Botto Bistro: The Restaurant that Rewarded One Stars on Yelp

This story starts as many do, with the internet.

Well, not entirely, but we can skip through the background pretty quickly if that’s all cool with you.

Chef Davide Cerretini immigrated to the United States in the mid 90s, leaving behind his native Italy, but bringing the taste of home with him, eventually opening a restaurant in Sausalito after years of working in kitchens. The recession of 2008 drove that restaurant and Cerretini to the brink, but by 2009 he had opened the small and unassuming Botto Bistro.

Having been in the restaurant business for some time, he was familiar with Yelp, and for the uninitiated, Yelp makes most of its money through ads. A business takes out a subscription, then they get placed a bit higher (though it is indicated it is purely an ad). To sell these subscriptions, they contact businesses. Again and again and again. If you’ve been in sales, I’m guessing you know what that’s like. You gotta pick up the phone and get those numbers, by hook or by crook.

WELL

Apparently, Cerritini didn’t like that. He and other business owners purportedly saw that Yelp was removing real reviews from businesses that chose not to advertise (Yelp has a filtering system that has not been made public).

So what’s a guy to do?

First, he wrote his own reviews. For his own business and bashing competitors. Obviously that goes against Yelp’s code of conduct. But he was getting frustrated. Needed to act. Needed to do something wild.

So he started ASKING for one star reviews, to skew the importance of Yelp (for his business) in the first place. The business website featured a “hall of shame” of legitimate negative reviews, stories of how Botto trolled Yelp.

The news covered it, other businesses followed suit. The dude cleaned up. He has since sold Botto and goes around teaching cooking classes. So maybe making noise is a path to success.

There was even a “documentary” made by some of these aggrieved businesses, focusing on Yelp’s devious ways. Thing is, it’s only from the perspective of the business owner. For the likes of us, we humble review readers, THOSE THINGS DO MATTER.

And I know Yelp removes reviews that may seem legitimate, but there are systems in place for a reason. If a user only has one review to their name, leaves a review in the middle of the night, the review sounds suspiciously similar to another, it came from the same IP address as another, and so on and so on; if that’s the case, then there just may be cause to filter a review.

By and large, I trust Yelp. But you can be the judge. For a more in-depth telling of this story, head here.