Can we all just agree to stop weaponizing Yelp please? It all started a few weeks ago when Urban Bean Coffee in Minneapolis took a hardline stance on Trump supporters in a since-deleted Facebook post, stating that basically anyone who supports “”this moron”” (we’re quoting their weird use of quotes here) wasn’t welcome in their stores. This of course ruffled the feathers of those looking to make America great again, so they took to Yelp to ruin the coffee shop’s reputation with a glut of one-star reviews. The only problem? WVEC reports the Trumpeters left reviews on the wrong place, instead casting digital aspersions at Orange Park, Florida’s Urban Bean Coffeehouse Café.
It’s an easy mistake to make. Googling “Trump Urban Bean” is obviously going to pull up the orangest search result possible, and that was good enough for the his supporters, who began leaving bad reviews on the coffee shop’s Facebook and Yelp pages. Owners DuWayne and Pam Hegel began noticing an influx of negative reviews coming from “Kansas or whatever” and they realized they had been hit by the errant backlash.
The Hegels took to Facebook to clear up the confusion in a post that has been shared over 200 times by their loyal customers, and that groundswell of support seems to have worked. The Orange Park Urban Bean is now back to having a solid 4.8 out of 5 star rating on Facebook and a 4.5 star rating on Yelp. All is well. But next time a business says something we don’t like, can we all just agree to not spam their reviews. Yelp sucks enough as it is without people actively trying to make it worse.
Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.
*top image via the Liberty Standard overlaid with actual quote from Urban Bean Coffeehouse Cafe’s website.
