This narrative essay is based on a conversation with Cliff Smith. Smith is based in Palo Alto, California and has been an appraiser for EyeSpy Critiquing & Consulting since 2003. The material has been edited and shortened for clarity.
I started working as a mystery restaurant with EyeSpy over 20 years ago. Our friends knew the founder, Misty Boulton, so they were among the first people to do it, and when they told us about it, we thought it sounded too good to be true—having our meals at nice restaurants paid for in exchange for writing of experience. We didn’t jump at the opportunity right away, but when I lost my job and started teaching GMAT prep, I picked up the side hustle so we could continue dining out.
I usually do about three appraisals a month and my work takes me to fine dining establishments as well as more casual restaurants; sometimes the estimate will even be for a takeout order. One Saturday last month, my wife and I scored a brunch at The Village Pub, and our brunch budget was $250 – and we needed it. We actually went a little overboard with the tax and tip. The following Friday we got a pizza delivery. So it remains a mix, and that’s one of the benefits: that side hustle takes you to places you wouldn’t otherwise go.
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The process usually starts when you receive an email, then go to the website and see that you have an assignment. You can negotiate when to complete the assignment within the month, and if you can’t do it this month, you can explain why and potentially take the assignment next month, but you may not get it again. It depends on what’s going on – sometimes if they already have someone for the next week, it doesn’t work out.
There is an online survey form for each assessment and they differ. Different restaurants cater to different things. For example, The Village Pub are very particular about how they handle wine. Are they following the correct protocol? Do they keep filling your cup? Other places don’t care that much, but they might care how many people say goodbye to you. So before grading, you really need to look at the form. Even if it’s a similar type of restaurant, management may care about different things for different reasons. And you have to remember when they did different things. I take pictures so I have a time stamp for everything.
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You must submit the assessment within 24 hours. When we started it was two days, but they changed it to the next day. And in a way it makes sense because you have to memorize a lot and it really fades. The time required to complete the assessment depends on the location. For the pizzeria I mentioned, I finished it the other night and spent maybe two hours at most. But I probably spent about six hours evaluating The Village Pub. I wouldn’t do it all in one day for a place like that.
We need to send pictures too. I use Photoshop to cut them out because I secretly take the pictures—although it doesn’t have to be too secret because a lot of people take pictures these days—but I do so much that I don’t want to be obvious about it. I don’t take great pictures all the time. For food yes, but for other things not so much. But I can take a picture of the table to show the place settings if they care about their positioning. Later, when I send the photos, I have to crop them to make them look better, and reduce the rest so as not to bring the EyeSpy server to its knees.
Starting in July 2008, I tracked how much I was budgeted for each estimate — and it came out to a total of $40,000. Of course, the actual number is higher than that because we started the side job in 2003. And of course, food costs out have increased over the years. My favorite part of being a mystery restaurant is being able to go places we wouldn’t otherwise; this leads us to restaurants like The Village Pub, where we simply wouldn’t spend that much money on dinner, let alone brunch. We also try places that we normally don’t get to try. We go to Oren’s Hummus, owned by founder Mistie Boulton, all the time, but before working with EyeSpy, I’m not sure if we’d ever had Middle Eastern food.
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I also appreciate that I actually have a voice. In general, if you go to a restaurant and they misbehave with you, you can ask to speak to the manager and maybe you’ll get a gripe or get a free dessert. But I have a nuclear weapon. If I notice that something is not right, there will probably be a change. It wasn’t revenge, but we went to a nice bistro in San Francisco once and our server just wasn’t very accomplished. It wasn’t a deal breaker that would keep us from this restaurant in the future or anything, but things weren’t smooth or well done. A few months later we went back to the same restaurant and the same server was there, but now she was an assistant server, not a main server. So I thought Well, they listened. And she looked good doing it; was better suited to her skill set. It’s nice to know they will hear me because the restaurant management paid to hear it.
