Polish law does not oblige a restaurant to publish guest reviews, but publishing them creates duties. The act on countering unfair market practices names as unfair the claim that reviews come from consumers who used or bought the product when the venue took no reasonable and proportionate steps to check. Commissioning and distorting reviews fall under the same list.
Showing reviews is an act with legal consequences
A wall of guest quotes on a restaurant site looks like decoration. In Polish law it is a market practice, and market practices have their own statute: the act on countering unfair market practices, consolidated text Dz.U. 2023 poz. 845. Its operative sentence is one line — unfair market practices are prohibited (Dz.U. 2023 poz. 845, art. 3, Sejm ISAP, opened 28.08.2026). The rest explains which practices count.
Unfair market practice — a category of that act, and not the same thing as breaking a platform's rules. A platform can pull a listing down; the act attaches a legal consequence, and the two travel on separate tracks.
The general clause sits in art. 4 ust. 1: a practice is unfair when it is contrary to good practice and materially distorts, or may distort, the market behaviour of the average consumer. Immediately after it, art. 4 ust. 2 does something that matters here: a misleading practice and an aggressive practice are unfair and are not assessed against the conditions of ust. 1 at all. Reviews live on the misleading side of that split, which is why nothing below asks whether a particular guest was actually harmed.
Under art. 2 pkt 4 a market practice is an action or an omission of the trader, a way of proceeding, a statement or commercial information connected with the promotion or acquisition of a product. Two words there decide most of this page. Omission means saying nothing can be the practice. Statement means a sentence on your site is a practice even if nobody clicked anything.
Who the act calls a trader and who it calls a consumer
A trader under art. 2 pkt 1 includes natural and legal persons and organisational units without legal personality running a business or professional activity, even if that activity is neither organised nor continuous, together with anyone acting in their name. A single-owner bistro is inside. So is the agency that runs its profiles on its behalf. A product under art. 2 pkt 3 is any good or service. A dinner is a product; a table for four on Saturday is a product.
The measuring stick is the average consumer, whom art. 2 pkt 8 describes as reasonably well informed, attentive and careful — deliberately not "the most gullible reader" and not "a lawyer". The question a restaurateur has to answer about their own wall is: would a reasonably careful person reading this page believe something the venue cannot back up? Usually nobody asks, because the approval and HACCP route eats the first months and the wall is built once and never revisited.
The wording the act actually uses, and the word it never uses
Two points of the act's black list carry this whole subject. The black list opens art. 7 with the phrase that misleading market practices listed there are unfair in all circumstances. There are twenty-six points in that list, numbered without a gap, and the last three were added later.
The first of the two, in English, and with the act's own Polish terms kept where they carry the meaning: a trader who gives access to opinii konsumentów o produktach claims that those opinions were posted by consumers who used or bought the product, although that trader has taken no uzasadnionych i proporcjonalnych kroków — reasonable and proportionate steps — to check whether the opinions really come from them (Dz.U. 2023 poz. 845, art. 7 pkt 25, Sejm ISAP, opened 28.08.2026). The Polish sentence in full is at that link, and this page does not reprint it: reprinting a statute in a page that cannot carry Polish letters would produce a quotation that is not one.
The second is shorter and blunter: posting, or commissioning another person to post, untrue consumer opinions or recommendations, or zniekształcanie — distorting — consumer opinions or recommendations in order to promote products (Dz.U. 2023 poz. 845, art. 7 pkt 26, Sejm ISAP, opened 28.08.2026).
opinie i rekomendacje konsumentów — the act's own term for what everyday Polish, and everyday English, calls reviews. The word recenzja does not appear anywhere in this act. Neither does any word for stars or scores. That is not a stylistic detail: an argument built on "our reviews" and an argument built on the act's opinie are the same argument only as long as the second one is the one quoted.
| everyday word | the act's word | why the difference matters |
|---|---|---|
review, recenzja | opinia konsumenta | recenzja is absent from the act; quoting it as statutory language misquotes the act |
| recommendation from a regular | rekomendacja konsumenta | the act names recommendations separately in the same point, so a "thank-you note" is covered too |
| star rating, score | no term in this act | the act regulates the opinions, not the arithmetic laid over them |
| endorsement by an influencer | not named in this act | this act does not settle it; do not stretch a point of the black list to cover it by analogy |
Reasonable and proportionate steps: what that means at the counter
The black-list point above is triggered by a claim. No claim, no point 25 — and silence has its own norm.
art. 6 ust. 1 treats a practice as a misleading omission when it leaves out material information the average consumer needs to decide about the contract, and art. 6 ust. 3 pkt 1 names concealing it, or failing to deliver it clearly, unambiguously or in good time. In the list of what counts as material information there is a point written for exactly this subject: information on whether and in what way the trader ensures that published opinie come from consumers who used or bought the product — for a trader who gives access to consumer opinions about products (Dz.U. 2023 poz. 845, art. 6 ust. 4 pkt 7, Sejm ISAP, opened 28.08.2026).
That norm carries a condition and the condition travels with it. art. 6 ust. 4 opens with "in the case of an invitation to purchase", and art. 2 pkt 6 defines that as commercial information stating the features of the product and its price. A page listing dishes with prices next to a wall of opinions is a different object from a page showing opinions and no prices. Printing the number without the condition prints it wider than the act does.
Reasonable and proportionate steps — the act's phrase uzasadnionych i proporcjonalnych kroków, used in point 25. The measure is not the number of steps but their proportion to what the venue asserts: a venue that says nothing about origin is held to less than one printing "all reviews from verified guests".
The measurable part is the only number this page asks a restaurateur to produce:
Verified-source share = Reviews linked to a bill or a booking ÷ All reviews displayed
Reviews linked to a bill or a booking— displayed reviews with a record tying the author to a specific bill, table or booking, pieces. A link counts where it exists in the data, not where it is plausible;All reviews displayed— every review the venue shows publicly on its own surfaces, pieces;- the result is a dimensionless share between zero and one.
The share converts an intention into a quantity: "we check our reviews" is a statement, a share is a fact that can be shown. It is honest about its limits too — a low share is not proof that anything is false, and a high share does not license a stronger claim than the data supports. What it does is tell the owner which sentence they may write on the page.
Why the burden of proof changes the shape of this
art. 13 puts the burden of proving that a practice is not a misleading unfair practice on the trader accused of using it. That single sentence reverses the instinct most owners have — nobody can prove our reviews are fake — into its opposite: if the claim is challenged, the venue is the one holding the file.
A file is not a feeling: it is the record of what was asked, of whom, and what came back — see the task layer.
Commissioned reviews and reviews traded for a discount
Point 26 covers two different acts in one sentence, and they deserve separating.
The first is posting untrue consumer opinions, or commissioning another person to post them. The act does not distinguish between writing them yourself and paying an agency: zlecanie zamieszczania innej osobie is named next to doing it directly. This page does not explain how any of that is arranged, and will not.
The second is distorting opinions or recommendations to promote products, and distortion requires inventing nothing: cutting a sentence out of a long complaint so the remaining half reads as praise distorts a real opinion.
Review given for a reward — an opinion obtained in exchange for a discount, a dish or another benefit. The reward alone does not make the opinion untrue; it does make any statement about how the opinions were gathered one that needs its qualification attached.
The distinction is the whole of it. A guest who really ate the dinner and liked it writes a true opinion whether or not a coffee came with the request. What changes is the sentence the venue may write above the wall: "opinions from guests who dined with us" survives, "independent opinions" does not, if the venue supplied a reason to write them and did not say so — the omission side of art. 6 ust. 3 pkt 1, and the black-list side of point 25 if the venue also asserts the origin.
The reward also creates a selection, not only a statement. Offer a coffee to everyone who leaves an opinion and the wall fills with the opinions of people who wanted the coffee: nobody wrote anything false, and it is still not the wall an average consumer expects. Describe the arrangement in one sentence next to the opinions.
Deleting negative reviews and choosing which ones to display
On a venue's own website nobody is obliged to publish anything: no norm in this act says a restaurant must show its reviews. But the moment a wall exists, the question stops being "may we remove one" and becomes "what does the remaining set state".
Display selection — showing part of the opinions while keeping quiet about the rule that decided which part. A selection rule said out loud and one kept hidden are different objects with different consequences.
art. 5 ust. 2 pkt 2 names as a misleading action the spreading of true information in a way capable of misleading. That is the exact shape of a curated wall: every quote is real, every quote is signed by a real guest, and the set as a whole says something the venue could not say in a sentence. Alongside it stands art. 7 pkt 26 with its word zniekształcanie.
| what the venue does | the claim it creates | what has to back that claim |
|---|---|---|
| shows every opinion it receives, in order | "this is all of it" | a record showing nothing was removed |
| shows a named subset, rule stated on the page | "this is the part we chose, and here is the rule" | the rule as written, applied the same way each time |
| shows a subset, rule not stated | "this is what our guests say" | nothing backs it; the set says more than the venue can support |
| removes opinions that break the law or name a staff member | "we moderate for a stated reason" | the moderation reason, written before it was used |
| asserts every opinion is from a paying guest | the origin claim of point 25 | reasonable and proportionate steps, recorded |
The fourth row is the one owners are most surprised to find safe. A written moderation rule — no personal data of staff, no threats, no content unrelated to the visit — applied uniformly and published next to the wall is a stated rule, and a stated rule is not a hidden selection. It has to exist before the first deletion, though, not after the first bad week.
A map listing is a different animal: the venue does not control what is displayed there, and that surface is governed by the platform's terms, which are not law. How the entries are kept current across a map card, the site and the portals is the subject of a separate walkthrough on venue data.
Replying to a review: what may be said about a guest
A reply is not neutral. Under art. 2 pkt 4 a statement connected with promoting the product is itself a market practice, and a public reply under a review is a statement. art. 5 ust. 2 pkt 1 — spreading untrue information — applies to it exactly as to the menu.
That has two practical edges.
The first is factual. "This guest never visited us" is a claim about a fact. If the venue cannot show the booking record or the bill, the claim is the venue's own untrue information, published under its own name, in reply to a complaint. The safe form is narrower and truer: the venue describes what it can check and says so.
The second is personal data, and this page stops at the edge on purpose. Naming a guest, quoting their phone number or describing their bill are data questions, and the act quoted throughout this page does not govern them — so this page prints no article numbers for data protection, because that act was not opened here. Contacting guests and recording conversations is held by a neighbouring page on consent and call recording; the general rule survives the summary: the reply is written about the visit, not about the person.
A machine-written reply adds a third edge. The disclosure duties around automated assistance are held by a separate page on machines in guest service; what belongs here is only this — such a reply is still the venue's statement, and none of the norms above soften because a model produced the sentence.
Practically, the reply is a queue, not an inspiration. Who writes, in what window, and what is never automated is settled in the walkthrough on responding to reviews — it works because it takes the decision out of the moment of irritation.
Asking a guest for a review without turning the ask into a sale
Asking is allowed: nothing in the act forbids a restaurant from asking a guest what they thought. What it does regulate is the moment the ask carries a commercial purpose the guest cannot see. art. 6 ust. 3 pkt 2 names as a misleading omission the failure to disclose the commercial purpose of a practice, where that purpose does not follow unambiguously from the circumstances and where the omission may cause the average consumer to take a decision they would not otherwise have taken.
The three sentences that keep an ask honest
The first says who is asking. A message that reads as if it came from the platform, or from an unnamed "quality team", hides the identity of the party with an interest.
The second says what is being asked for and what is not. "Tell us what you thought" is an ask. "Leave five stars" is an instruction about the content, and an instruction about the content is the first step towards an opinion that was shaped rather than given.
The third says what, if anything, the guest gets. If nothing, say nothing extra. If something, name it, because the moment a benefit is attached and unmentioned the wall above starts making a claim the venue did not intend to make.
The channel is a separate matter from the content. Whether a venue may send that message at all — to which address, on what basis, after which consent — belongs to the consent and recording page, and the sending itself is the subject of the follow-up walkthrough. The message infrastructure lives in the automatic messaging layer; the record of who was asked and when lives in the guest base.
Reviews on your own site against reviews on someone else's platform
They look interchangeable to a guest. To the act they are not.
| feature | reviews on your own site | reviews on a platform |
|---|---|---|
| who gives access to the opinions | the venue | the platform |
| who is making the origin claim | the venue, in whatever sentence it prints | the platform, in its own wording |
| who decides what is displayed | the venue | the platform's rules and ranking |
| what governs removal | the venue's stated rule | the platform's terms, which are not law |
| what the venue can record | the full link to bill or booking, if it keeps one | whatever the platform exposes |
where art. 6 ust. 4 pkt 7 points | at the venue, in an invitation to purchase | at whoever gives access there |
One row is worth reading twice. The act has a separate point about the main parameters of plasowanie — ranking — in search results, addressed to a trader who lets consumers search products offered by different traders or consumers (Dz.U. 2023 poz. 845, art. 6 ust. 4 pkt 8, Sejm ISAP, opened 28.08.2026). A restaurant showing its own opinions on its own site is not that trader. Stretching the point to cover a venue's own listing would be an inference by analogy, and this page does not make inferences by analogy about a statute.
The practical consequence is unglamorous: the surface the venue actually controls is its own, and that is where a stated selection rule, a recorded moderation reason and a verified-source share are possible at all. On the map listing the venue controls its answers and its listing data, which is why the listing is treated as an object with an owner in the map card work, and the review handling as a process in the review layer.
The average rating as a single number, and why it never stands alone
An average is a summary, and a summary is information. art. 5 ust. 2 pkt 2 makes that uncomfortable: spreading true information in a way capable of misleading is a misleading action. An average computed correctly and displayed without the count behind it is true information presented in a way that can mislead — two opinions and two hundred produce the same number and carry nothing like the same weight.
This page deliberately does not do the arithmetic. How many opinions it takes to move an average is held by the rating arithmetic page and is not recalculated here: a second copy of a calculation drifts from the first, and two of our own pages naming different numbers for the same thing would be worse than one page.
What belongs here is the legal shape of the display, and it comes down to three habits. Show the count next to the average. Show the period, because an average over four years and one over four months describe different restaurants. Do not present a figure the venue cannot reproduce from its own records — a rounded, remembered or aspirational average is untrue information under art. 5 ust. 2 pkt 1, however small the rounding.
A review routine that survives an inspection
The norms above are static; the work is not, and most of the exposure comes from the gap between what a venue says once on its site and what the shift does every day for two years. The second measurable quantity describes that gap:
Response time = Reply timestamp − Review timestamp
Reply timestamp— the moment the venue's reply was published, a point in time;Review timestamp— the moment the opinion appeared, a point in time;- the difference is a duration, computed per review, never averaged across a period.
The summary is taken as a median, not a mean, for an arithmetic reason rather than a matter of taste: one forgotten opinion from three months ago drags a mean far enough to make a healthy month look broken, while the median tells you what happens to a typical review.
| step | who does it | what gets recorded |
|---|---|---|
| a new opinion appears | the shift, from a single queue | the timestamp, the surface, the text |
| it is read and classified | the shift lead | complaint, praise, or a fact to check |
| a fact is checked against bill or booking | the shift lead | whether a link exists, yes or no |
| a reply is drafted and published | named person | reply timestamp |
| a recurring cause is escalated | the owner | which cause, how often |
That table is worth more than the norms if it exists and nothing at all if it does not. Running it out of one inbox instead of five surfaces is the difference between a routine and a memory, which is why the single-queue walkthrough is a prerequisite here rather than an accessory. Where review handling sits inside the wider management loop is described in the management system overview, and how it connects to bookings and suppliers in the restaurant automation walkthrough.
The one-page record that lets the shift work without the owner
Everything above stays owner-dependent unless written down once. The record is short and holds decisions, not intentions.
Write down which surfaces the venue shows opinions on. Write down the exact sentence printed above the wall on the venue's own site: that sentence is the claim, and the claim decides what has to be backed. Write down the selection rule, if there is one, in the words a reader will see; the moderation rule and the date it was adopted; and who replies, in what window, and what is never answered without the owner.
Then write down the two quantities: the verified-source share and the median response time, each with the date it was measured. Both are the venue's own numbers from the venue's own records; neither is an industry norm, and this page does not name one, because no official source publishes a norm for either.
That page fits on a single sheet and turns habits into something a new manager can execute in week one. Where those decisions become dated tasks with owners rather than a document nobody opens is the task layer; the guest history feeding the verified-source share lives in the guest base.
Frequently asked questions
Is a restaurant required to publish guest reviews?
No. Nothing in the Polish act on countering unfair market practices obliges a venue to show opinions on its own surfaces. The duties on this page begin the moment it does show them, and above all the moment it says something about where they came from.
What does the act say about claiming reviews are genuine?
It puts the claim on its black list. Under art. 7 pkt 25, a trader who gives access to consumer opinions and asserts that they were posted by consumers who used or bought the product, while having taken no reasonable and proportionate steps to check that, is using a practice that is unfair in all circumstances.
Can a venue delete negative opinions from its own website?
No norm in this act obliges a venue to publish any given opinion. The risk is not the deletion but what the remaining set then claims. A written selection or moderation rule, adopted before it is used and shown to the reader, keeps the set honest; an unstated rule leaves the wall making a claim the venue cannot support.
Is offering a discount for a review allowed?
The act does not forbid asking, and a reward does not by itself make an opinion untrue. It changes the sentence the venue may print above the opinions: if a benefit was attached and is not disclosed, the display can become a misleading omission, and any assertion about independence becomes a claim the venue cannot back.
What counts as reasonable and proportionate steps to check an opinion?
The act uses the phrase uzasadnionych i proporcjonalnych kroków and does not enumerate the steps. Proportion is to the assertion: a venue claiming nothing about origin is held to less than one claiming every opinion comes from a paying guest. The measurable part is the share of displayed opinions the venue can tie to a bill or a booking.
Does any of this apply to opinions on external platforms?
The origin claim binds whoever makes it. On a platform the display, ranking and removal rules belong to the platform's terms, which are not law. There the venue controls its answers and its listing data; it controls its own site fully, and that is where a stated rule and a recorded check are possible at all.
What should the shift do with a new opinion, and how fast?
Read it from one queue, classify it, check any factual claim against the bill or the booking, and reply within a window written down in advance. Record both timestamps, summarise the gap as a median rather than a mean, and escalate a repeating cause to the owner instead of answering it again.
Start with the share you can produce today: of the opinions your venue displays, how many can be tied to a bill or a booking? It is the only measurable part of the reasonable and proportionate steps the act asks about, and it decides which sentence you may print above them. The rest of the restaurant work is collected in the restaurants section.