Yelp in Denmark: What you can use Yelp for

Yelp in Denmark excited me in April 2012. I’d used the service while living in the US and was curious about what reviews of local places might mean for Danish businesses.

Yelp in Denmark through my experiences in the US

I’d found good restaurants myself through other guests’ ratings. I also described being able to read about cafés, hairdressers and other businesses with a physical address.

What interested me was that you didn’t have to know the place beforehand. You could find something good in an area you’d just arrived in.

Reviews could shift attention

I talk about American friends who got a response from a restaurant after leaving a bad review. It’s a story I retell from that time.

I thought living off a good address alone could become harder if guests shared their experiences. Conversely, a small business away from the high street might gain new customers because people found it through reviews.

Big expectations for a new service

I was very certain Yelp would quickly become hugely important in Denmark. That was my expectation in 2012, not a documented account of what happened later.

I also show my fascination with a feature that could overlay ratings on the view from the phone’s camera. I was excited about the possibilities, even though I didn’t know which features were in the Danish version.

The video’s advice about collecting reviews and the story about gift cards are historical statements. They don’t describe Yelp’s current rules or recommend buying positive reviews.

A Facebook for people who love food

It’s been a while since I made a video. Now I’ve seen Yelp arrived in Denmark a couple of days ago, and I think it’s worth spending some time on. Especially if you have a physical shop, restaurant, bar, café, hair salon, attraction or anything else with an address customers visit.

I know Yelp from the US. Back then, you could use the service on iPhone, Android, Mac and PC. Put simply, it was a place to rate different services. Restaurants and cafés featured heavily. I call it a Facebook for foodies: people who like food.

I’m probably exaggerating when I say Americans wouldn’t dream of going to a restaurant without using Yelp. But a great many used the service to choose where to eat. After visiting, they could rate it and tell others what was good.

Which dishes tasted good? Was there a tip you should know, or an absolutely fantastic mojito? As I described it in 2012, Yelp could collect the reviews and work out what people particularly liked about the place. You could also find other shops and local offers and check in, as with Foursquare and Gowalla.

Yelp in Denmark could become a public pillory

For an entrepreneur with a physical location, I saw potential you needed to take bloody seriously. I’d heard of American restaurants going from nothing to packed because they gave good service and guests talked about it on Yelp. I also described places losing customers or having to close after bad reviews. That’s how I described the service’s significance back then.

Some friends of ours in the US gave a restaurant they otherwise liked a bad review after a half-hearted visit. The restaurateur called them that same evening, apologised and gave them a $100 gift card, then just under DKK 600, so they could return. They had a good experience on their next visit and deleted their bad review.

That shows how important this kind of feedback had become to the restaurant. I call it a public pillory. I compare it with Trustpilot, but highlight Yelp’s focus on physical places.

My advice in the video was actually to ask customers for positive feedback after they’d bought something. That’s the historical advice I gave in April 2012. As the existing text also explains, it doesn’t describe the rules applying to the service today.

I was absolutely certain about the next six months

You could stand in an area and ask: Where’s the best Thai restaurant? Where can I get a good burger, or where’s the best men’s hairdresser? I thought businesses that quickly ranked highly in the ratings could get a boost you’d have to see to believe.

I was so excited I guaranteed Yelp would blow the whole fucking lot away within six months. I said people in Denmark would be walking around using Yelp, and there was no discussion, what so fucking ever. AOK and the other local services would have a gigantic problem, I thought.

That was my very confident expectation in 2012. I’m recounting what I said here, not what happened later. I also expected the service to become more useful after three or four months once there were more reviews.

If you don’t have a physical location to market, you can still use Yelp as a customer, as I did. In the US, it had helped me find some of the best restaurants and other good places in my neighbourhood.

A high street address isn’t enough if customers share the experience

I was particularly interested in what this could mean for places living off a stream of tourists. Imagine a shitty restaurant on Strøget selling a rotten sausage for DKK 40 and telling the unhappy customer to get lost. Then the next tourist arrives, knowing nothing about the bad experience.

I thought that model would have a harder time. New guests could check the area’s restaurants and avoid those that weren’t any good. Being on Strøget or Kongens Nytorv would no longer be enough. You’d also have to provide good service.

Conversely, a good café, hairdresser or restaurant in an outlying area could gain new customers even if few people normally passed by. People could find it through the ratings. That was an exciting opportunity for the little husband-and-wife business making an effort. Also read E-pusher about selling and marketing online.

The little pizzeria could challenge the familiar chain

I also thought chain restaurants could have a harder time. When people were somewhere unfamiliar and couldn’t face getting bad food, they often chose a chain such as McDonald’s. You roughly knew what you’d get. It might not be fantastic and a bit expensive, but you expected a clean toilet and an experience without unpleasant surprises.

With Yelp, I imagined you could press a button and discover a little local Italian pizzeria 20 metres further along. Or a fantastic place three or four hundred metres from the main street. Then the good local business could compete with the chain’s familiarity.

Stars in the camera and dreaming of Google glasses

At the end, I discuss a fun augmented reality feature. You could see restaurants through the phone’s camera while their Yelp stars were overlaid virtually in front of them. I didn’t know whether the feature was included in the Danish version.

It was a bit useless, I admitted, but also pretty cool. You felt like the Terminator seeing the world through a computer. As a technology freak, I couldn’t help imagining the new Google glasses showing ratings for the places you passed. It could probably become awful too. But the technology bloody fascinated me.

Yelp had arrived in Denmark. I thought it would be exciting and was glad I wasn’t AOK or behind one of the other restaurant review services. That’s how I ended the video in April 2012.

Also read about welcoming customers properly.

The original profile link leads to my Yelp profile.

Best wishes, Martin

Historical reference from 2012: Here I linked to an interview with racing driver and mechanic Martin Christensen. The original interview page cannot be opened at the time of this review.