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April/May 202 2 VII MAGAZINE on the summit of Mount John Observatory. After drinking speciality coffees and choosing from a sweet and savoury menu on the rooftop terrace, head out for a stargazing walk with an ‘astroguide’. For gourmet dining, there’s the Dark Sky Diner by the lake, with floor-to- ceiling windows looking out over the starry sky. https://www. darkskyproject.co.nz/eat/ astro-cafe/ PARIS ON ROOFTOPS, IN THE GREEN Rooftop restaurants have become part of the urban landscape. In Paris, many hotels open out into the green all year round, equipping themselves with shelter structures in the cold season. Inevitable (and indeed unique) is the prominent Eiffel Tower. The choice ranges from the Asian Mūn, overlooking the Champs Élysée, to the vegetarian gourmet Créatures on the rooftop of the Galeries Lafayette with a 360-degree view of the Ville Lumière, to Le Tout-Paris, a bar and bistro on the seventh floor of the Cheval Blanc hotel with a view of the Pont Neuf. The most original, however, is Le Perchoir Porte de Versailles, a bar and restaurant on the panoramic terrace of pavilion 6 of the Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles, next to Nature Urbaine, Europe’s largest urban rooftop garden. In view of the salad beds and strawberry shoots - as well as the ever-present Eiffel Tower - the proposal could only be short- circuit, or rather ultra-short-circuit: 100% of the varieties of produce grown in the urban garden are part of the La Table du Perchoir menu. https://leperchoir.fr/location/le-perchoir- porte-de-versailles/ AT PAGE 28-31 FOCUS ON Nightmare reviews TO COMBAT THE WEAR AND TEAR OF NEGATIVE REVIEWS, WE HAVE COM- PILED A LIST OF USEFUL TIPS ON HOW TO DEFEND YOURSELF EFFECTIVELY. AND ABOVE ALL TO AVOID FALLING INTO THE TRAPS OF SOCIAL MEDIA by Riccardo Sada Before selecting the perfect place to eat, the ‘modern patron’ checks and analyses reviews of at least a dozen restaurants, a practice followed by 91% of consumers worldwide. And it is precisely by reading positive reviews that the choice towards a particular restaurant is made. This practice demonstrates the importance of platforms such as TripAdvisor, The Fork and Google. So how do you maintain a ‘stellar’ reputation? First of all, it is essential to understand what customers think of your restaurant’s offer and brand. How? By always focusing on profiling and effective marketing techniques. THE FIVE BASIC POINTS 1. Working on a strong online presence 2. Encourage reading reviews starting with the most loyal customers 3. Respond to all reviews, even the worst ones 4. Incentivising customers with ad hoc offerings 5. Publish and disseminate (positive) feedback and use specially created management software This is not the end of the story. A restaurant feedback form would be useful, which should essentially help the manager to monitor and process all customer-related details. You can do this by automating your feedback forms. They will help the manager to better understand customers’ preferences and views, without - or before - they take to social media to share a particular thought. The forms are to be integrated with commonly used CRMs during the workflow and analysed in end-of- service meetings. Not only that, the restaurant feedback app, if integrated with the POS, can generate specific customer feedback forms based on the items ordered by the customer. This would make reviews even more accurate and full of basic information. HOW AND WHEN TO CONSIDER SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS “Reviews are a tool to make a restaurant known. And if, at times, they are misleading, in the long term they can prove to be true,” says Lorenzo Murray, owner of Classico Trattoria&Cocktail (Milan). “It’s good, therefore, to constantly monitor the various social media platforms to try to ‘anticipate’ the thought that the customer has of your restaurant”. In order to make our restaurant known and to respond to the reviews - also in foreign languages - we have relied on a support platform, Qualitando,” explains Federico Chignola, owner and chef of Casa degli Spiriti in Costermano (VR) . “With this system we register all incoming customers through social media networks or email, and we submit them a quality questionnaire. We therefore anticipate their willingness to review our restaurant, perhaps even badly, ‘mitigating’ their problems”. Transparency and experience sharing are fundamental aspects for the customer, believes Salvatore Butticé, chef at the Il Moro restaurant (Monza) : “The possibility of informing oneself and creating expectations from the narratives of other guests has become a consolidated practice for monitoring market-oriented processes. The feedback received is always fundamental for comparing the quality intended with the quality perceived and experienced, so it is very important for the organisation of our services”. In general, social networks are excellent showcases and almost all consumers take information from these platforms to find out more about certain venues.