Yelp Now Shows If Restaurants Are Taking COVID-19 Precautions

Customers can report how well restaurants are adhering to guidelines.

At this point in the pandemic, most of us have visited a restaurant where the staff seems just a little bit too lax about the whole there's a deadly virus spreading like wildfire thing. Maybe they don't consistently wear masks, or they make you touch a dirty screen at checkout, or they don't offer hand sanitizer for customers passing through.

Now, we can more easily do our part to hold restaurants accountable with Yelp's new features that let customers report how well places are following COVID-19 safety guidelines. Just like users can offer feedback on whether businesses offer free Wi-Fi, have street parking, or are good for groups, they can now offer feedback on what precautions a business is taking to keep customers safe.

Yelp's new COVID-19 feedback tools | Courtesy of Yelp

The features allow guests to report safety measures like whether staff wears masks and gloves, enforces social distancing, requires customers to wear masks, sanitizes between customers, checks guests' temperatures, provides hand sanitizer, and offers contactless payment methods. Unfortunately, there's no way to report when employees wear their masks below their noses, but we'll take what we can get.

Once Yelp sees a pattern emerge, it will update the restaurant's page to show what customers are reporting. For example, if a lot of people say that a restaurant doesn't enforce mask-wearing, Yelp will trust that it's probably true and begin displaying that finding to warn future customers of the environment they'd be entering.

Of course, it's a hard time for restaurants, and Yelp isn't introducing the new features with the intention of hurting business. They've also introduced features that allow restaurants to self-report what they're doing to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Yelp's new business safety features
Restaurant owners can use Yelp's new features to communicate what they're doing. | Courtesy of Yelp

Restaurants can now tell Yelp if they're offering services like DIY meal kits and heated outdoor seating. They can also share which safety measures they're following, including whether they check staff for symptoms and offer contactless menus. If customers haven't reported otherwise, Yelp will take their word for it.

With great power comes great responsibility, and it's our job to only give Yelp fair and accurate feedback. Still, it's nice to know that if restaurants are ignoring COVID-19 precautions, we can warn others about the public health threat they're posing—and hopefully push them to change their practices in the process.

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Kyler Alvord is a news writer at Thrillist. Find him on Twitter and Instagram. Or don't. It's really up to you.