Man Pretended He Had a Restaurant and Became Number 1 on TripAdvisor
I find this story so hilarious. Because I could also easily fall for something like this completely. When I’m abroad, I still check TripAdvisor pretty regularly. I always look up every tip I get there too, and you really do often come across lovely little restaurants. Take The Shed restaurant in London. It was simply number one on TripAdvisor for quite some time! You can’t go wrong, right? Although…
That restaurant didn’t exist at all. ‘Owner’ Oobah Butler writes for VICE.com, but before that he had another interesting job: writing fake reviews on TripAdvisor. And that’s how he got the idea; if you can fake all of that, could the restaurant itself be fake too? An experiment he fully committed to and documented on the website.
What Is a Restaurant Without Professional Photos?
The problem, of course, was that he didn’t have any space for a restaurant in the first place. But he did have a house. Okay, great. Location sorted. But a restaurant obviously needs some somewhat food-worthy photos, so he got photographer Chris Bethell to take pictures of the food. But, um, which food exactly? As long as it looks somewhat appetizing and modern, it’s fine. So yes; with a few dishwasher tablets, footwork and shaving foam, you can get a long way. Just look.
Let the Guests Come!
The website was up, and he bought a phone to take reservations: completely ready to go. The address was still a bit of an issue, so he decided to simply mention the street and add that it was an ‘appointment only’ restaurant. And that’s how the garden shed where he lived was renamed The Shed at Dulwich, London’s newest hotspot.
He started at number 18,149—in other words, dead last—but this was familiar territory, of course. The solution lay in all the fake reviews, which he already had plenty of experience with.
And then it happens… The reservations start pouring in. Requests for birthdays, weeks in advance. Two months later, he is number 156 in London without having served a single dish. Hilariously, he even receives sample packages from companies wanting him to use their ingredients or cookware. Ah, life of an influencer… PR agencies approach him about getting articles published on websites, and he rises to number 30. Reservations go through the roof, but they keep getting the same answer: we’re fully booked. And yes, make something exclusive and people only want it even more.
On November 1, 2017, he pulls it off: he is number one in all of London.
The Phone Just Keeps Ringing
People keep calling, up to 116 times in a single weekend. Every time, he says they’re fully booked (in the exceptional case that he actually answers). A joke that got a little out of hand? Definitely. 89,000 people search for his restaurant online in one week. London’s trendiest hotspot, and nobody has even been there yet. But that is about to change, because he is going to do it: The Shed is going to open for real, just this once.
The problem is that he can’t cook himself, so the guests are served one-pound frozen meals on a few garden chairs and a rickety little table with a lamp beside it. Call it romance and people are fans. He has no fewer than three tables, and he is stressing out completely: are people really going to be happy with this kind of ready-made meal?
And the answer is… Yes. People thought it was INSANE. Seriously, please read the whole story on VICE because it is so hilarious. And once again, it turns out that if you hype something up enough, people will become fans anyway. Even if you pay through the nose for a meal that costs less than one euro. At least you’ve been to the coolest hotspot…
Image: VICE / Chris Bethell
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