This seems like a very good idea...

I recently happened to be in a Starbucks where, interestingly, the staff members were chatting about how a customer had labeled this location as a "non-cozy" one. I presume the customer in question posted this comment somewhere on the web... The funny thing is that this 'bucks is more hard-edged Irish pub than prim faculty club, so it seemed to me to be a very fair comment.

But when we post an e-pinion, or blog comment or a comment on a rating service like Yelp! how do we know that the business we're describing actually hears our voice? Well, when it comes to restaurants we now have a two-way site called BooRah.com. This is a site, based in Mountain View, California, that both collects and posts restaurant reviews - you can see the ones for your own community by going to the site and you can search for reviews from other cities - and scours the internet for more reviews and comments on particular restaurants.

If you go to BooRah, you'll notice that selected reviews are posted but not all of them. If the restaurant owner wants to see all of them, he/she can subscribe for a small fee with BooRah to see every comment/review that the web service finds using search instruments. You will see a 1 to 100 percent rating at BooRah for each restaurant, summarizing the positive versus negative reviews. For example, I earlier posted my favorable comments on the Sombrero Mexican restaurant in Mission Valley, San Diego (one of 340 Mexican restaurants in San Diego listed by BooRah). BooRah shows a 100% favorable rating for this chain restaurant at this location.

I see two key benefits: first, we the consumers are not wasting our time making comments on the world wide web because Boorah will find them and publish them; second, the restaurants that subscribe to view the customer reviews will hopefully take them to heart and make the needed changes to keep their customers and boost their approval ratings.

Come to think of it, a few nice couches and padded chairs would look nice in my local Starbucks... and maybe a few nice heavy throws and a working cat or two!

(The photograph shows the co-founders of BooRah.)