Welcome to Plancha: a practical newsletter for people who run restaurants, hotels, and hospitality businesses in Central & Eastern Europe. We’re building this because the industry deserves something better than PR dressed up as “insight”: utility first, every time. (If you want the full “what we cover / who we are / how we’ll fund this” version, our About page lays it out clearly.)
Our very first edition focuses on Google Reviews. Not because it’s particularly great fun responding online to people who leave 1-star reviews because they failed to make a reservation (“BuT tHeRe iS a FrEe TaBlE OVerR tHeRe, I cAn SeE iT, wHy WoUlDn’T yOu LeT uS sIt ThErE?!”), but because they are still influencing customer choices for a lot of restaurants.
A quick regional snapshot: ratings are crowded at the top
We pulled restaurant listings via the Google Places API (15 km radius from city centers) in Budapest, Bucharest, and Vienna.
A few useful takeaways:
- Most restaurants are “rated” (roughly 91–94% of the total restaurant universe in these cities).
- 4.5–5.0 is the biggest tier:
- Budapest: ~54% of rated restaurants sit at 4.5+
- Bucharest: ~48% at 4.5+
- Vienna: ~49% at 4.5+
- The truly low end is tiny (about 2–4% under 3.0 across these cities).
Translation: you’re competing in a market where “good ratings” are common, so recency, credibility, and how you handle the occasional bad moment matter a lot.
Review farming and potential consequences
As you can see above the jump in 5.0-rated restaurants is unusually sharp, especially in Bucharest, which may reflect a mix of factors, including possible manipulation. Google has some pretty clear policies as to what is allowed and not allowed on its platform.
