This essay is based on a conversation with Cliff Smith. Smith is based in Palo Alto, California and has been an appraiser for EyeSpy Review and Consultancy since 2003. The piece has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I started working as a mystery restaurateur with EyeSpy over 20 years ago. Friends of ours knew founder Mistie 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—to eat our meals at nice restaurants paid in exchange for writing experience. We didn't take the opportunity right away, but when I I lost my job and started learning GMAT prep, I got side hustle so we can continue to dine out.
Typically, I do about three assessments a month and the work takes me fine dining institutions as well as more casual ones Restaurants; sometimes, the estimate will also be for a pickup order. One Saturday last month, my wife and I did a brunch evaluation at The Village Pub, and our brunch budget was $250—and we needed it. We actually went a little over with the tax and tip. The following Friday, we received a pizza delivery. So it remains a mix, and that's one of the advantages: This side hustle takes you places you might not go otherwise.
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 do the task within the month, and if you can't do it that month, you can explain why and you can take on the task the next month, but you can't do it again. It depends on what's going on – sometimes if they already have someone for the following week, it doesn't work.
For each assessment, there is an online survey form and they vary. Different restaurants cater to different things. For example, The Village Pub cares a lot about how they treat it SUMMER. Do they follow the proper protocol? Do they keep refilling the glass? Other countries don't care so much about that, but they might care about how many people say goodbye. So before an assessment, you really need to look at the form. Even if it is 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 all of them.
You must submit the evaluation within 24 hours. When we started, it was two days, but they changed it to the next day. And in a way, this is reasonable, because you have to remember a lot, and they fade. The time it takes to complete an assessment depends on the country. For the pizza place I mentioned, I finished that night and probably spent two hours on it 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 also need to send photos. I use Photoshop to cut them out because I'm taking pictures stealthily – although it shouldn't be too stealthy because a lot of people are taking pictures these days – but I do so much that I don't want to be too obvious about it. I don't take great pictures all the time. I do it for food, but not so much for other things. But I can take a picture of the board to show the place settings if they care about their positioning. Later, when I submit the photos, I have to crop them to look better and reduce the rest so as not to bring the EyeSpy server to its knees.
Since July of 2008, I've been tracking how much I've budgeted for each estimate – and it totals to $40,000. Of course, the real number is higher than that because we started it side hustle in 2003. And, of course, the cost of dining out has increased over the years. My favorite part of being a mystery restaurant is the ability to go places we wouldn't go otherwise; it gets us into restaurants like The Village Pub, where we just wouldn't spend that kind of money on a dinner, let alone a brunch. We also try places we don't normally get to try. We go to Oren's Hummus, which is 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.
I also appreciate that I really have a voice. In general, if you go to a restaurant and they treat you badly, you can ask to speak to the manager, and maybe you'll be confronted or get a free dessert. But I have a nuclear weapon. If I notice something is wrong, maybe there will be a change. This was not vindictive, but once we went to a nice bistro San Francisco, and our server just wasn't very complete. It wasn't a deal breaker that would keep us out of that 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 a side server, not the main server. So I thought Well, they listened. And she seemed to be okay doing it; it was a better fit for her skill set. It's nice to know that I will be heard because the restaurant management paid to hear it.