I recently found myself regressing into a guilty pleasure: obsessively reading Yelp reviews of brands that I love. You can stare at an Excel sheet all day and never truly know what’s going on in a restaurant business. While Yelp should never be viewed in a vacuum, I’ve found that spending some time reading reviews will quickly show whether your brand is riding tailwinds or facing headwinds.

“My love affair with &pizza began during my first trip to D.C …” read the first of many reviews I clicked. One after another, I was struck by the recurring declarations of fidelity to &pizza. The love wasn’t reserved for just one outlier shop. All 26 locations of this tiny upstart brand had sprouted a legion of devotees making their voices heard.