Next time you’re browsing Yelp reviews, check out who owns the business.
The restaurants and shopping reviews app and website is adding a feature that will tell customers whether a business is women-owned. Businesses owned by women can mark themselves as women-owned via their Yelp accounts, and the distinction will appear in the “more business info” section of a Yelp page alongside features like “accepts credit cards” and “gender-neutral restrooms.”
“We’re excited to help raise the profile of millions of women-owned businesses who drive the local economies of our cities and towns,” says Miriam Warren, Yelp’s vice president of engagement, diversity, and belonging. “We’re hopeful that this new attribute not only makes it easier to identify and connect with great women-owned businesses on Yelp, but that it also drives more dollars directly to the bottom line for these female-owned businesses.”
Yelp, in a partnership with designer Rebecca Minkoff and her Female Founders Collective, is launching the feature at the start of Women’s History Month to help customers patronize women-owned businesses throughout March and beyond. A few thousand businesses will already be identified as women-owned on launch day, including Drybar, Milk Bar, Glossier’s New York flagship store, The Wing, and Sprinkles Cupcakes.
Identifying a business or product as women-owned has proven to be a popular—and successful—marketing technique. “It’s been a huge success,” Coolhaus co-founder Natasha Case told Marketwatch in February of putting a “woman-owned” label front and center on the brand’s ice cream sandwiches. “Once we put that seal on there, the way it’s connected and resonated on social media, with buyers, with shoppers, with clients—it’s been massive.”
“In working with a major corporation like Yelp, we’re underlining our unified goal to close the economic divide,” Minkoff said in a statement. “Our partnership aims to reach the most people—whether that be businesses self-categorizing as female-led or consumers searching for female-founded companies.”