Restaurant Marketing Workshop

Ovation, Tap leaders share tips on crafting a guest feedback strategy

A panel talk at the upcoming Restaurant Marketing Workshop will deliver insight on not only getting a guest feedback approach up and running but tips and advice on making it a success.

Photo: Willie Lawless/Connect Media

May 15, 2026 by Judy Mottl — Editor: RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com, Connect Media

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There is no debate that guest feedback is a critical aspect in improving operations and staffing activity as well as driving stronger customer loyalty and customer engagement.

But not every restaurant operator has a top tier guest feedback strategy and many don't even know how to create and develop such an important strategy.

A panel talk at the upcoming Restaurant Marketing Workshop will deliver insight on not only getting a guest feedback approach up and running but tips and advice on making it a big success.

The workshop, sponsored by Ovation and hosted by Connect Media, will take place June 2-3 in Boston.

The panel talk, "How to Have a 5-Star Guest Feedback Program," features top restaurant leaders sharing expertise and real-life experiences. It will provide a clear, actionable playbook for not only collecting and responding to feedback, but how to use guest feedback, to drive retention and revenue.

Participants include Zach Oates, founder and CEO at Ovation, a guest feedback platform, Pedro Uchoa, partner and CEO of Tap, a Brazilian fast-casual brand with locations in New York City and Miami and Marc Howland, founder and CEO of Breadless, a Detroit fast casual brand..

Marshall supports brand, digital, loyalty, franchise, and community marketing initiatives across corporate and franchise locations. She has supported the marketing execution of nine restaurant openings at Starbird, with ownership of major brand, digital and community workstreams. Oates grew up in restaurants before jumping into startups and founding three companies. Uchôa is a former professional soccer player turned marketer. Tap, with has a 33,000-member loyalty program, averages 4.8 stars across all locations. Howland began his career at Goldman Sachs and The Carlyle Group before pivoting into food, working as a sandwich maker at Jimmy John's to learn the business from the ground up.

Avoiding big missteps

When it comes to crafting a guest feedback strategy restaurants can make many a misstep. The biggest one, according to Uchoa, is treating guest feedback as a reputation management task instead of a business intelligent tool.

"Most brands are playing defense. Responding to protect their star rating. The brands winning right now are playing offense, mining feedback for patterns, turning recurring complaints into operational fixes, and turning five-star moments into marketing fuel," he said in an email interview. "We love to think that a single piece of feedback has changed a menu item, inspired a campaign, and motivated an entire team. That only happens when you stop seeing feedback as noise and start seeing it as a signal."

Another big mistake is relying on methods like table touches, online review and long receipt surveys as a primary source of insight, according to Oates.

"Those absolutely have their place, but table touches aren't honest or scalable (only 1 in 26 share), online reviews skew heavily toward extremes (less than 1% leave reviews), and long surveys focus on very few (.5-3% of people take long survey)," he said in an email interview. "The result is a fragmented and delayed view of the guest experience. Brands need to be able to see that information in one place."

Handling the good and the bad feedback

Guest feedback falls into a few specific buckets: good feedback, negative feedback and general/opinion feedback.

While it's all 'feedback,' it's not good practice to treat them all the same, according to the panel experts.

Uchoa advises not to treat them equally and that the 'bad' requires more urgency in terms of resp9onse.

"Good and bad feedback serve entirely different purposes. A one- or two-star review is a fire that needs to be put out quickly, ideally within the next few hours," he said.

"Silence in the face of a bad review sends a message to every potential guest who reads it. But a 5-star review isn't just a pat on the back; it's a marketing asset, a staff motivator, and proof of the brand's promise in action. The mistake is treating 5-star reviews as the finish line. They're actually the starting line for loyalty."

Oates agreed bad feedback demands more attention.

"If you can address it quickly, that's where some real hospitality can happen. Good feedback reinforces what's working and can lead to evangelism from those guests," he said.

Good first steps

The first step in building a successful guest feedback strategy is doing an audit of where the feedback is flowing from, according to Uchoa. The channels include everything from Google and Yelp to the point of sale platform to post-visit surveys.

"Feedback is already flowing, whether you have a program or not. Most brands are missing half of it because it lives in silos," he said.

So step one is mapping every feedback touchpoint.

"Then it's about asking which ones am I actually reading, responding to, and acting on? That audit alone usually reveals two or three immediate fixes. The mindset shift, seeing feedback as a gift, not a threat, has to come first, but the audit turns that mindset into action," said Uchoa.

Oates said a good first step is to make it super easy for the guest to provide feedback.

"You can increase the completion by 67% by reducing the initial survey. Friction is what keeps you from hearing from the average guest," he said. "The simpler and faster the feedback experience, the more volume you'll get, and volume is what gives you a true picture of what's happening across your locations. The value is in the volume."

The staff role in guest feedback

When it comes to the role restaurant staff play in the guest feedback strategy Uchoa recommends sharing feedback with staff and sharing with intention and not just transparency.

"Here we have a two-track approach. Constructive feedback that requires action goes to the location manager, who brings it to pre-shift meetings where it can be addressed directly, with focus and without embarrassment," he said.

"But once a week, I personally share one or two standout five-star reviews from each location in our team group chat, and whenever a guest mentions a team member by name, that goes straight to the group. That ritual does something powerful: it reminds every employee that their work is seen, that every guest interaction matters, and that hospitality directly impacts our reputation. Well-shared feedback doesn't just fix problems; it also helps build culture."

Oates agreed with the approach noting it keeps everyone accountable and motivated and that celebrating positive feedback boosts morale.

"If there's something negative, it's a chance to coach and improve as a team. This is where the real change happens," he said. "I often talk about the loop of tracking and training. If you track but don't train, you're not really accomplishing anything! It is also critical to ensure that someone responds to the negative feedback because a guest who has been properly recovered spends 5x more per year than the average guest."

About Judy Mottl

Judy Mottl is the editor of RetailCustomerExperience.com and DigitalSignageToday.com at Connect Media. She is an award-winning editor, reporter and blogger who has worked for top media for nearly four decades, including AOL, InformationWeek and Internet News, as well as for leading technology providers including HP. She’s written everything from breaking news to in-depth industry trends and reported on technology long before the internet arrived, including the debut of the first smartphone. When she's not sharing insights on digital signage deployments and trends in retail customer experience she's on the beach or watching the latest live murder trial.

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