We are in the service industry, we are not mind readers.

Some may dislike me for this truth that I am about to confront: If you say that everything is great when your server asks, we take your word for it. We do not read into the size of your pupils or the placement of your utensils. We believe you. And then we wake up to a bad review…

This is an awful truth since the post-pandemic-near-apocalypse nightmare that we all lived through. For some, it really was the death of their whole worlds as their businesses or sometimes families disintegrated around them, but as the rest of us just kept going they were forgotten. “Oh, have you been to that café on 10th Street lately?” Your friend might say. “No! Not since the start of it!” You may reply. There were many people behind the businesses that were left in the wake. I firmly believe our sense of what is ok to say or do to others was also left behind. Gone are the days that when we are unhappy, we would politely mention to those who could help. This was a skill for only some to begin with, but now it seems like it was only something to be scared of doing lest you be called a “Karen” or a “Kyle”.

When we first purchased the restaurant (my brother and I), it was called Tapas. A well-established eatery in the heart of our beloved town of Canmore. I needed an outlet and he helped back my dreams. The sale was arranged for a while before the stars would align, or in this case, the sale would go through as a worldwide pandemic struck. Back then, we were absolutely terrified, but also excited, whatever would happen, we made it this far! However, the learning curve in this kind of situation is plumb, as a good friend of mine stated.

Restaurant ownership is hard; especially when you are the chef. You pour your dream into a place to have someone who has lots of points on Tripadvisor (this doesn’t make you a professional critic, just a reviewer who spends a lot of time mulling their opinion on the internet) mostly to be drowned out by fake reviews for the competition (look out for places with all 5-star reviews) or in our case, a sabotage review from the previous owner (her email she owned the account with before selling the restaurant was the same one that she posted a review for us from and so we now sit in review purgatory on Tripadvisor, but understand their need to crack down for obvious reasons). My point is, that reviews are subjective. If you eat at steak houses usually and review a taqueria, there is a chance you may not be familiar enough with the content to have an informed opinion. There used to be a time when critiquing was left to the critics, but review sites…

I only know how to cook food well, and I am constantly trying to better myself not only as a person but as a chef and business owner. I love food, it is predictable. I know when certain plants or mushrooms will grow, and I know how they will taste if I cook them just so…however, one of the biggest challenges that I never saw coming and has been the most challenging to deal with, is people. In Canmore, you can choose to get a meal from most places where the things on their menus are almost a copy-paste of each other, where foreign workers subsidize the lack of living-wage-type pay, where food comes out of a box because it is predictable and the management know that it at least that can be cooked without prep and with consistency, and the rent will be made. Don’t get me wrong, the overhead here isn’t cheap, and labour is an exorbitant cost on top. If I cared more about the bottom line than how I could do what I love then I wouldn’t hesitate to make the switch. But here we are. I have an amazing team and it is my goal to make sure that they learn everything that I can teach them and go out into the world and spread the great gospel of cooking, as confident and well cared for humans. But. It is disheartening to them as well to deal with the laissez-faire form of hate that exists today.

Guests come in, they are asked with each course, and then again after the whole experience what they think or thought. Everyone says how amazing it is. Then you wake up to the one-star review that you never saw coming. Don’t get me wrong, 90%-97% of people (my guess, and I am covering my bases a bit) are telling the truth. The 3%-10% are the loudest. They are the ones that write reviews even if they don’t know what they are upset about (we have had couples get in fights and then say how horrible their experience was, even though we had nothing to do with their domestic dispute). The horrible truth is that even when you know a review is fake, you have to fight like heck to get it removed; if you are lucky. The worst reviews are the ones that give a star rating and no description; it still hits not only you, but your staff. It deters future business. 99.3% of people that dine with us are extremely happy, but the 0.7% are the ones that write reviews, and they are therefore louder.

I guess that this whole spiel is about just begging you to be open with your server. If you don’t like the way that something tastes, be honest. Sometimes it will be just about your personal preference and you can’t get mad at that. It’s absolutely possible that the restaurant made a mistake. The staff and restaurant literally exist to make reasonable people happy (I will touch on this another time), and they will bend over backward to make sure that you are. If the temperature isn’t right on your food, let them know, if the ambiance (even the music in some cases) isn’t to your liking, let them know. But please be reasonable, if you don’t like the flavour profile, that is subjective, for example, but if the server was no where to be seen, that is not. If we buy a shirt we don’t like, why is it up to the business to cover that cost? Why do we write them a horrible review when it is just our opinion that it doesn’t quite hang right, but you have never owned a quality shirt? And if you had, were you informed of the designer that you were buying from this time? Did you know they were quirky and were they to your taste. Most people come into our restaurant without reading our website; expecting another cookie-cutter restaurant even sometimes, with chicken fingers, pizza, and burgers, but stay out of embarrassment and then write bad reviews because of it. Some people feel cathartic to release their stress on a business due to their bad day, but it’s not just these small businesses that are negatively affected, but the humans that make the goods.

Please be honest to your server, but polite. please just think about what you write before you write it when REVIEWING. Please read these links about reviewing:

NYT- Why You Can’t Trust Negative Reviews

National Strategic Group- The Psychology of Customer Reviews