Gaetano's Cheesesteaks: Salty Responses to Sour Reviews PART ONE

You know why you’re here. You live on drama just like the rest of us, and you saw some wild, sick owner response to a Google review on some place name Gaetano’s Cheesesteaks. We’ve seen them too. Reviews are kind of our thing, and in fact, we’ve written about owner responses to reviews already. And we have a time-honored “When Owners Attack” segment on the podcast, featuring such reviews.

But this is special. This is Gaetano’s after all. So. What IS Gaetano’s?

As they’d tell you, it’s a family owned and operated restaurant (since 2005), specializing in cheesesteaks, among other things, and located in Hamilton Township, New Jersey. Google them! (I know, I know, that’s probably how you got here).

Well, here’s a video primer. Brain Donahue seems like he’s a bit of a sellout, so take it with a grain of salt (I mean, who calls internet reviewers “keyboard cowboys”? SOME negative reviews are valid, some MUST have merit). Anyway-

For journalistic integrity, we have reached out to Gaetano’s for any comments they may have for this “article,” but at time of writing, we have received nothing (UPDATE- coordinating now, we may follow up with a second post!)

In all honesty, our “When Owners Attack” segment is very evenly split; sometimes the owner is in the right, sometimes the owner is a jerk. We try to look at the whole picture. But speaking of, let’s get to some snippets.

I mean, if you want to scour Google yourself, there are SO MANY of these. Here’s the link, but here are a handful I’ve picked out.

That first one is probably the most positive response I saw in my digging. Most responses are to one star reviews, obviously, but I did see some 3 star responses as well. A mis-clicked one star has to be frustrating, so it’s good to see they didn’t shred ccon c. Jack was not so fortunate.

I’ll admit, I was hoping to see a response on a fiver, just some honest appreciation for a positive review, but- well, we’ve got Jack getting torn up for a simple rating, not even a review! I’m not gonna say petty, but I might have to say double-standard in 3..2..1...

There are a lot of reviews that are more or less “comments” on the business and what they’re doing. It’s an internet thing. You see a funny review response, you search the business, find more, then decided you like it or hate it. Then you leave a review saying as much. I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do (it’s not, it doesn’t help anyone decide if they want to go there- they can read the real reviews for themselves, you don’t need to say the owner is rude or rad). BUT, if you’re going to eviscerate every reviewer who says they haven’t been there, how are you gonna just let the others slide by? Good for the goose and not the gander?

Honestly, I do really appreciate the effort of responding IN French. That’s something I can say about Gaetano’s responses. While there is often an uneasy tone of “is that racism?” or a bit of schoolyard body-shaming, oh, and certainly name-calling too, they DO still put in their work.

For anyone not fluent in binary, that translates to “go f#ck yourself.” Was that not enough effort for you?

Well! There are quite a few reviews where it’s clear Gaetano’s has looked at not just the name and profile picture of the reviewer, but also their other reviews (so they can comment on those activities), even going so far as straight up Googling this guy:

Again, I’m not about to say “petty,” but I am gonna call BS on the stats. Let’s go to Girard’s Ballotpedia page, which does tell us he’s an executive chef, so #factcheck, he ain’t just mopping floors!

I don’t need to tell you how to read those numbers, but I guess I will. First of all, I’m only seeing TWO elections, AND it looks like our guy did all right! He didn’t win it all, but he pantsed the write-ins.

So here’s the thing. The memes we see? All from Google, right? All the reviews I have here? Google, RIGHT? Yeah, yeah, right, Jesus.

OH!

That’s right, you got it. What about that other review hub? What about Yelp?

Interesting dang thing about that. There are a lot of one star reviews there as well. How many responses?

THREE.

All in 2015.

And they sound quite a bit different.

Nota bene: at some point, it’s impossible to tell when, Gaetano’s set their “owner” profile to the name and picture of Jeremy S, AKA the Yelp CEO, so there’s a little bit of the juvenile tinge to this business. But even so. Well. You’ll see.

Hey! IT’S THE WORD I WON’T SAY!!! P-E-T-T-Y! Interesting how that sounds coming from the business.

“Mean and unnecessary.” Pot? Kettle? What’s that color, everybody??

Oh, hang on, I have one more!

AHEM- to quote a famous Gaetano’s review response:

It is shocking to me that anyone can… say whatever they feel like about someone…

Life is too short for nastiness. For tearing people down. For meanness. Too short.

Maybe you really need to think about the things you put into cyberspace and the impact it has on the people you are judging.

That’s all very INTERESTING, isn’t it? Did Gaetano’s turn over a new leaf that happened to have bird crap all over the other side? Because to read these last three responses, you would think this is a hard-working, people-serving, honest and genuine business owner, just trying to make things right. NOT the type of person to say “kick rocks,” “jump off a bridge,” or “get weight management.”

To all that, I’ve got one thing to say.

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