Restaurant opening 2nd location and eventually closing the current one

[Niki]

Hi, looking for advice on the best way forward for a particular situation.

A Restaurant client is currently in Location A and with a Google business profile that has top ranking and 6,000+ reviews!

They are opening Location B with the same name in April (only 1km away but in a different town) and they will temporarily operate two locations until the current lease expires.

In September (so just 4 months later), they will be closing Location A and start to operate only from Location B.

How do I manage the eventual move in location and still keep the 6,000+ reviews etc. that the restaurant currently has in Location A?

If they were just moving immediately I would change the profile's location... but with the 4 month interim period having 2 locations a new business profile will be created and then I would need to somehow merge the two locations? Is that even possible?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[JoyHawkins]

They are unlikely to keep the reviews. Google treats this differently depending on the situation and very much base it on if the experience would change. A physical location at a restaurant has a lot to do with the experience of the actual place (ambiance, environment etc).

You can definitely try, but I would not expect to be successful - especially since they aren't in the same town.

If you simply updated the address on Location A, it might work, but that scenario makes it impossible to have 2 listings at any point.

 

[Claudia]

I went through this same scenerio for a client. To be clear Joy is right as it is complicated and support is unpredicatable.

Here is what we did....

We created the new listing as the business was operating out of both in different towns but close proximity.

Once we were ready to officially shut the original listing down I contacted support and asked them to merge the listing. They ended up marking the original permanently closed and moved all the reviews over.

 

[Niki]

Thank you for the answers.

I guess I am going to have to eventually see if I am able to merge the listings.... but absolutely no guarantees to the client.

Very helpful to hear from you both though as it gives me the peace of mind that doing all I can for the client and I am not missing a trick.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Once we were ready to officially shut the original listing down I contacted support and asked them to merge the listing. They ended up marking the original permanently closed and moved all the reviews over.

This is great to know it's possible to accomplish this. I guess it all depends on who you get on Google support! I'd certainly go this route and try, but I wouldn't promise the client it's possible, just in case you aren't successful.