Product Sense: Reimagining Yelp With Restaurant Operators as the Core Users

You are a product manager asked to design an app modeled on Yelp, but built for the people who own restaurants rather than the people who use Yelp to decide where to eat. Decide how you read the brief, which owners you are building for and which of their problems the app should solve, then propose and prioritize what goes into a first version and explain how you would measure whether it is working. ```hint Start from the owner's jobs List what an owner has to get done while opening or running a restaurant, then look for the job where a Yelp-style strength (local discovery, ratings, reviews) would save the owner the most time or risk. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does "like Yelp" mean a place where owners discover and rate the businesses they buy from, or tools that help owners manage how diners see and review them? - Are the owners already running a restaurant, or preparing to open one? - Are we building this as Yelp, alongside its diner-facing product, or as a new company borrowing Yelp's model? - Should the first version serve independent single-location restaurants, multi-location groups, or both? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A stated interpretation of "Yelp for restaurant owners" and the goal the product serves, with a reason it matters to whoever builds it - Owner segments compared, with one chosen and a reason grounded in how often and how badly that group feels the problem - Pain points from the chosen owners' journey, ranked, leading to a first version prioritized with explicit criteria - A plan for the cold start: why the first owners, and anyone else the product depends on, would show up before it has content - Success metrics with guardrails, and the main risks to trust in the product with mitigations ### Follow-up Questions - How would you keep ratings trustworthy when the businesses being rated could pay for visibility on the same platform? - How would your first version change if you had chosen the other owner group (already operating versus about to open)? - Which single metric would tell you to keep investing after the first launch market, and what result would make you stop?