- A New Jersey restaurant threatened to fire staff if they didn't get enough 5-star reviews on Google.
- The restaurant was hit by negative reviews after a Reddit post about the policy went viral.
- A director said it wasn't company policy and the employee who posted the sign has been fired.
A restaurant in New Jersey threatened to fire front-of-house workers if they didn't get enough five-star reviews on Google.
A director of the chain that owns the Tio Taco and Tequila Bar in New Jersey told the New York Post that it wasn't company policy, and that the employee who had posted the sign informing staff of the requirement has since been fired.
A photo that went viral on Reddit posted Friday shows the sign at the Edison branch of the chain, saying that front-of-house staff had to get a minimum of five, five-star Google reviews each month. To count, the employees had to be personally named in the review.
Staff had to meet the criteria "to remain employed at the Edison location," the sign said.
The sign also said that employees who got at least 15 Google reviews would be entered into monthly contests where they could win prizes including free food at the restaurant and a Starbucks gift card.
Danielle Smith, a director at Tio, told the New York Post that it wasn't a company policy and that it hadn't been enforced. The employee who came up with the policy at the Edison restaurant had since been fired, she said.
Thomas Bonfiglio, CEO of Tio's parent company Triple T Hospitality Group, told local news outlet NJ Advance Media Monday that the policy had been posted by an assistant manager without authorization from the company.
"It's not our policy," he said.
The sign was taken down 15 minutes after being posted, Bonfiglio said.
"In the restaurant business we're not firing anyone, we're still trying to hire people," Bonfiglio said. "So to think that we will fire people over this is a silly thing."
Tio did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment outside of normal working hours.
NJ Advance Media reported that people had bombarded the 10 restaurants owned by Triple T Hospitality Group with negative reviews after the Reddit post went viral.
Bonfiglio told NJ.com that he had hired a scrubbing company to remove the negative reviews. As of Tuesday morning, the most recent Google reviews for the Tio Edison restaurant were from five days prior – before the post got traction.
"It's not enough that we have a pandemic, it's not enough that we have a labor shortage, it is not enough that we have food inflation, it's not enough that people are insecure going in restaurants," Bonfiglio told NJ.com. "It was scary to read ... You have 2,000 people saying‚ 'burn down and die, let's put them out of business.'"
On review site Yelp, the restaurant has around half a dozen one-star reviews, with captions referencing the five-star review policy.
The Yelp page has a notice saying that it was being monitored by Yelp's Support team "for content related to media reports," and that it had disabled new reviews for the restaurant "as we work to investigate the content you see here reflects actual consumer experiences rather than the recent events."
The Tio Edison restaurant's Facebook page also has some negative reviews related to the Google Reviews policy, urging people to avoid dining there.
Triple T Hospitality Group has three Tio restaurants, all in New Jersey, as well as six Tommy's Tavern and Tap restaurants in New Jersey, and one on Staten Island.