How to Become a Secret Shopper at Detroit Restaurants
How do you become a secret shopper at restaurants? Could this actually mean you’d get free meals (or at least a big discount?) – this TikTok video has gone viral and has me wondering:
@michel.c.janse hot tip for my fellow foodies! 🤌🏼
♬ original sound - Michel Janse
Can you do this here in Detroit?
So I took her advice and signed up on iSecretShop.com to check it out.
**NOTE – we are BY NO MEANS endorsing this website…just sharing it for info purposes only**
Here’s what I learned so far:
- Registration was easy and pretty straight forward (name, address, etc. – nothing out of the ordinary)
- I live in Waterford and have multiple opportunities to “secret shop” some restaurants. I noticed Jet’s Pizza had a bunch of locations…as well as the Costco in Auburn Hills.
- There’s a contract involved…don’t be scared. I took the time to scan through the payment documents and requirements – one of the assignments told me payment would be via paypal and take 45 days to process. They’d also need info for a W-9 (so this isn’t under the table, everything has to be documented of course). Again, nothing out of the ordinary.
- I’m going to try one of these this week to see how the entire process works.
How to spot a “Secret Shopper”
The other side of this is – what if YOU own the business and you’re being visited by Secret Shoppers (might be happening more than you think – the industry is 2 billion worldwide).
How would you know? Found an interesting article about it with some tips:
- They’re taking photos. …
- Keeping a list. …
- Asks too many questions. …
- Reluctant or slow to answer questions. …
- Asks about your competitors. …
- They check out the bathroom. …
- They track the time.
Of course you could do what we did on the show and just show up to eat (call it a “restaurant road trip) – we paid for every meal and always had fun (Ryan never took notes btw)
