The reception of Yelp is decorated as a general store in order to look like the entreprises they promote. The names of the meeting rooms are also named after different type of entreprises. Each of the 14 floors Yelp occupy represent a different industry.
The app is primarily used to find restaurants, about 70% of its use. The remaining 30% of the research are mainly for nightlife. However, these are not the only business that can be found on Yelp. There are also locksmiths, dentists, gas stations, banks and many others. We also learned that Yelp chose to focus on the north american market, where their service is the most popular. The app is still available elsewhere, but the community is less responsive.
After our tour of the office, our host, a graduate from ETS, Pierre-Luc Beaudoin, sat with us to talk about the values of the company. The concepts that stood out the most were learning and cooperation. Here, no closed office, everything is open air and this also apply to the CEO. Yelp promote learning by organizing different types of meetings. The most popular are the brown bags. These meetings are scheduled during lunch time and there several topics are covered, from ukulele to building security during earthquakes.
Yelp, similar to Facebook, organize hackathons. Based on the same idea, their main objective is to upgrade the life in the office, and offers the opportunity to employees to explore new fields while working on various projects.
