Article

Houston plagued by fake restaurant listings

Somebody is creating dozens of fake restaurant Facebook listings for real restaurant locations in Houston. The question is, why?

August 9, 2016 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

Houston's temperature today is expected to hit 97 degrees — perfect gelato weather. But if a Google search leads you to Bop's Gelato shop, you're going to be disappointed. That's because somebody (or somebodies) is creating fake restaurant pages in the city — at least 60 of them at the last count, according to the Houston Press which broke the story earlier today.

In fact, the fake pages give real addresses that are usually occupied by completely different types of restaurants whose owners have been completely taken by surprise to find someone seeking an ice cream cone from a shop that exclusively serves something like tea.

For instance, according to Houston News reporter Phaedra Cook, if you go to the location for Ant's Acai Bowl on Bellaire Boulevard, you're going to get Sharetea bubble milk tea shop instead. The restaurant's owner told Cook he just didn't understand why anybody would even try to pull off such hijinx in the first place.

"Everybody I've talked to has been baffled," said Cook in a phone interview with QSRweb.com this morning.

Cook has contacted Facebook, which is looking into the problem. At QSRweb.com, we are also perplexed, and particularly intrigued to find out whether similar things are happening in other cities around the country.

Cook said many of the images used for the fake site Facebook pages have been pulled from other restaurant's websites worldwide. But other than that, the instigator or instigators of the scam remain unknown and unseen, though QSRweb.com will work throughout the day to find additional details as well as obtaining advice on how real food service operators might deal with such "replications" if they occur for their brands.

About S.A. Whitehead

Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.