Google reviews should be regulated

How often do you change your mind about a restaurant because it has 4.2 stars on Google instead of 4.6? Behind every one of those decimal points, there’s someone who poured their savings, their nights, and their weekends into building something. And there was, perhaps, a simple misunderstanding between what a place had to offer and the person who walked through its door.

A few weeks ago, Anthony Gentile, owner of Gentile Café, posted a video. Just him, looking into the camera, calmly explaining a mathematical reality most people don’t know: it takes between 40 and 50 five-star reviews to erase a single one-star review on Google. Forty to fifty people expressing their satisfaction (!) to cancel out what one anonymous person, from their couch, decided to click in thirty seconds, often without saying a word to anyone on site.

A few days later, Raegan Steinberg, owner of Arthur’s Nosh Bar, voiced the same frustration about the baseless, hateful comments piling up on her listing. And in the days that followed, Victor, co-owner of Pasta Pooks, spoke up — not to defend his own restaurant, but to defend his neighbours at Mayo Disco, who’d been targeted by a public video review. What he wrote stayed with me: “We don’t do this as a hobby. This is our lives on the line.”

The mechanism nobody explains as you’re posting your Google review

A Harvard study measured it: one extra star in a restaurant’s rating can increase its revenue by 5 to 9%. In an industry where margins hover around 3 to 5%, that’s the difference between staying open and shutting down.

But nobody talks about the reverse. A 1.5-point drop in average rating leads to an 11% drop in sales. And 93% of customers consult reviews before choosing a restaurant; 71% say they’ve decided not to go somewhere because of negative comments. Five four-star reviews: one unhappy customer shows up with a one-star. The average drops from 4 to 3.5 in an instant. Climbing back from there means months of work. Months of politely asking happy customers if they’d consider writing it down somewhere. Months of watching a number that barely moves, while reservations very much do.

Welcome to the absurd era of restaurant pokémonification

Victor put a word on something many people felt without being able to name it. Some people no longer walk into a place to eat — they walk in to log it. To check a box in their collection. To film their plate before tasting it, to harvest likes with a video titled “Disappointing lunch” shot before they’ve even asked to speak with the chef.

What deeply bothers me about this is the order of operations. The camera turns on before the opinion is formed. The title exists before the meal begins. We no longer discover, we produce. And in the logic of what we produce, negativity performs better. Outrage generates more views than wonder. The algorithm couldn’t care less what that does to the human on the other side.

What we’ve built at Tastet over the past 12 years rests on a simple principle: if we talk about a place, it’s because it’s good. If an address doesn’t meet our criteria, we don’t tear it down — we’re not perfect either. And we go further than a rating. This place is good, but for whom? For what moment, what occasion, what budget? Is it the best in its neighbourhood, or in the entire city? All of these nuances matter because they manage expectations, and well-managed expectations mean satisfaction. Everyone wins.

Happy people don’t leave Google reviews

This is the paradox at the heart of it all, and it’s a cruel one. A satisfied customer shares their experience with three people on average. A dissatisfied one shares it with ten — and online, that ratio amplifies exponentially.

People who’ve had a beautiful evening go home with a full belly and a soft mood. They mention it at the office the next day, they text the address to their best friend. But they don’t write anything online. It’s not bad will, it’s human nature. Happiness is quiet. Disappointment looks for a stage.

The result: a chef who works six days a week, who thinks about their customers even in their sleep, who spent ten years finding their balance in the kitchen — that chef often gets judged on their worst night. The one where the dishwasher called in sick. Where the back table was impossible to please from the start. Where two ingredients went missing because of a botched delivery. Those nights happen. In any profession, they happen.

What the screen takes away without us realizing

I don’t think people who leave mean Google reviews are fundamentally mean. I think the screen strips away something essential: empathy. I don’t believe these comments would be said to a restaurant owner’s face. Or if they were, they’d be said with a delicacy that would change their impact entirely.

Psychologist John Suler named this phenomenon back in 2004: dissociative anonymity. Behind a screen, the online self becomes a compartmentalized self, separate from real life, with a sense of impunity. When we can’t see the face of the person we’re addressing, our brain tends to dehumanize them. They’re no longer a person. They’re a listing. An establishment. A target.

Victor put it better than any academic study: if you wouldn’t say it to their face, don’t write it. It’s disarmingly simple. And yet we forget, fingers on the keyboard, with that little rush of power the publish button gives.

What if it were you

Imagine arriving at work tomorrow morning to discover that a stranger has posted a public review of your week. Without having spoken to you. Without context. Just a verdict, permanent, indexed, visible to your colleagues, your clients, your boss, your banker. Imagine that review still being there in five years. Imagine being expected to smile through it.

That’s the daily reality of every independent restaurant owner in Quebec. People who’ve often risked everything: their savings, their years, their health on a project they love. Who do a thankless job with a generosity most of us couldn’t sustain for a single week.

What we can all do, tonight

If something went wrong, as we suggested back in 2016 in this piece of advice for restaurant customers: say so on the spot. 76% of people who leave a negative review really just wanted an apology. Just to be heard. Maybe a one-star review wasn’t needed: maybe what was needed was a conversation no one dared to have.

And if your evening was beautiful, if you ate something that stopped you in your tracks, if the service surprised you with its warmth, if you went home thinking it was exactly what you needed without knowing it: write it in a Google review or on social media. That gesture, free and tiny, can change something very concrete in the life of someone who put their own life on your plate.

Independent restaurants are not corporations with crisis management teams and marketing budgets. They’re human beings who decided to feed you for a living. Treat them as such!

Written by Jean-Philippe Tastet