Why are you always so damn positive about places?

It’s a good question, so we thought we’d try to answer it. Here goes…

When we have a negative experience at a pub, restaurant or food shop (and we quite often do) we don’t mention it publicly. Instead, we ignore it, move on and do not add it to our recommended network.

We don’t write about negative experiences for two reasons: first, we don’t want to damage businesses, no matter how disappointing we find them. Second, our time is limited, so we want to spend it writing about the many excellent independent businesses that are out there.

GFC’s lack of negative reviews does not equate to a lack of critical judgement, or to financial agreements where a business pays us to write nice stuff. Instead, it’s a conscious decision to be positive. And to be clear, no business pays us to receive a positive review. You can’t buy a Great Food Club recommendation – they’re simply not for sale.

Our criteria are as follows: We only write about businesses that are:

1) Independent.

2) Somewhere we’d recommend to a friend.

3) In the East Midlands.

We also occasionally remove places from our network if they fall outside our criteria.

You can find who we recommend here.