My Scoring Process (WIWI)
What is WIWI??
WIWI stands for “Was It Worth It?”. The biggest problem with Yelp, Tripadvisor, etc. is that people might give a restaurant with good food 4-5 stars, but that restaurant may be charging $30 a plate… If I could get the same quality food elsewhere for $15 a plate, obviously I would do so. Also I know they try to account for that with their $-$$$$ scale, but I find there’s still a huge range encapsulated in “$$” for example. Since I’m a Phd student (#BallinOnABudget), I’m defining a metric that focuses primarily on taste and value, in order to give someone an idea of how “worth it” a particular restaurant was for me. It does NOT mean the restaurant had to be cheap! If I paid a lot but the food still exceeded expectations, the WIWI score will be high.
WIWI scoring for restaurant reviews
WIWI formula: WIWI = 0.5(Taste) + 0.35(Value) + 0.15(Service & Atmosphere)
So the WIWI score is 50% taste (obviously the food has to be good!), 35% value (more important to me than service/atmosphere most of the time), and 15% service and atmosphere (not too important unless it’s REALLY good or REALLY bad).
Each individual component is scored on a 1-10 scale, with a 5 being exactly what you would expect for that food item or restaurant. This is how I try to avoid the inflation you see on Yelp, etc. where everyone has 4-5 stars. For example:
Taste: I’ve had many tacos in my day. No taco is bad. So if I eat a taco, and it’s precisely as good as I would expect a taco to be, the taste score would be a 5. So if a taco gets a score of 3, it doesn’t mean it tastes like utter garbage - it just means it’s slightly below average.
Value: This one is the crux of what makes the WIWI score a little different. If I go to a great steakhouse and get a phenomenal steak for $65, the taste will probably be a 9.5 or something - but the value will probably be a 4 or 5, because you’re dang right it better taste out of this world if I paid $65 for it. Similarly, if I order a cheap burger somewhere and it’s meh (taste 4-5), the value will also be 4-5 because it’s probably what I expected. If the burger unexpectedly tasted great, however, value would be much higher because it’s so much better than I expected.
Service and Atmosphere: Pretty simple/subjective. If I like the vibe, it’ll do slightly better than a 5. If I don’t, it’ll do worse.
Value: How
WIWI scoring for specific dish reviews
Same as above, except the only two factors are taste and value. So the WIWI formula for specific dishes is:
WIWI = 0.65(Taste) + 0.35(Value)
65% taste, 35% value. This one is strictly about the food item, so service and atmosphere don’t matter.