Local Business Spotlight: Burritos & Blues

Meet David. He’s the Managing Director of Dublin’s popular Burritos & Blues. We recently caught up with him to get some insight into how they have grown their business to three locations and used Yelp along the way. While lots of factors have played a part in their great online reputation, David shares how Yelp became a key part of their strategy.

Photo Credit: Eamonn O.

How did you get introduced to Yelp and how have you implemented it as a marketing tool for your business?
We came across Yelp after we opened our first location in August 2010, a few reviews were posted (all quite good) but also 1 or 2 eye opener reviews with some constructive criticism. So I popped on to Yelp because I was searching social media for anyone that was talking about us and what I liked about the Yelp Business Account is that it gave me, the business owner, an outlet to respond directly to the reviewer and if anyone saw those reviews they would see my reply. Most of the review sites in Ireland don’t give you the facility to respond to a positive review or a negative review.

Are there any other features inside the Yelp Business Account that you would recommend other businesses take advantage of?
The check-in offer! We offer a 10% discount when someone checks in through Yelp, I find it’s a great idea because we’re very active on Twitter and we can pull people through Yelp from our Twitter account. We’ll tweet the Yelp check-in offer and have gotten a lot of positive responses out of that.

What advice would you give to a business owner who just got a negative review?
Although I did take everything rather personally at the start when we opened our first shop, I learned to temper and tailor my response and not to take the feedback too personally. I would say that it’s very important to be very diplomatic in your response, try to be objective and think about the overall scheme of what their experience was. Ultimately what I want when someone gives us a negative review….all I want them to do is rethink about their experience and if I can get them back in…just to try and let them see the overall offering our business has. If they have a second negative experience, then I think that’s something on our side which means I can go and fix that.

How do you feel Yelp has impacted your business?
I think it’s been very positive, as we open new locations it gives my potential customers a reference point to go and see what our other locations are like and what our overall reputation is. When people are searching online for Burritos & Blues and find one of our Yelp pages and read our positive reviews, or see our positive responses on negative reviews welcoming people back, I think the big picture is it works positively for our businesses.