Would You like a feature Interview?
All Interviews are 100% FREE of Charge
This told essay is based on a conversation with Cliff Smith. Smith is based in Palo Alto, California and serves as an evaluator for: EyeSpy Criticism and Consulting This work has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I started working at EyeSpy as a mystery diner over 20 years ago. Our friends knew the founder, Misty Boulton, so they were among the first to do it. And when they told us about it, we thought it was too good to be true. It’s about getting paid in exchange for a meal at a nice restaurant. Write down your experiences. We didn’t jump at the opportunity right away, but when I lost my job and started tutoring GMAT prep, I started a side hustle so I could continue eating out.
Typically, I complete about three evaluations a month, and my job takes me to fine dining as well as casual restaurants. In some cases, takeout orders may also be evaluated. One Saturday last month, my wife and I reviewed brunch at The Village Pub. Our budget for brunch was $250. And it was necessary. Actually, I ended up paying a little more than the tax and tip. The next Friday, the pizza delivery arrived. So it remains mixed and that’s one of the benefits. This side hustle allows you to go places you might not otherwise be able to go.
RELATED: She used her kids’ college funds to build a side hustle, but the product ‘didn’t sell’ — here’s how she got $100 million in sales on track
The process typically begins when you receive an email and visit a website to confirm that you have an assignment. You can negotiate when to do the assignment during the month. If you can’t do it that month, you may be able to explain why and accept the assignment the following month, but you may not be accepted again. It depends on what’s going on. Sometimes that doesn’t work out if you already have someone the following week.
There is an online survey form for each assessment, and they are different. Different restaurants have different priorities. For example, The Village Pub takes great care in how they handle their wine. Are they following proper protocols? Will they keep your glass filled? Elsewhere, you might not care much about that, but you might care about how many people say goodbye. Therefore, the form must be checked before evaluation. Even within similar types of restaurants, managers may value different things for different reasons. And you have to remember when they did things differently. Since we take photos, every photo has a timestamp.
Related article: This 29-year-old quit his marketing job and started a side hustle – and now earns nearly $200,000 a year: ‘I was really drawn to the adrenaline rush’
You must submit your evaluation within 24 hours. Initially it was scheduled for 2 days, but they changed it to the next day. In a way, that’s natural, because you have to remember a lot of things, and it disappears. The time it takes to complete an assessment varies by location. In the case of the pizza shop I mentioned earlier, he completed it that night, and it took him two hours at most. But I probably spent about 6 hours reviewing The Village Pub. In such places, you can’t do everything in one day.
You must also submit a photo. The reason I use Photoshop to crop photos is because I secretly take photos. That said, a lot of people are taking photos these days, so I don’t have to be too sneaky, but I don’t want to take too many photos because I take too many photos. It’s clear about that. I don’t always take great photos. I think so about food, but not so much about other things. However, if you are concerned about the table’s location, we may take a photo of the table to show the setting of the place. You will need to crop the photo so that it looks better when you send it later. Also, reduce the rest so as not to confuse the EyeSpy server.
Since July 2008, I have been tracking how much money is allocated to each assessment. That’s a total of $40,000. Of course, his actual numbers are higher than that since he started his side hustle in 2003. And of course, the cost of eating out increases every year. What I love about mystery diners is that you can go places you wouldn’t otherwise be able to go. You end up going to a restaurant like the Village Pub, where you don’t spend that kind of money for dinner, let alone brunch. I’m also going to try places that I wouldn’t normally go to. We always go to Oren’s Hummus, run by founder Misty Boulton, but I don’t know if I’d ever had Middle Eastern food before working with Ispy.
Related article: I started a semi-passive side hustle that makes $33,000 a week on Amazon: “Selling is easy”
I’m also grateful to actually have a voice. Generally speaking, if you go to a restaurant and are treated badly, you can ask to speak to a manager and you may be compensated or even get a free dessert. But I have nuclear weapons. If you notice something is wrong, there will probably be a change. This wasn’t convincing, but one time I went to a nice bistro in San Francisco and the server wasn’t very good. It wasn’t a deal breaker that would prevent us from going to that restaurant in the future, but things weren’t smooth or well done. A few months later we went to the same restaurant again. The same server was there, but now she was an assistant server instead of the main server. So I thought, Well, they listened. And she seemed fine with it. It was more suited to her skill set. It’s nice to know that she gets my opinion heard because the restaurateur paid me to listen to her.