How We Rate Our Reviews
At Recipe Mama, we strive to adhere to a strict and fair review rating system. We understand that a review can positively or negatively affect a restaurant’s traffic so we carefully follow a pre-defined rating formula to create a consistent platform to review each restaurant. While there is certainly always a subjective element to any review especially regarding taste and atmosphere, Recipe Mama does its best to minimize its role in the rating system to be as objective as possible. That being said, here is the official Recipe Mama rating system.
Our rating system is based on a 5-star scale with half-star increments, with a more stars indicating greater enjoyment and satisfaction and a less stars indicating lesser enjoyment and satisfaction. Each restaurant is reviewed in three major categories, each weighted differently in the final rating calculation:
- Food (65%)
- Multiple dishes are rated individually and a simple average is taken to get the overall food score
- Service (20%)
- Atmosphere (15%)
Each category is assigned a rating based on a 5-star scale and is then adjusted for higher or lower emphasis compared to the other categories as indicated above, then normalized to a 5-star overall score. Basically, the food rating is more than four times more important than the atmosphere rating so it will account for a greater portion of the overall score. And no matter what fancy math is involved, the final overall rating is going to be on a 5-star scale.
A rating system broken into these categories, rated individually, and weighted for importance allows us to better justify the overall score. Though price isn’t an explicit part of our rating system, each category is implicitly rated against the price so restaurants of all price ranges can compete equally.
