Bagel Shop Owner Pulls AI Posts, Apologizes After One-Star Reviews

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Adam Jones, the 53-year-old owner of Myer’s Bagels in Burlington, Vermont. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

We specialize in Montreal-style bagel production. For us, it’s just north of us. For the rest of the country, it’s a newer item. We don’t proof them as much, so they don’t get as airy. They’re denser and a little chewier. We also use wood to cook the bagels.

We’re about 22 people, and everyone takes the orders, makes the bagels, and does everything.

You always have to recreate the wheel to stay competitive. Social media is where you need to be. I’m not naive to it, but it’s not a stronger part of my experiences. So, I’m learning.

In the past, I’ve had great employees — i.e., college students — who love social media themselves, so they’re happy to take it on. It’d be good for a few months, but then the rest of their lives come into place, and it wasn’t a full-time job. It would slowly die. We’d get along fine, but then I’d throw another person on, and the same thing would happen.

Why I used AI for our shop’s social media posts

I was pointed to a company that helps small businesses with AI. It helps with human resources. I have a paid accountant and bookkeeper. They can give me their analysis, but why not have a third opinion?

This program does many different aspects of business, and one is social media. It was nice. There’s a calendar where you can build a whole month of posts to release on Instagram. We’re a college town, so graduation is coming up. I’d ask: What’s a neat spin on a post about graduation to encourage someone to come in? The program comes up with an idea.

It allows us to import our photos that we’ve taken, and it uses those, but it can tweak them. Part of the picture was real. I looked at it and said, “Not too bad.” Some of the AI bagels they had in the background didn’t look like ours, and I would say, “Can you make that smaller and thinner?”

It didn’t take long for our audience to realize what we were posting wasn’t 100% Myer’s. I appreciate their passion for us not doing this the way they’d like.

One had a picture of our retail bags for the grocery store. Those were actually our photos of the bags. The AI went into our Google, Yelp, or old Instagram comments and pulled out a review from Sam. It put our bags in front of a wood fire that wasn’t our fire, and took that quote and made a fake handwritten note.

Was it untruthful? Yes. Was it our fire, image, and background? No. For McDonald’s or anyone else who’s advertising food, it’s in a studio. But Sam is a real person. Sam made that quote, and those were our bags.

We have a picture that we’d used before of our baker rolling out the dough. AI took that photo, superimposed it on a nice wooden cutting board, and then put a fire in the background and a kettle to boil bagels.

That’s not how we’re laid out, and our customers know that. But it was our real bagels, real hands, real dough.

Between those two photos, I bet there were 25-30 comments for each one, plus people replying.

We had some very passionate, adamant people who went to our Google reviews. They left us one star, claiming nothing about the food, just about this situation. No one called us directly; it was more of a response through social media. The pen is mightier than the sword.

There were a few people who went in to defend us, saying, “Look, they’re a small business. They just wanted to be more creative.” I appreciate those comments, but certainly the negative responses were much more.

Some were very civil, others I would classify as not very civil. I don’t judge on that part. The medium allows it, and for us to be on it, you have to be ready to respond or fall victim to whatever you do.

I apologized — but I’m not anti-AI

We got quite a bit of feedback on a few posts. I went in, pulled them, and apologized.

I wasn’t married to the idea. It was a test, or the first foot forward. So, I was willing to erase them and say: “We will do better. We’ve heard.” It’s just like, if people don’t like a bagel flavor and it doesn’t sell, we will make a new bagel flavor.

We’re not anti-AI. We will continue to use AI in many aspects of the business, because it’s what’s going to keep Myer’s here for another 30 years. Without extra help, I’m not going to be able to keep up with the rhythm and the pace of growth.

AI is not going away. I look at it as a tool to do things better and easier as a business owner.

It’s not good for everything, but it’s a tool that has value to make Myer’s better for my employees and me. Ultimately, it’s also good for the consumers, since it keeps prices down and combats inflation. There’s a bigger picture here.

For social media, I think there’s still a place for it, but I need to tread much more carefully.