![]() (Some appear in Yelp before they even open, as eagle-eyed Yelpers stalk construction sites.) Just as important, closed businesses are flagged on Yelp months before they are on other sites. In active Yelp markets, many businesses appear the day they open. ![]() With commercial data providers, 18-month delays for new businesses to be listed were common. Yelp unquestionably has the most comprehensive reviews and data set for restaurants and entertainment venues in the U.S. In Yelp’s early days, I would email CEO Jeremy Stoppelman with product ideas. I was an early elite member and wrote some of the first reviews of restaurants in Arlington, Va. I have been using Yelp since January 2006, early enough to get as my vanity URL. I like to get my biases out in the open: I’m a big fan of Yelp, the product. Yelp spent $38.5 million, or nearly two-thirds of its revenue on sales and marketing. For the first 9 months of 2011, Yelp generated a loss of $7.6 million on $58.4 million in revenue. That’s 3.6% of the 529,000 businesses that have claimed their Yelp listings and it’s a speck in the universe of the more than 20 million businesses listed on Yelp. In the quarter ending in September, Yelp generated revenue from 19,000 businesses. It turns out that when you’re upfront about what you’re selling and how much it costs, it’s harder to get people to buy. There is plenty of risk, it’s just hidden. In reality, it’s a “no money down” model. Getting and keeping small business advertisers is difficult and expensive. Yelp’s S-1 shows what we’ve known all along about the small business market: it’s a really, really tough business. Those merchant-funded discounts are what enticed consumers to sign up for Groupon. A lot has been made about the hundreds of millions that Groupon has spent on customer acquisition, but what has largely gone unsaid is that most of its marketing costs were really borne by the small businesses in the form of outsized discounts. We paid $48 for 3 cups of gumbo (broth) and 2 glasses of wine.Groupon showed that by convincing small businesses to sell their dollars for 50 cents (and charging them 25 cents for the privilege), you could generate a lot of revenue quickly. She informed me that "Our kitchen is the size of a postage stamp and we just can't get food out". I went into the bar again to talk to the manager who turned out to be the bartender who never waited on us prior. We were still again just sitting there waiting for our ticket and server is gone again. My friend had not one single piece of protein in his. We said we would just have this and to just forget about the rest of the food. At which time our server who we had not seen in an hour came around the corner with our 3 cups of gumbo. ![]() Not her fault so we just decided that we were going to go. She came back and very sweetly was trying to explain but it was clear our ticket was never put in. We flagged down a really nice young lady to see about our ticket. At this point we were just ready to go as most of the restaurant had emptied. We sat there for an hour and 10 minutes and never got any of it. We then looked outside our server was at our table. We then went into the bar to order drinks and waiting about 10 minutes for drinks and still got no service. The hostess never bothered to ask if we needed drinks or anything. I totally understand busy but honestly the restaurant was nowhere near full. The hostess came up to the table and informed us that our server was busy. No on came to our table for a good 15 minutes. Got seated at our table and that is where the wait began.
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