. You can also schedule a free strategy session with me to explore how we can collaborate to optimize your success. You can find links for both of those in the show notes below. And until next time, I hope you guys have a great day and we will talk to you later.

Announcer: 39:43

Thanks for listening to the Bar Business Podcast. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Check out our website at barbusinesspodcastcom and join our Bar Business Nation Facebook group for more strategies and tips.