I received a message from a friend of mine who lives in New York this morning. She told me to look at this posting she saw on Reddit about a restaurant that is allegedly requiring FOH (front of house, aka waiters) to get 5 start reviews online in order to keep their job.
She worked as a waitress in college before becoming a super successful tech recruiter out of Silicon Alley.
The thread covers a restaurant where management allegedly posted a sign threatening to fire any FOH server who was unable to get a minimum number of positive reviews online.
Of course, she and I both laughed as we know several things:
The review industry is filled with SEO agencies that specialize in getting good reviews online for a small fee. The negative press that might come from posting such messages to employees far outweighs the reviews.
The employees can just take jobs elsewhere and the restaurant will be left with high turnover and poor staff.
Let’s use this as a jumping off point to discuss some recent trends among what is happening in the service industry
Isn’t The Job Market Tight for Servers , Bartenders , Waiters and Waitresses?
The job market in the Northeast, specifically the NYC metropolitan area is very tight. Employers are having a hard time hiring people, so they say.
Much of this has to due to Covid, but there is a silent aspect to the story. Many private employers have decided to not pay a higher wage.
I spoke to two associates of mine who recruit for retail workers (for semi-independent and mid-scale franchise locations) and what I am hearing is the opposite from what the newspapers are saying.
First, the lip service to higher wages is just that. Franchise owners and business owners are still in the mindset of paying minimum wage (or less then minimum wage for the service sector).
As my friend Raymond told me:
At least a dozen times a week we’re getting calls from Restaurants seeking servers. It’s always a waste of time. They never want to pay a finders fee. So it’s a non-starter, right. But worse than that they are all looking to pay less than minimum wage. It’s a complete opposite to those pieces on the news.
What Ray’s talking about are the PR puff pieces placed on tv about how hard it is for a restaurant to find good workers. How they are offering to pay great wages and benefits.
Listen, as someone who has worked in the Public Relations sector for over 20 years…it’s nothing more than a nicely crafted piece of fiction that some junior level publicist was able to place on local tv. That’s it.
Restaurants And Fake Reviews: Not a New Story
The idea that a restaurant would want positive reviews on Google or Yelp isn’t news. It’s what every small business wants.
Most larger companies understand the important of having a dedicated marketing team. I’ve worked in agencies where the primary focus was recruiting for Marketing position. Even mid-sized companies now have professional in-house marketers.
In addition to in-house teams, many companies will consult and outsource work to PR and Marketing agencies that handle reputation management.
Some of these firms are low-end shops located overseas, while the best are high touch firms located in DC, LA, NYC, Boston, London and Paris. Of course, if you’re using one of these firms you company has 6 fugure budgets, at least.
The problem is when you have smaller mom and pop style shops who try and run marketing campaigns. They end up paying someone in India to post fake reviews online, or else worse….end up making the mistake that this company is alleged to have made.
The results are always the same. Bad fake reviews that anyone can spot.
As someone who has been to countless business lunches over the years everywhere from Manhattan, Austin, L.A., Miami, Chicago….I’ll tell you that high end restaurants are wise enough to avoid this trap. The better executive assistants I’ve worked for knew how to pick restaurants and it was never based on online reviews.
Online reviews are suspect, and everyone who works even tangentially in the industry (marketing, not hospitality) understand that.
Making Waiters and Waitress Beg for Reviews
The most distasteful thing here is that employees are allegedly being made to (in the words of one poster on Reddit) “beg for reviews”.
It’s a humiliating and tough situation. Waiters and Waitresses, who are not paid much to begin with, are being forced to do marketing for the restaurant. That's a tough job.
The difficult aspect of this is that most people simply don’t leave reviews. Even if your waiter or waitress was excellent, how many people sign into Google and leave a review?
This creates a situation where servers are having to beg and plead with people to leave reviews. While they might not say that they are at risk of loosing their job if they don’t get the reviews, it will nevertheless cause a tense dining experience.
Is This a Good Way To Retain Employees?
The next question is if this is a good way to retain employees? Certainly not. Having a work atmosphere where people are frightened that they will be fired is terrible.
Having recruited for all spectrums of the workforce: from low paid entry level work, to executive level roles, one thing is true. Scaring employees is never the way to go.
Ask any executive recruiter who deals with headhunting and the number one reason people leave jobs is because they were being overworked, underpaid, and threatened. That’s it.
Smart managers and smart business owners know that the best way to motivate employees is with rewards.
It’s an old saying, but the carrot works better than the stick. There are ample studies regarding this, and most sophisticated management consultants understand this process. However, during my years working cross industry, I’ve come to learn that most management (whatever the industry) is staffed by incompetent and cheap individuals…hence the high turnover among employees and general failure of small and medium sized businesses.
As recruiters will tell you, social media and is very important. Not only for companies, but for individuals when they are applying for jobs. Recruiters look at social media. The other side of the coin is that people look at sites like Glassdoor and Indeed when they are searching for work, so the PR game is important on all sides.
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