We recently published a piece on our website titled In Defence of Food Blogs which has given rise to more comments on the post than anything we've written before. While there has been strong support for the article, there was also of course some push back with by far and away the most popular theme being that bloggers are ruining the dining experience for others. While the complaint confuses the principle of blogging against the way that the activity is carried out, it nevertheless raises a separate but still interesting question: how likely is it that your meal will be disturbed by bloggers?
Our conclusion, which we lay out below suggests that you probably haven't been disturbed by food bloggers that much, if at all. You might well have been disturbed by Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry addicts sharing the minutiae of their lives with their friends as it happens (including their meal) or through workers answering an office email, but there's less than a 2% chance that a blogger is also in the restaurant when you eat there. In fact below, we estimate that in the course of a year, for a diner eating out once every week, the odds that you've shared the restaurant with a food blogger on five occasions and noticed is also just 2%.
If you think that food bloggers are always ruining your meal then you are either:
Or possibly all of the above; read on.
To help answer the question of how often you do in fact share a restaurant with a food blogger, we turned to food blog aggregator site Urbanspoon that lists a staggering 537 food blogs that have posted a London restaurant review. We've then taken a sample of 20 restaurants that includes 3 stars, 2 stars, 1 star and no star restaurants. Some are recent openings and would be considered blogger favourites (Roganic, Zucca), others are London classics (The Ledbury, Savoy Grill, Caprice) and some are just seemingly unpopular (anything by Gary Rhodes). In our sample shown in the table to the right, the average number of blogger reviews per restaurant is 26.1.
We note that reviews start appearing around 2007 though clearly have gained in popularity but the past three years captures the approximate period over which most of these reviews have been posted. Now, if we assume that a restaurant undertakes one lunch and one dinner service five days each week, clearly there are 10 services a week, so 500 a year. If we assume as above that the blog posts have accumulated over the past three years, that is 1,500 services.
Very simply, 26 blog posts per restaurant over 1,500 services means that during any one service, there is only a 1.74% chance that a blogger is in a restaurant with you, or turning that around, there's a 98.3% chance there are no bloggers in the restaurant at all. If you prefer odds, ahead of turning up to a restaurant, there's only a 1-57 chance you will be sharing with a blogger.
Of course, those 1.7% chances mount up so below we've shown a graph on the probability of sharing a restaurant with a food blogger if eating out repeatedly. The x-axis plots the number of times you visit restaurants (perhaps in a year), the y-axis the probability that you'll meet a blogger during that period. The blue line shows the probability that you'll share a restaurant with a blogger during one outing that year, the red line the probability that you share on two occasions, and the green line that you will likely share three times.
Briefly then, if you eat out at restaurants that are bloggable (so excluding most pubs and chains) once every two weeks, there's a 34% chance that by the end of the year you will have shared a restaurant with a blogger. There's only a 13% chance that you shared a restaurant with a blogger on two occasions and less than a 5% chance you hit three bloggers. Eating out 50 times a year, so once a week, those percentages move to 58%, 34% and 19.9% respectively.
One in three individuals who eat out every week will go the whole year and never share a restaurant with a blogger!
Our conclusion, which we lay out below suggests that you probably haven't been disturbed by food bloggers that much, if at all. You might well have been disturbed by Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry addicts sharing the minutiae of their lives with their friends as it happens (including their meal) or through workers answering an office email, but there's less than a 2% chance that a blogger is also in the restaurant when you eat there. In fact below, we estimate that in the course of a year, for a diner eating out once every week, the odds that you've shared the restaurant with a food blogger on five occasions and noticed is also just 2%.
If you think that food bloggers are always ruining your meal then you are either:
- married to one,
- paranoid, or
- a very unlucky person.
Or possibly all of the above; read on.
To help answer the question of how often you do in fact share a restaurant with a food blogger, we turned to food blog aggregator site Urbanspoon that lists a staggering 537 food blogs that have posted a London restaurant review. We've then taken a sample of 20 restaurants that includes 3 stars, 2 stars, 1 star and no star restaurants. Some are recent openings and would be considered blogger favourites (Roganic, Zucca), others are London classics (The Ledbury, Savoy Grill, Caprice) and some are just seemingly unpopular (anything by Gary Rhodes). In our sample shown in the table to the right, the average number of blogger reviews per restaurant is 26.1.
We note that reviews start appearing around 2007 though clearly have gained in popularity but the past three years captures the approximate period over which most of these reviews have been posted. Now, if we assume that a restaurant undertakes one lunch and one dinner service five days each week, clearly there are 10 services a week, so 500 a year. If we assume as above that the blog posts have accumulated over the past three years, that is 1,500 services.
Very simply, 26 blog posts per restaurant over 1,500 services means that during any one service, there is only a 1.74% chance that a blogger is in a restaurant with you, or turning that around, there's a 98.3% chance there are no bloggers in the restaurant at all. If you prefer odds, ahead of turning up to a restaurant, there's only a 1-57 chance you will be sharing with a blogger.
Of course, those 1.7% chances mount up so below we've shown a graph on the probability of sharing a restaurant with a food blogger if eating out repeatedly. The x-axis plots the number of times you visit restaurants (perhaps in a year), the y-axis the probability that you'll meet a blogger during that period. The blue line shows the probability that you'll share a restaurant with a blogger during one outing that year, the red line the probability that you share on two occasions, and the green line that you will likely share three times.
Briefly then, if you eat out at restaurants that are bloggable (so excluding most pubs and chains) once every two weeks, there's a 34% chance that by the end of the year you will have shared a restaurant with a blogger. There's only a 13% chance that you shared a restaurant with a blogger on two occasions and less than a 5% chance you hit three bloggers. Eating out 50 times a year, so once a week, those percentages move to 58%, 34% and 19.9% respectively.
One in three individuals who eat out every week will go the whole year and never share a restaurant with a blogger!
Probability of there being a blogger in the same restaurant as you per year versus number of times you eat out
Even in the new blogger magnets like Roganic, there has been just 30 reviews in the year, so even here then, just a 6% chance that there was a blogger present (more than 17-1 against).
But if anything, overall, these probabilities overstate the fact since i) outside of London the probabilities of meeting bloggers will be much less, ii) not all bloggers are annoying or they may be far enough away from you that you don't even know they are there and iii) turning tables means there is more likely 15 services a week than 10. If only 50% of bloggers are annoying and we assume three services a day not two, the probability of a person person who eats out every week in a year being annoyed by a blogger on one occasion in that year is 19.5%, twice 11.4% and three times just 6.6%.
In conclusion then, people who complain about their restaurant experiences continually being ruined by bloggers are almost certainly very much mistaken. It is estimated that half of all adults in the UK now own a smartphone with 64% of all UK internet users on Facebook: new media users might be ruining your restaurant visit but there is a 98.3% chance it's not a food blogger.
But if anything, overall, these probabilities overstate the fact since i) outside of London the probabilities of meeting bloggers will be much less, ii) not all bloggers are annoying or they may be far enough away from you that you don't even know they are there and iii) turning tables means there is more likely 15 services a week than 10. If only 50% of bloggers are annoying and we assume three services a day not two, the probability of a person person who eats out every week in a year being annoyed by a blogger on one occasion in that year is 19.5%, twice 11.4% and three times just 6.6%.
In conclusion then, people who complain about their restaurant experiences continually being ruined by bloggers are almost certainly very much mistaken. It is estimated that half of all adults in the UK now own a smartphone with 64% of all UK internet users on Facebook: new media users might be ruining your restaurant visit but there is a 98.3% chance it's not a food blogger.