export_ofoct.com

[00:02.26] We're talking about a restaurant.

[00:04.12] A restaurant that became the top-rated restaurant in London.

[00:07.58] Except that the restaurant was a fake.

[00:11.03] It didn't exist.

[00:12.89] Yes, so we ask who did it, why he did it and how.

[00:18.73] Well, let's start with who, Richard.

[00:21.12] It was a journalist, OK? By the name of Ubar Butler.

[00:25.37] And what's interesting was that his original job included writing fake reviews for TripAdvisor restaurants, even though he never went to them, right?

[00:39.18] And he saw that these fake reviews actually helped the restaurants to become very popular.

[00:46.09] The reviews were always positive.

[00:47.68] Yes, obviously the restaurants themselves paid for him to write the reviews.

[00:53.00] Of course, which leads on to why he had his idea.

[00:57.51] Yes, he wondered whether it was possible for not only to have fake reviews but actually have a fake restaurant.

[01:07.34] Would it be possible to become the best restaurant in London?

[01:10.00] Yeah, now this became a challenge for him, didn't it, Richard?

[01:14.25] And we're talking about April 2017.

[01:19.29] So how did he go about it, Richard?

[01:21.42] Well, the first thing is he decided to use his real shed in the garden.

[01:27.79] That was the restaurant.

[01:28.86] Yeah, and he called it The Shed.

[01:30.98] And for £10 he was actually able to get it verified as a real place.

[01:36.82] Because it wasn't real, he didn't want to give his real address, so he made it appointment-only.

[01:44.26] And then, so he did that, then he designed a website and he created a concept.

[01:51.70] What was that?

[01:53.03] He named all his dishes after moods.

[01:56.75] So he had a happy, love, comfort as his dishes.

[02:02.86] So comfort for me would be something like shepherd's pie.

[02:06.84] Yes, and he also took some photos of the dishes.

[02:11.36] Yeah, those arty, soft, focused, close-up photos of food that is very popular nowadays.

[02:19.06] But they were all fake as well.

[02:21.18] Yeah, he didn't even use real ingredients, right?

[02:24.64] He used shaving cream instead of cream.

[02:28.89] Shaving cream, yes, and paint.

[02:31.01] He painted his things to look attractive.

[02:33.93] Yeah, so he had a name, had a logo, and lots of great photos.

[02:39.78] So then he submits his restaurant to TripAdvisor and... Well,

[02:44.82] it's approved and then it's put on their site for everyone to see.

[02:50.14] He started out ranked at number 18,149, but by the end of August he was at number 156.

[03:01.29] And by the winter he's number 30. How did he do that, Richard?

[03:07.40] Well, obviously, he has a history of writing fake reviews.

[03:10.06] Yes. He had lots of contacts.

[03:11.92] He got all his friends to write really great reviews for his non-existent restaurant and that soon got him shooting up the charts.

[03:21.48] It was all about the reviews.

[03:23.60] All the reviews were fantastic and it made all the difference.

[03:28.38] And of course he couldn't have any bad reviews because no real people went to the restaurant at all.

[03:32.37] Exactly. And then on the 1st of November, the same year, just six months after listing The Shed online, he gets an email from TripAdvisor.

[03:43.53] He's worried, isn't he?

[03:44.85] Yes, he thinks they've rumbled him.

[03:47.78] Yeah. But an actual fact is to tell him that he's London's top-rated restaurant.

[03:54.42] A restaurant that doesn't exist, he's told, is currently the highest ranked in one of the world's biggest cities on perhaps the internet's most trusted review site.

[04:07.17] Number one, Richard. I mean, that is just incredible.

[04:10.88] Now, he stayed there for two weeks, but of course now that the page has been deleted, everybody realises it was a fake.

[04:17.79] But he said it was a fake, didn't he? Yeah, he... It wasn't actually found out by anybody.

[04:22.04] No, no, no. He wanted to show that this was possible, right?

[04:26.82] And I suppose it's sad really because it just shows how easily fooled people are.

[04:34.26] How fake everything is.

[04:36.38] But an actual fact, in his own words, he's much more positive.

[04:40.10] He says, if he can transform his garden into London's best restaurant, then literally anything is possible in the business world.