We have refused this number in every district and we are refusing it here, and the reason is a matched pair
Rum Kitchen holds a 4.9 from twenty-two reviews.
Twenty-two.
And we have refused this exact number, at this exact sample size, in a previous district – and the reason is one of the cleanest things in this survey.
The Bootlegger
Which is the proof, and which we found in Covent Garden.
The Bootlegger in Covent Garden holds a perfect 5.0 from twenty-two people.
And its sister branch, in the City – same chain, same concept, same fit-out, same training, same drinks list – holds a 4.3 from five hundred and twenty-six.
Same bar.
What that tells you
The 5.0 is not better.
It is the same bar with less evidence.
It has not been open long enough, or been busy enough, to accumulate its own worst nights – and the moment it does, the number will fall, and it will keep falling, and there is nothing anybody can do about it.
Every additional customer is another chance to have a bad night, and the bad nights accumulate in the average and never leave.
The venues on 4.9 in this survey are, overwhelmingly, small and young. The venues on 4.4 are large and old and have been doing it properly for twenty years.
The number is not a report card. It is a measure of how much has happened to you.
The full ladder
Seven postcodes, and we have now seen every rung.
No rating at all. Charles Darwin, in Covent Garden – a bar named after natural selection, being quietly deselected by it. And a bar in Soho called, simply, secret bar.
One review. Nellie’s Tavern.
Two. Bar Alta. Fire Bar.
Twenty-two. The Bootlegger. And this.
The dead zone – twenty to sixty – where four bad nights are fatal. Canvas Bar, on a 3.3 from forty-seven.
And the real numbers. Amalfi, on a 4.8 from fifteen thousand three hundred and forty-six. Unfakeable, unbuyable, immovable.
All of them are shown to you identically, in the same font, on the same scale – with the review count underneath, in grey, smaller.
They know exactly what they are doing.
What we would tell this venue
Nothing, because there is nothing wrong.
Twenty-two people have been in and twenty-two people have enjoyed it, and that is a genuinely good start and it should be said out loud.
What we would tell the customer is different.
Go now. A young bar with a small sample and a high number is, on the evidence of seven postcodes, frequently a room where somebody is trying extremely hard – and the trying is at its most visible before anybody is watching.
The number will fall. That is arithmetic and not a criticism.
Go before it does.
Verdict
Twenty-two reviews. Not a rating.
Go, be the twenty-third, and start the arithmetic.
The one fix
Print the review count at the same size as the score.
Not underneath. Not in grey. Not smaller. The same size, the same weight, the same line.
Do that, and a 4.9 from twenty-two people is visibly a rumour rather than a verdict – and a 4.8 from fifteen thousand is visibly the most reliable number on the page.
It would cost nothing. It would take an afternoon.
It will never happen, because the ambiguity is worth money to somebody, and it is not worth money to you.
Oeko Angebot ([email protected])
