I was talking to a restaurant owner about their problem with Yelp. He told me that 70% of the reviews are negative, but he explained to me that people "yelpers" tend to write more negative & sarcastic reviews because the reviewers are trying to one up each other in their rhetoric. He also explained it doesn't make sense to rate a place a 1 star when a single person rated it a 1 star. How about all the other people who actually like it.
Overall, I think Yelp has it's pros and cons. I can definitely understand the frustration of the restaurant owner. Most of the reviews on Yelp seem to be more about the personality of the reviewer instead of the personality of the restaurant. Well, I'm not sure you can completely avoid this. This is the reason that Zoodango actually doesn't use the typical 1-5 star review system at it's current form. We want to show you first the total number of people who "like it" and you can also read quick comments about the restaurant. I personally like to see all the types of people who say that they would recommend a place. If 100 people from diverse backgrounds say it's a good place, then I probably would agree with them.
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Actually rating star review for one restaurant is a very subjective feedback from every single individual. Mostly, people will rate the restaurant from many aspects such as the environment, services, food presentation, quality of food or quantity of food, and etc. It's just depend on which aspects is the most concern of one individual. For those people who emphasized on service, if the service provided is terrible, he/she will definitely rate that restaurant for the lowest rate, no matter how good is the food. Anyway, rating review with comments is vital. At least, the restaurant can still work on for the problems based on the customers' feedback.