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Everyone's a critic
Dining democracy
“I’d rather depend on a hundred people writing reviews rather than one guy from the newspaper,” Claire Maroousé told me over drinks at the new swank gastropub next to her office.
Claire is a self described foodie who lives in Wimbledon and who very rarely splurges on a nice dinner without checking online first to see who’s been saying what. You want to have some idea of what you’re in for she told me, “if you’re paying for anything more than £40 a head.”
Relying on more than just signs
Claire doesn’t just look up what other people have to say, though, she also posts her own reviews about the restaurants she’s visited. When she had a particularly bad experience at a certain celebrity chef’s restaurant a few months ago, she took action and posted a review.
Claire isn’t alone. Many others are logging in and sounding off.
According to Toptable.com, one of the UK’s most popular restaurant booking sites, diners post roughly 1000 reviews on the site every day. And with currently almost 600,000 reviews of restaurants across the UK, there’s no underestimating the appetite of the public to have their say.
The profits appear to agree. Hoover’s business resource reports that Toptable made $ 4.2 million last year. (One revenue stream is a booking fee charged to the restaurant for each person booked through the site).
Toptable works like this: potential diners register with the site, use it to book each time they go to a restaurant and after they’ve dined, they post a review to receive points that count towards a free meal at certain participating restaurants. The site contains its own professional reviews, customer-written reviews, special offers, location maps and other details.
But potential diners aren't the only ones who rely on Toptable.