Closed for maintenance from July 5-8, the restaurant has racked up several one-star reviews while not even open. “I just wish that the company that allowed this thing to happen would patrol their own territory a little bit better,” Paterlini says.Īnd the scammers aren’t just targeting high-end restaurants Lucho’s, a Mexican restaurant on Ocean Avenue, was also hit. Paterlini says he reached out via email to Google Support only to receive an automated reply stating that a response could take “weeks” - but he doesn’t hold much hope about the situation. He’s heard from other business owners that replying to the emails escalates the situation, leading to more requests for money and harassing phone calls to the restaurant. Giancarlo Paterlini of Acquerello also fell victim to the scam. “Restaurants are so vulnerable to and not that that’s the end of the world, but those reviews do tend to sway diners and hospitality is at the core of what we do - whenever somebody isn’t happy, we want to fix it.” “I’m surprised that it hasn’t happened sooner, I mean, it seems like a pretty smart scam,” Cantu says.
Digging through his emails, he finally found an email nearly identical to Alter’s, also asking for a $75 gift card. He noticed email notifications about the bad reviews rolling in for about a week, mostly one-star without any words. “It looks like Google just sweeped a lot of recent ones,” Yang says.Īfter seeing Alter’s post, chef Val Cantu reached out to her about one-star reviews on the Google listing for his Michelin-starred restaurant Californios. As of July 7, though, she says it looks like the fake reviews have been hidden or removed - but, Yang points out, one review that did come from a recent diner was taken down, too. “Within a few days we had 10 or more.” Son and Daughters received just one of the extortionist emails, Yang says. “They said we could appeal the decision,” Yang says. The team flagged the reviews as spam, but within an hour or so Google let her know the reviews didn’t violate any policy issues. On July 2 her restaurant got a few mysterious one-star reviews within a few hours of each other. Sons and Daughters’ Julianna Yang had a less positive experience with Google. “I’m a little worried, but it’s also just really annoying.” “It’ll be interesting to see if they keep trying to do this,” Lutes says. At first he used the Google Business app to dispute each review, but eventually Google Business Profile Support helped him get them taken down. “I thought, this is crazy they’re trying to extort me,” Lutes says. Within three days the restaurant had seven or so. He gets alerts whenever Third Cousin receives a review and says about a week ago he started getting daily pings - all one star reviews without any text. He says he’s received two emails baiting him into paying for the reviews to stop. Greg Lutes, owner and chef at Bernal Heights’s 3rd Cousin, worked tirelessly for the last week to get his restaurant’s false reviews taken down. When Alter checked her own reviews the morning she received the email, there were already 10 new one-star reviews on Nightbird’s listing. “People from across the country just started reaching out to me, like in Texas and Chicago, and half the restaurants in San Francisco.” Chefs at Acquerello, Sons and Daughters, Californios, Luchos, and 3rd Cousin all confirmed their restaurants were all similarly bombed with one-star reviews. “It’s kind of crazy,” says Alter, who posted a screenshot of the email to Instagram.
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“We sincerely apologize for our actions, and would not want to harm your business, but we have no other choice,” the email reads, ending with the promise to stop leaving negative reviews if the gift card code is sent. The email states the sender would continue to leave more one-star reviews unless Alter sent a $75 Google Play gift card.
The words were apologetic, but there was no disguising the email, which Eater SF has reviewed, aimed to extort the San Francisco chef. Chef Kim Alter of Nightbird, received the first email July 5. Local businesses have taken to Instagram to raise awareness of the phenomenon.
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But in San Francisco, the one-star reviews raining down on restaurants seem to be part of a scam sweeping both the Bay Area and cities across the country.įor the last week or so, high-profile restaurants throughout the Bay Area including Nightbird, Acquerello, 3rd Cousin, Sons and Daughters, Californios, and Lucho’s have received a torrent of one-star reviews on Google, accompanied by pleas to send $75 to would-be scammers.
Remy the rat, and with his human puppet Alfredo, live and die by the review penned by Anton Ego in Pixar’s “Ratatouille.” Dustin Hoffman’s critique of Jon Favreau’s lackluster lava cake in “Chef” kicks things up a notch, too. The one-star review is the creeping dread of any chef or restaurant owner.
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