New Service Helps Hospitality Combat Negative Online Reviews

Food and Beverage Intelligence  offers a proactive solution for the hospitality industry to combat online criticism that can affect sales.

The brainchild of entrepreneur Robert Watman, Food and Beverage Intelligence objectively investigates bars, restaurants, nightclubs and hotels and analyzes the factors that influence the guest experience — especially those most often cited by both professional and amateur reviewers on popular online review sites.

Three out of four consumers turn to an online review site when they are looking for a place to eat. Food and Beverage Intelligence tools to evaluate front-of-house operations, applying a mix of direct observation and undercover surveillance.

One of the first nationwide concept clubs -- Culture Club, Poly Esthers and Nerve Ana -- gave Watman first-hand experience overcoming the challenges of maintaining standards across brands with multiple locations.

Clients who can’t go ‘undercover’ themselves typically find the third-party point-of-view enlightening but the number of evaluation points included in the tailored reports provided by FBI are particularly helpful without a detailed plan of action. During company’s proprietary, hands-on implementation phase, the FBI team works with an establishment’s staff to rectify detected issues under real circumstances and the program even includes a series of unannounced surprise evaluations.

Instead of reading a complaint on TripAdvisor, managers receive a message in their inbox identifying budding issues. Employing Truepic technology, images with a verifiable time and date stamp provide confidence and a trail that leads to the responsible employees.