I checked out the social media reviews of the restau­rant we were in a few min­utes lat­er and it made me think; do we prac­tice this same cour­tesy in the dig­i­tal uni­verse?

It’s the sand­wich tac­tic, where a cri­tique is deliv­ered wise­ly, the meat of which is buffered by the soft­er effects of a com­pli­ment, and the encour­age­ment of recog­ni­tion. We all appre­ci­ate it when the spot­light is on us but seem to often for­get our graces when the gav­el is in our hands. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true when it comes to the restau­rant indus­try.

While it may be true that restau­rants have a mas­sive tool in social media if they use it well, the pow­er the con­sumer wields over them is unde­ni­able. Those col­lec­tive stars, inter­mit­tent blogs, tweets and shares can cause incomes to rise and fall with dra­mat­ic effect. Con­sumers know this and, in some cas­es, are frankly a bit drunk with the pow­er of the posi­tion they are in.

Con­se­quent­ly, being in the peo­ple busi­ness, they tend to val­ue the feed­back of peo­ple to a degree that can make or break their day and the mood of their teams.

As con­sumers, we can evolve when it comes to using this pow­er to cre­ate a cul­ture of improve­ment in our com­mu­ni­ty restau­rants.

I promise you, they are lis­ten­ing with intent and they are shar­ing it with their teams. It’s not sug­ar coat­ing and it’s not B.S. to tell some­one some­thing affirm­ing when it’s time to share some­thing dif­fi­cult. It’s sim­ply polite, and it’s wise in terms of the effect it has. And this, is how you make a sand­wich.