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Googling diners before they arrive is a well-known practice, particularly at fine dining restaurants. New York’s famed Eleven Madison Park has historically gone to great lengths to find out information that could make a meal feel extra special. But what if this intel was used in other ways too? One California chef has long been researching diners online—and canceling their reservations or blacklisting them if he notices red flags in their public reviews of other restaurants. He’s also got a list of guests who’ve “misbehaved” at the restaurant and aren’t welcome back.
In a reply to a recent Tweet by Adam Reiner of the Restaurant Manifesto disputing the idea of Googling your guests in advance, Carmel Valley chef Michael Jones defended the practice. He argues that checking people out on platforms like Facebook, Yelp, and TripAdvisor not only has the potential to enhance their experience, it can also help restaurants identify potential bad situations before they unfold—or at least prevent them from happening again. A red flag might be a user who writes only negative reviews or someone who frequently denigrates restaurant employees, he says.
He started the practice at Cachagua General Store, his eclectic countryside restaurant that was open on and off in different locations from 2003 to 2018. Jones would run guests’ phone numbers though Spokeo, an online directory, before looking them up on Facebook and then Yelp or TripAdvisor if he could match their profiles. And at his current catering company and part-time restaurant, A Moveable Feast, where he claims to know most diners personally these days, he still keeps notes about diners—like their wine preferences or who is “banned” for life.
Jones, who’s worked as a chef for more than five decades, sees it as a way to protect his small staff. “You’re coming into my house,” he says, “mine, the servers’, the cooks’, my wife’s, everybody’s who works here. And I don’t tolerate misbehavior.” According to local news reports, in the past he’s used aggressive tactics, such as allegedly spraying one diner with a fire extinguisher when the guest wouldn’t put out his cigar.
His approach to hospitality, unsurprisingly, is controversial. Some TripAdvisor users have called his style “foul” and “pompous,” while others think he’s rogue but charming—a kind of mercurial savant. Either way there are also sticky questions around Jones’s methods. In the name of curating a vibe, the restaurant industry has a long history of discriminatory practices that exclude some diners.
In response, the chef says he is only trying to ban people based on behavior, not by their identities or political persuasions. And he admits his restaurants are an acquired taste. “There were wild peacocks and feral chihuahuas wandering through,” he says of the remote General Store. By weeding out those who he thinks are potentially rude or will flat out hate the restaurant he’s worked hard to build, Jones believes he’s shielding his employees and other customers from trolls.
The idea that diners need to come into restaurants with more respect has gained traction over the pandemic, a period that has seen a rise in impatient, prickly, demanding, and downright abusive behavior. But as the adage “the customer is always right” loses steam, where should restaurants draw the line?
Here Jones shares his perspective on the pros and cons of researching diners, the perils of restaurant reviews, and what factors he takes into consideration before canceling a reservation or blacklisting a customer.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When did it first cross your mind to research your guests ahead of time?
I was in Spain with my wife in 2005 and we were going to a fine dining restaurant for dinner. The waiter says, “What do you guys like?” I go, “Whatever, we eat everything.” And the menu came, and they’d obviously Googled us because it was tailored to each of us individually. It was amazing. So after that we would run names through Facebook, just to see if there’s anything we could do to amplify the experience. The more information we have, the better job we can do.
And that idea morphed into research that was designed also to keep guests out of your restaurants?
Yeah. We had a specific situation around 2015 where a group of people were going on both Yelp and TripAdvisor to leave scathing negative reviews. These were patently false negative reviews. They stand out because every other review we had then was four and five stars. And suddenly, there's all these one-star reviews. This felt vicious. This was, like, an internal thing. This was restaurant people going after other restaurant people or something.
So how would you actually go about researching your guests?
We’d run their phone numbers through Spokeo and then try to find them on Facebook. We used Facebook just to see their general demographic—like old, young, East Coast, West Coast. We weren’t looking to get rid of anybody there; we were more looking for information to make them happy. Then we would try to find them on Yelp and TripAdvisor.
Supporters of these platforms would argue that leaving reviews, good and bad, is the whole point of them. How do you think diners should be sharing their opinions?
Well, if it’s a real negative review, we reach out to the people and apologize.
The thing that makes me crazy is that people won’t tell me in real time when something sucks. I want to put a questionnaire on every table because that invites criticism. If something isn’t up to standard, I want to know. This past Sunday we had a guy who'd been with us forever and he sent his pancakes back and went, “These are not Cachagua star pancakes.” He was right. But when guests won’t say anything, then they have a negative impression of us going forward.
It’s a weird situation, where you want to encourage people to share their views, positive and negative, like if there's something wrong, but you don’t want everybody going off about everything online.
Why are reviews on platforms like Yelp or TripAdvisor so important to a restaurant? Do you feel as if people make a lot of their dining decisions based on them?
I think they do. They really look at the number of stars. Even a single one-star review can knock you down, depending on how many reviews you have.
What do you think it would take to hold customers accountable for their behavior at restaurants?
If they can’t go back. I think that's what it takes. We haven’t used it in about a decade, but we used to have a Google Doc shared with four or five other local restaurants. We only put people on there that were egregiously bad or amazingly wonderful. Most of the time people are great. But each restaurant can then decide if they want to deal with the tough customers or not.
What would land a person on the Google Doc?
One lady came in on Easter with her grandkids and sat at a table for three hours. We had to move the umbrellas a bunch of times for her. We comped all the kids’ food because they wouldn’t eat anything on our menu. They had only one bottle of wine the whole time and left a 14% tip.
Another time a guest wanted to know who the waitress voted for before she ordered. What could it possibly matter? It’s none of your business. It’s not anybody's business. But somebody that comes in with an attitude and they only want to be served in a politically correct environment of their own choosing, I don’t know. That just seems to be pretty egregious. The waitress, she wouldn’t say, so the lady left. That’s not acceptable. You need to be outed for that one.
What kind of flags would lead you to actually cancel a guest’s reservation?
Sometimes we just knew there was no way; they were clearly not suitable for coming to our place. They’re not going to drive an hour into the countryside and be comfortable sitting under paper curtains on a concrete floor with a possibility of a feral chihuahua wandering through. So we’d call back and say, “Hey, I'm sorry, the plumbing broke” or something.
That sounds like you’re making a lot of assumptions about people.
Well, if somebody was actively angry multiple times in past reviews about something that is the basis of our business, we would go, “No, that’s not going to work.” Also, there’s the people who just harp on every place they eat, you know? I’m not willing to participate in serial bad reviews.
If someone complained often that things take too long, and that was a major portion of their deal. Every restaurant they’ve been to can’t be slow. And if fast food is their shtick, they’re not going to enjoy us on a Sunday afternoon when we’re slammed. They’re not going to like it because you can easily wait half an hour for your first course. [Editor’s note: Jones has always had a small team, so food would take some time to come out. A reviewer who complained frequently about slow food would be a red flag for Jones.]
And, also, derogatory reviews of the staff; I will not allow anyone to abuse my staff in any way.
These seem like fairly subjective ways to filter. How do you ensure you’re not discriminating against people who want to dine with you?
It’s not something we do lightly. And it’s not something that we do regularly. More often the intel helps us say, “Okay, these guys might be trouble. Let’s make sure we see them right away and get the food out quickly.”
When I was in college I wanted to go to this restaurant where the owner was a famous asshole. But we went in there and my date had a pantsuit on. It was probably 1970 or something. We had a reservation and they wouldn’t seat us because we weren’t up to their dress code. They just took one look at us and they said, “No, this is not your place.” It was humiliating. He was being way too snotty.
So that aspect of discriminating, no we don’t do that. We’re only trying to be exclusive as far as people’s behavior.
To be clear, are you still doing all of this?
It’s very unlikely that anyone we don’t know would make a reservation here at a Moveable Feast. So no, we haven’t done it much lately. If there’s a catering gig we’ll Google people and try and figure out who they are—not for negative purposes but for positive ones.
If there is a problem, then we just mark it down and get over it. You know, comp the meal and get them out of there. And just say, “Okay. Never again.” We take notes, good and bad. Like, “Oh, this person was great.” Or “This guy loved the Chenin Blanc.” You know, that kind of thing. If somebody’s mean to the staff and I’m not completely buried in the kitchen, I’ll go out and throw them out instantly. Otherwise I’ll just usually write “banned.”
With all this extra work and monitoring, what is your end goal?
I once worked at this place in California and the lady who ran it curated an amazing environment. That’s what I seek to do: There’s three people in the kitchen, total. It’s going to take a while, depending on what you order. Meanwhile, we have a beautiful garden. There’s live music. Hopefully, you’re dining with people you want to talk to.
When the vibe spreads, other people who understand what you’re doing will come in. Our goal is to match ourselves to the customers. Last Sunday we had nine tables where we knew every single person at the table. Then there were three other tables where we didn’t know anybody. By the end of service, it was like they were part of the family too. We just ask that guests give the bare minimum respect to our place and our workers.