Entrepreneur chef, Davide Cerretini’s business strategy is one that most restaurant owners probably wouldn’t endorse: trying to become Yelp’s lowest-rated restaurant in the San Francisco area.

“I really don’t want to be in the Yelp listing,” Cerretini has said, “so we decided if you can’t beat them, try to play the same game. If I can’t be removed from that list, I’m going to do everything in my power to be the most unreliable restaurant ever.”

Cerretini started offering incentives to customers to post one-star reviews on Yelp of his restaurant, Botto Bistro in Richmond, California. Anyone who posts an on-site poor review of the restaurant receives an immediate 25 percent off their bill.

Reviews range from sarcastic (“I might as well have been in Italy. YUCK!”) to supportive (“I can only give this place one star. To do so otherwise would show them disrespect. The pizza is fabulous and I want to support any business that’s willing to expose Yelp’s unhelpful review manipulation policies.”), but they all come with a one-star rating.

“Knowing we’re confident in our food, we decided, ‘Let’s go the other way. Let’s make fun of ourselves,” Cerretini explained.

Cerretini decided to start the rewards program in response to what he sees as Yelp’s manipulation of reviews and unfair practices to “blackmail” restaurants into advertising on the site.

“We did advertising, we tried to play the game, we tried to do what every other restaurant has to do to the point where finally one day we decided the harassment was enough. No more phone calls for advertising; no more worrying about the review,” he said. And there began the ‘25% off for a bad review’ idea.

From a Contradiction Matrix perspective, Cerretini’s problem looks like this:

And his solution presents us with a inspiringly brave illustration of Inventive Principle 13, The Other Way Around.

The result? A ten-fold increase in business. Then Yelp complained. So Cerretini got himself an interview on Trevor Noah’s Daily Show to announce his new offer. 50% off the price of your meal for a bad review.

He now also offers blockbuster-success ‘One Star’ Italian cooking courses. Not sure if that counts as an example of Principle 5 or 7?

Here more about Cerretini’s inspiring little-guy-fights-back story at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001rym0.