Iowa City Restaurant Appears to be Using Immoral Business Practices

I've been on patrol, researching the Google reviews for a local restaurant in Coralville, and posting them to Facebook for further exposure. I will be documenting my findings here. These are my original posts. Please note that these are solely my opinions based on what I've experienced myself at their establishment, as well as what I've found online while looking into their reviews.

February 2, 2023

LOCAL RESTAURANT EXPOSED by me for fun

Tavern Blue has been buying positive reviews on Google, in my opinion, and it has been such an ongoing joy to watch. This restaurant is the worst place I've ever been, and as a lover of all things horrible, I am absolutely obsessed with this establishment.

I noticed recently that the Google reviews for Tavern Blue were uncharacteristically positive lately, so I felt I needed to give it a closer look. That's when I noticed some of the reviewers names; Minar Asta, Bogiko Syrille, Doriand Yonou Njaba, many other names that when I looked them up on social media, they live in places such as Cameroon, Ngaoundéré, Bangangté, and Senegal. Then there were other reviewers with more familiar names such as Liam Hemsworth and Tommy Hilfiger, who, despite their global success in film and fashion, have gone their entire lives reviewing only one restaurant on Google, Tavern Blue in Coralville, Iowa. Each and every one of these suspicious reviewers had a 5-star experience which is nearly impossible at a place like this.

This is all being brought to light because I recently had an encounter with someone on Yelp (I had to post my own reviews on Yelp because it was removed from Google), who left a review similar to mine. He and his wife went to Tavern Blue, had a terrible experience, and dwelled on it for weeks because of the ironic entertainment factor. I sent him a message to basically just say "HEY sup I also love to hate this place and I stumbled across your review because I obsessively read every review they ever get." He was happy to hear from me and went on to tell me that he had originally posted his review on Google but the next day it was "blocked and then had 30+ positive reviews in its place." He and his wife have suspicions that they are paying a review farm to curate their ratings. INTERESTING, I TOO HAVE THIS SUSPICION.

I checked in with them on Google Reviews today and to my surprise, last night they gained eleven new 5-star reviews. Shout out to Abubakar, Aman Yadav, Aniket Kimar, Ankit Rana, Ankur Kumar Bharti, Ankur Pal, Teena Kamal, Hemu Sankhwar, Vandhna, Himani, and Tim.

Tavern Blue, your customers are not stupid, and we see exactly what's happening. That being said, at this point I wouldn't mind if you took things a little further and not only continued to pay for more strangely positive reviews and continue to make your restaurant worse and worse, but also start using more of your funds towards these reviews and to compensate just start charging even more for your already poorly valued foods and drinks (based on multiple reviews).

The owners read each and every review on all platforms, and they respond to them all. The best part is that they acknowledge the reviewer's bad experience, but they don't ever address any of the issues, and I know this because I can (and I do) read 10 negative reviews with all different complaints and/or suggestions, and then 6 months to a year later you'll keep seeing those same 10 problems in other reviews. It's quite beautiful actually. It's almost impressive how unshakable this business is. I guess it really is just laziness, but I like to think they are just brave, unwavering soldiers in this fight for life, and they're hanging on by a thread.

In conclusion: I love the place, it's about time we go for our regular 6 month checkup to see what suggestions they have not even tried to take from their very helpful reviews. I suggest you ALL go and enjoy yourself and then leave an honest review so I can read it.

EDIT: This just got really good. I just checked their reviews again and they have a TON of new ones, all from one hour ago. These reviewers (mostly from India, some just straight up fake names, maybe just one person with lots of Google accounts) were clearly given the instruction to comment on something specific, most of them just read the ingredients in a menu item. Some of these, and the others from yesterday, mention a "play area" so there must be some miscommunication with language barriers. To clear up any confusion there is not a play area, just a very bad mini golf course. These were really fun to read so I've included them for your viewing pleasure! Enjoy!