Five stars from a single person, and a name that is a limited company – the second we have found in one postcode
ROSTI BAR LIMITED. In capitals. With the LIMITED.
One review. A 5.0.
It is the second venue in the Notting Hill file listed under a corporate entity rather than a trading name, and we are beginning to think this is not a coincidence.
The pattern
We wrote in the first batch about Inda Pubs Ltd – a pub with no rating at all, no reviews, and a name that is a company registration.
We argued there that the mechanism is a trap: a venue listed under its legal name does not appear in a search, a venue that does not appear in a search gets no customers, and a venue with no customers generates no reviews. And that once a London venue has been open six months with no reviews, its statistical chance of ever accumulating any is close to nil.
Rosti Bar Limited has one. It is doing better than Inda Pubs Ltd. That is the entire scale of its achievement.
How this happens
Somebody fills in a form.
They are setting up a business listing, and there is a field marked name, and the person doing it – who may be an accountant, or an agency, or the owner at eleven at night after a fourteen-hour day – types what is on the paperwork.
Because that is what the business is called. Legally. On the incorporation documents, on the bank account, on the lease, on the licence.
Nobody tells them that the name on the map is the only name that now matters, and that it should be the name on the door.
Rosti
A rosti is grated potato, formed into a cake, and fried until the outside is crisp and the inside has collapsed into something soft.
It is Swiss, it was originally a farmer’s breakfast, and it is one of the great uses of the potato, and a bar built around it would be an extremely good idea.
We would love to tell you whether it is. One person knows. They gave it five stars and then said nothing further, and the internet closed over the incident.
Verdict
Unknowable. One review is not a rating, it is an anecdote, and we have been ruthless about this across two hundred and fifty-eight articles and are not stopping now.
But go. Somebody is behind that bar, paying west London rent, wondering why it is so quiet – and the answer is that their business is filed under a company number, and nobody can find them.
What we would fix
One field. That is all it would take.
Every business listing form in the world asks for a name. It should ask for two: the legal name, and the name on the door – and it should display the second one.
It would cost nothing. It would take an afternoon. And it would rescue a category of small, undercapitalised, family-run venues who filled in a form correctly and were punished for it.
Nobody is going to do it, because nobody who builds these systems has ever stood behind a bar at nine on a Tuesday wondering where everybody is.
Verdict
Unknowable. One review is not a rating, it is an anecdote, and we have been ruthless about this across two hundred and fifty-eight articles and are not stopping now.
But go. Somebody is behind that bar, paying west London rent, wondering why it is so quiet – and the answer is that their business is filed under a company number, and nobody can find them.
Be the second.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
