Restaurant owners: How do you feel about Google's claims of being able to tell which restaurant gave a person food poisoning?
Today Google announced that by combining search queries related to food poisoning, its leading search engine can now quickly identify which Restaurants should be avoided by consumers -- and inspected by health departments.
In light of this announcement, it's likely that any Restaurant that is NOT utilizing an effective and timely Reputation Management solution to immediately address the needs and concerns of any unhappy patrons BEFORE they can post negative reviews on Social Media is essentially risking its Online Reputation -- AND its business -- as time goes by.
Restaurateurs and Restaurant Management, how do you feel about this announcement? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Are you worried about disgruntled people (or even competitors) making up stories to drive business away from your restaurant? Or do you think that it's great to be able to identify and take action against poorly-run restaurants that may be the prime causes of such complaints?
How are you and your teams currently dealing with this type of situation when it occurs? Do you already utilize a Reputation Management solution? Your responses are welcome!
Answers (1-7)
This is dangerous door to open. With most cases people get food poisoning at home. It takes a lot of research and proof to determine where they became contaminated. This could be very damaging to a restaurant or food business if there was a false claim.
The troubling part of this is most people don't understand how food born illnesses work . Typically the most recent restaurant you ate in probably didn't get you sick, it would've been whatever you ate 8-12 hours before you got sick. Cheers.
Very dangerous without actually testing the source of the problem. Could be taken advantage of by disgruntled employees or unhappy customers that tried to take advantage of a restaurant. In the case of a real issue I would hope that every restaurant owner would address the problem immediately and resolve it.
I think any claims that serious should be verified by the health department before any public post. The health department posts all violations in the newspaper. It is cold and flu season. People often get sick immediately following a meal and associate the illness with the meal, food poisoning, however, takes many hours to reveal itself. This can cause a restaurant undo harm. It is necessary to verify claims before posting. And YES social media can abuse restaurants. I have begun using word of mouth only, and no longer looking to social media for recommendations.
Because of the lag time with symptoms from food poisoning...which affects every individual differently, this is definitely slippery ground. Of course the goal, with any food service business, is to provide the freshest, safest food possible. Anything to keep staff diligent is a good thing.
I think this is horrible. Firstly food poisoning is difficult to detect. It could be up to 48 before. It could be related to a virus, medication, alcohol.
This instills fear in people and can be very dangerous
This also reals of financial nepotism if the business does not engage google. They are not qualified to handle these claims. They can’t even get your phone number correct!
I can only say that years ago my family and I were on vacation.
We went to this beautiful restaurant and I had the swordfish.
Soon after I became terribly ill, it was the worst feeling I ever had.
Food poisoning is very serious and if it continually happens in the same restaurant then it should be reported to the board of health so the owners of the restaurant will be probably trained in food handling.
this is nothing to fool around with especially having gone through it myself many years ago.