Arbuckles back at top of TripAdvisor ranking in Downham Market after investigation
The former owner of Arbuckles at Downham has praised TripAdvisor for its professional handling of an investigation into false positive reviews which had been submitted by a member of staff.
And at the weekend the restaurant recovered its position as being ranked the number one restaurant in Downham on the review site having slipped to number three.
John Murphy, a board member of the employee membership trust, has also praised the way that restaurant management had dealt with its own internal investigation.
TripAdvisor intercepted reviews which had been made by a staff member, who is still unknown to Mr Murphy, when it became suspicious of emails which were identified as being sent from one IP address.
None of the false reviews were posted on TripAdvisor site, Mr Murphy confirmed. He told the Lynn News: "We had a policy where if a member of staff was named and thanked on a TripAdvisor review, we would reward them with a £10 voucher.
"We have had to change our position on that, which is a great shame because we had been running this for four years and in a normal month we would give around £300 to staff members. We want to encourage good service.
"TripAdvisor has been very helpful and I have been impressed with the way that they have handled this.
"The management within the restaurant, as soon as this was brought to their attention, did everything they possibly could to assist with the investigation and handled everything exceptionally well."
During the investigation, Arbuckles' lost its top slot as being the number one restaurant in Downham on TripAdvisor, which had applied a penalty ranking.
However, this has been removed. Said Mr Murphy: "We have now regained our number one ranking as being the top restaurant in Downham."
But he did confirm that because of the incident, Arbuckles has lost its TripAdvisor's Certificate of Excellence and it would be unable to receive one this year.
Mr Murphy and his wife Maxine, who opened the American-style restaurant and bar in 2008, sold the Stone Cross business to staff members in December 2018, with the business becoming an Employee Ownership Trust.
The move means that the business, which also has a site in Ely and is worth £7.5m, is now owned by the staff – of which there are around 120 working over the two restaurants.