Baz Butcher talks about when biting back is the only answer

Having had a long previous career in advertising and public relations before starting up St Giles’ Café, I knew the importance of marketing in the overall success of the enterprise, however small the business.

Running any business is a hugely demanding job, but you’ve also got to put the hours in and have the know-how on managing your reputation and building your brand. Yet it’s the thing that most often gets overlooked and not really understood because you’re full on managing the stock, the preparation, the service and the people.

I inherited an online reputation that was less than flattering. I knew that the café was and is a bit of an “institution” in Oxford and that many people would have views and opinions about my plans for change.

My start point was a web blog for which I was able to secure www.stgilescafe.com.

You don’t need to have a fancy or costly website, you need the ability to tell your story on a regular basis and use social media to direct your potential and regular customers to those stories.

The key is storytelling and contributing to other people’s stories, not just pumping out endless self-promoting posts, tweets and emails.

Despite my years of consulting about brand and reputation, how to use social media etc., nothing repeat NOTHING, had quite prepared me for the very small minority of people who didn’t /don’t like what we do, and who resort to social media and certain review sites to let rip their opinions.

I am someone who embraces critical appraisal and go out of my way to ask for it, but the highly personal and inaccurate nature of one or two ‘reviewers’ in a sea of really appreciative customers at the café and online, are the ones that stick in the gut and hurt.

Leaving aside whether you regard an opinion or review as “right” or “wrong”, the number one piece of advice that I used to give and was always given is this: the question (or opinion) is an invitation to speak. However you are feeling and whatever has happened or been said, doing NOTHING is not an option.

I’m very lucky to have a long-suffering partner who is too often woken up by my near continuous (some would say obsessive) checking of latest reviews, composing posts and general twittering.

But it’s just the way of today’s world, that even if you are a tiny café on a beautiful street in Oxford, news and gossip is going on out there day in, day out.

Giles Coren recently took a new start-up restaurant in Summertown to task in The Times, for having to wait over an hour and a half to have him and his children served. And he vented his spleen in CAPITAL LETTERS.

I still can’t imagine what I would have done if this wait time had happened in the café and then writ large in a national newspaper. But it wouldn’t have been NOTHING. A private and very public apology would be step number one. And then followed up by a public explanation of what the hell went wrong and what we were going to do about it so that it never happened again.

A few weeks ago someone left me a review on Trip Advisor that read thus: “Everything a European expects – over-priced, poor quality food badly prepared. Remarkably unpleasant sausages, mushrooms floating in fat, rancid tomatoes”. I URGE you to read my reply.