Food journalists, influencers, and the economy impact whether customers will try or ignore a restaurant or bar. Yet customer feedback may have a greater impact. Even though comment cards and surveys still exist, online platforms and social media give customers a large forum to speak their minds. An influx of technology that incudes data gathering tools and platforms enable operators to harvest this valuable instant insight into what their business is getting right or wrong.
These innovations, however, may complicate the process of receiving, interpreting, and translating feedback into smarter operational strategy, especially when AI factors into the equation. Online reviews are often regarded as earned media exposure according to PR and marketing pundits, but they are also top sources AI draws from...for better and for worse. Experts like Rodolfo Giannotti stress the importance of taking AI’s impact seriously. The founder of IAMenu, a digital menu and customer-feedback hospitality industry platform, recommends operators learn the right ways to collect and interpret feedback to translate it into operational improvements.
“One expensive mistake I still see in hospitality tech is ‘review gating,’ or tools that quietly route unhappy customers into a private form while pushing only happy customers toward Google, TripAdvisor, or Yelp,” he warned, adding that operators need to listen to the customers directly and actively. “It feels clever, but it creates real regulatory and platform-policy risk. The better approach is an honest nudge: Give every guest the same open path to leave a public review, and offer them a private channel to resolve the problem properly. The goal should not be to hide unhappy customers — it should be to fix the issue before it becomes a pattern.”
While AI can translate that feedback, Giannotti suggested grouping it by theme (slow service, wait times, staff attitude, menu confusion), and show the operator the three things worth acting on. However, a caveat of many tools is that they summarize too much and miss the fixable details, such as Friday night delays, one dish repeatedly mentioned, unclear allergens, or tourists confused by the menu. Specific details like these is where feedback becomes useful.
Restaurants should treat reviews less like marketing copy and more like operational data,” he continued. “Positive feedback tells you what to promote. Negative feedback tells you what to repair.”
Below the Surface
The great migration of restaurant customers from traditional platforms (i.e. Google, Yelp) to AI platforms for search and discovery cannot be overstated, according to Karla Cobreiro, founder of Cobreiro Comms, a Miami-based public relations agency representing hospitality and travel clients.
“Restaurants need to learn, use, and lean into AI platforms no matter what, as it is where their audiences are looking for them,” Cobreiro explained. “This shift in consumer behavior across all industries including restaurants affects how many people even make it to websites these days. Traffic is down because people just read AI overviews to find the answer they need and move on. Even when you search for a restaurant on Instagram, the AI overview with reviews pulled from Yelp and other sites appears before the list of accounts and related posts in the results.”
While harvesting and translating data are increasingly important actions, Crystal Jennings, vice president of Public Relations at LT Agency (formerly Lane Terralever), says public review sites are a starting point because they show what guests are saying publicly and what prospective guests may see before deciding where to eat. Her firm’s “2025 Franchise Trends Report” found that 43 percent of consumers rely on online reviews, from fellow customers. Loyalty programs and return-visit behavior also reflect what people are actually doing. She says the best metrics to follow are sentiment by location, response time, repeat visits, offer redemption and loyalty engagement.
“Restaurants need to understand not only what guests are saying, but how that feedback may show up in search and reviews,” said Jennings, whose company’s clientele includes Phoenix-based Four Peaks Brewing Company, Postino WineCafe, and Barro’s Pizza, advises. “AI can help restaurant brands sort feedback faster and spot recurring themes across comments. That matters because guests are also using these new tools to make decisions. (According to our franchise trend report), 28 percent of consumers are using AI tools to discover new products and businesses. Local team input, nevertheless, is still needed to understand the real issues and decide what should change. Outside reviews often reveal what guests may not say directly to the restaurant and help (management) understand the expectation gap.”
Emily LaMar, marketing director of The Thirsty Lion, with locations in Oregon, Arizona, Colorado and Texas, said she treats feedback as a “gift,” as third-party review sites form a guest's first impression of a restaurant and are monitored closely. Before providing a response to a guest, she and her team analyze trends arising across platforms. The information, in turn, helps management understand how it is perceived compared to competitors within each market. Information from multiple sources is consolidated, making trends across locations easier to monitor and compare. Standout guest comments, meanwhile, are used in Thirsty Lion marketing when appropriate.
“Feedback is one of our most valuable business intelligence tools, and it is our responsibility to listen to every guest to continue delivering best-in-class experiences,” LaMar said. “We monitor online reviews using Marqii, which tracks sentiment across several sites such as Google, Yelp, and third party delivery platforms to (track) recurring themes across all of our locations. We look for trends (across reviews) and pay close attention to sentiment by category, such as food quality, service, atmosphere, and value. We also review volume, star ratings, survey scores, and repeat guest behavior. Those insights help inform everything from menu refinements and operational training to facility improvements and marketing messaging.”
John Ricklefs, director of food and beverage at Shearwater Tavern at Carmel Mission Inn in Carmel, CA, encourages restaurant staff to retrieve customer feedback by table touches and engagment with guests during their visit. Beyond that, he looks at OpenTable, Google, and social media, as well as hotel platform Medallia, which encourages guests to answer questions about the property’s F&B. However, he says Yelp has been dropped as a metric based on what he calls the “bathroom wall-type of responses” on the platform.
“Details are where these platforms fall short as we want to focus on things such as food quality and seasoning and speed-of-service responses,” Ricklefs explained. “Menu items highlighted in reviews are discussed with culinary leadership. We encourage our social media team to highlight and repost guests' posts to our accounts. However, some customers will just place a number on the rating without a reason. When this occurs, we reach out to the customer directly so we can uncover more about their experience and what led them to give it a particular rating.”
Other platforms and tools that can help operators track customer feedback data include QR Nova, a QR code generator that also scans into trackable feedback and ordering data; ThoughtSpot, a cloud-based, AI-powered business intelligence and data analytics platform; and Qu POS, a restaurant point-of-sale platform for quick-service and fast-casual restaurants (including Jack in the Box, Golden Corral, and Dave’s Hot Chicken) that captures guest feedback data by functioning as a central data engine pulling information through API integrations, loyalty apps, and third-party partner platforms.
An Information Translation Tutorial
Even with so many technology tools available, Jean Hagan, partner at EisnerAmper (an accounting, tax, and business advisory firm), said operators shouldn’t let review tracking run wild. Operators should be engaged, and also assign a designated manager to scan review content on a weekly basis to bring the most useful information to management for review. Positive reviews should also be scoured as there is something in all reviews that the management team can take into the conversation on improving operations.
Even with their shortcomings, Hagen says Google (“strongest in major destinations that may produce high visitor content”) and Yelp (“still the big kahuna out there” but “a less sophisticated review platform than it was in the beginning”) yield good information. However, as it is not easy to tell whether a reviewer actually went to the restaurant on these sites, she recommends looking at Resy, OpenTable, and Tock because of their “level of consumer commitment and engagement.” Beyond allowing customers to reserve a table, the platforms encourage them to follow up with a review.
“If reviewers are just complaining about price, I skip over them as they could have researched a restaurant’s prices before going there,” added Hagan, on being selective of what feedback to focus on. “On the other hand, if a review says the service was off, there was a cleanliness issue, or multiple customers were unhappy with a given menu item, they need a closer look.”
Hagan shared an anecdote about a client in Beverly Hills whose management had convinced him to not pay attention to Yelp or Google, and this was the wrong approach. “You need to manage these sites, rather than let them have a life of their own when you're not interacting with them,” she said. “The client started out with a three point average on Yelp. We actively started managing, responding, discussing, and sharing (the information found in the reviews) with the management team to identify opportunities to improve. Within a year, the client moved to a four star rating. The (client) did an amazing job because management committed to it.”
Jennings argued that a platform is only useful if it helps management teams understand what needs to change. When vetting a feedback tool, restaurant brands should ask whether it can show patterns by location and how quickly local teams can act on the information. Thirsty Lion’s LaMar added that as expectations have evolved, operators should not stop at monitoring review scores but also lean into platforms to uncover sentiment analysis and category-level reporting.
“We value tools that don't just tell us our rating, but also why guests feel the way they do and how that compares across locations and over time,” she said. “We have moved away from platforms that only provide data, and towards those providing AI-driven summaries and key takeaways to save our operational teams time. Using Marqii as our main sentiment reporting platform provides us actionable reports and identifies trends quickly, rather than requiring us) to manually read thousands of reviews.”
Cobreiro says her team has regular conversations with operator clients about online and social media reviews since they represent important external conversations with their audiences. She hears from owners or operator clients when “they are in the middle of what they consider to be a crisis involving one or several bad reviews” to get assistance on how to respond. However, she advises operators shouldn't just focus on responding to negative reviews. Like Hagen, she said one person on a restaurant’s marketing team should be dedicated to going into platforms to monitor reviews.
“The process shouldn't be just a ‘copy-paste’ with the same two sentences of, ‘Thanks so much for stopping in. See you next time,’” she said. “Customers are going to social media or a platform to leave a review because they want to (connect with) a live human. When you don't respond, you lose an opportunity to further engage them. If customers didn't care, they wouldn't be going to these platforms in the first place.”
Although operators of every size and genre can benefit from mastering technologies that can harvest and analyze reviews, Steve Crowley of Service Physics, an operations consulting firm whose clients include Subway, Cava, Panda Express, Peet's Coffee, suggested restaurants should treat review sites as research hubs rather than scoreboards. “A low rating isn't really the problem,” he said. “It's pointing at some broken step, and the job is to go find that step and fix it.” On the metrics side, he says that the number that matters most is the gap between your locations and shifts. If one store runs the same menu but scores lower, that's an execution issue, not a menu issue.
The Human Element
“We primarily use Google and Yelp, though Instagram has also become an important source of feedback, even though it is not technically a review platform,” said Jill Vande Woude, CEO at Your Farms, Your Table, a farm-to-table culinary and catering company operating out of founder/Chef Sam Diminich's Restaurant Constance in Charlotte, N.C. “People often send us a private message about their experience, which gives us a chance to ask questions directly and better understand what happened. With Google and Yelp, I look at the star rating but care much more about the written comments. The more specific someone is about their experience, the more useful it is. That feedback can help us identify issues with food quality, service, timing or anything else affecting the overall experience.”
Vande Woude says positive feedback helps the team understand what guests are connecting with, whether it is a certain dish, a team member, the atmosphere, or the overall experience. Customer reviews on social media and the website, in turn, spread word on Your Farms, Your Table and Restaurant Constance’s strengths so prospective customers can learn directly from people who had good experiences. They are also shared internally, so the team can see when guests notice their hard work. Negative reviews can reveal problems not dealt with immediately, since a guest may not feel comfortable saying something while they’re in the restaurant, but they may be willing to explain it afterward in a review or direct message.
“That can help us identify service gaps, recurring food issues, communication problems, or confusion around things like hours and availability,” she continued.“Specificity is the most helpful thing. I would much rather have someone explain in depth exactly what went wrong than leave a one-star review with no commentary. We can talk to the chefs, look at where the service broke down, or determine whether a team member needs more training.
Jennings also finds positive reviews can transcend validation and shape what a restaurant leads with in marketing. If guests consistently praise a dish, that should influence what the restaurant promotes in social content or paid media. LT’s report also found that taste is the top loyalty driver for food and beverage brands. Positive remarks can also help support local search, social content, and location-level marketing.
Conversely, when things go wrong and are put into writing, several people we interviewed agree that it’s not a good idea to go back and forth with an upset diner. The person tasked with monitoring reviews should have a protocol for bad reviews with personalized responses rather than “copy-paste.” Jennings added restaurants should acknowledge the issue, respond in a way that’s specific, and invite the guest to continue the conversation privately. The tone should be human and direct, as what can be learned from negative reviews can lead to implementing real change to prevent the same complaint from returning.
“Rather than telling guests what we think we're good at, we let our customers tell that story for us,” affirmed LaMar. “We consistently earn 4.8–4.9 star guest experience ratings and review a word cloud (a visual representation of customer reviews or feedback) of the most frequently used review terms. It’s common to see team members mentioned by name. Recognizing and celebrating their quality of service helps reinforce the exceptional hospitality our guests value most. If guests consistently mention a particular menu item, bartender, patio experience, or level of hospitality, we incorporate those insights into our marketing campaigns, social media, email communications, and advertising.”
Another caveat LaMar pointed out is that no one platform tells a complete story, as each review platform serves a different purpose and attracts a different type of guest. “We interpret the feedback within that context," she said. "OpenTable reviews often reflect the experience of guests who made a reservation and tend to skew more positive, while Yelp users are typically more motivated to share detailed critiques. Both perspectives provide valuable insights.”
LaMar points to recent sensitivity in value sentiment scores, a metric measuring customer attitudes toward certain issues. With the current economy and inflation directly impacting discretionary spending, the leadership team at Thirsty Lion identified this trend and took a deep dive into its guest sentiment scores to truly understand what should be examined to provide customers more value.
“Based on these insights, we focused on reducing hard costs without compromising the integrity of our offerings, allowing us to lower prices across multiple menu categories, including food, cocktails, and beer,” she said. “This work ultimately created more accessible price points for our guests while maintaining our commitment to the quality, hospitality, and scratch-made experience core to our brand.
Even with all of the technical bells and whistles available, there is no substitute for truly listening to your customers. The process is not just about reading as many reviews as possible and responding quickly, but finding out what inspired customers to speak out.
QR IQ
Oliver Miller, product lead at QR Nova (qrcodenova.com), offered some insights on translating guest feedback into operational change from a technology perspective based on what his firm tracks across its restaurant accounts:
- The highest-response feedback channel right now is a QR code on the receipt or table tent that drops the guest straight into a one-tap survey while they're still seated--not an email two days later. Response rates are several times higher because you're catching them at the moment, not after.
- Use a dynamic QR, not a static one. You can route the same printed code to a different form by daypart or location, and you get scan analytics (when, where, how many) without reprinting anything.
- With this technology, remember that the point isn't collecting more feedback, it's closing the loop: Tag complaints by category, and a manager can see "slow service, Friday dinner, patio" as a pattern instead of one-off comment cards.
- Some helpful statistics:
- A National Restaurant Association study revealed 75 percent of U.S. operators now consider contactless ordering and digital tools "essential."
- TEAM LEWIS, a global marketing, PR, and digital communications agency, found that restaurant menus are the single most-scanned QR destination for consumers at 48 percent.