AI-assisted, source-checked
Covering 2,000-plus Brisbane venues properly is not something a small team can do by hand, so we use AI to do the reading: pulling a venue's own menu, hours and description together into a draft. What the AI never does is decide. Each draft is checked against the venue's source material before publishing, and the model is only ever given that material to work from — it is not asked what it knows about a restaurant, because that is how invented detail gets into directories. If the source material is thin, the draft comes out short, and we publish it short.
What we do not do: we do not visit every venue, we do not have owner confirmation for listings unless a listing says so, and we do not present a compiled listing as a review. Where a listing has been checked in person or confirmed by the venue, it will say so with a date.
We don't invent facts
Checkable facts — an address in Woolloongabba, a Sunday trading time, whether a West End bar takes bookings — are only published when we have a source for them. This matters more in Brisbane than it might elsewhere, because venues here rebrand and relocate constantly, and a confidently wrong opening time sends someone across the river for nothing. Where we don't know, we say nothing rather than guess, and a listing that hasn't been checked recently is treated as less reliable until it is.
Sourcing & attribution
Our information comes from a mix of sources, including:
- Each venue's own website and menu — the primary source, and the one we lean on hardest
- Google Places for location, hours and rating volume (never for our own write-ups)
- Ticketing and listing platforms for events: Ticketmaster, Eventbrite, Moshtix, Meetup and AllEvents
- Reader corrections, which in Brisbane are most often about a venue that has closed or moved
Where images or facts come from a third party, we attribute them where appropriate and link out so you can check the original.
The Spot Score, in plain language
In practice, Brisbane's spread-out geography is what the Spot Score has to correct for. A CBD venue with heavy passing trade accumulates reviews a good Sunnybank or Wynnum restaurant never will, so raw review volume would bury exactly the places worth telling people about. The score weighs reputation against a venue's own category and context, adds weight for how complete and current our information is, and ignores money entirely — sponsorship is labelled and sits outside the ranking.
Freshness & verification
Venues change constantly, so freshness is built into our process and into the Spot Score itself — older, unverified information counts for less. We re-check listings over time and update them as sources change. Even so, please treat time-sensitive details like hours and menus as a guide and confirm with the venue before you go.
How to report an inaccuracy
Found something wrong, out of date or a venue that's closed? Please tell us via our contact form and we'll review and fix it quickly. Spotting errors helps everyone, and we're grateful for it.
What this looked like for Brisbane
Brisbane was the first city we built out properly, which means it also absorbed most of our mistakes. The early listings leaned too heavily on aggregated review data and read like every other directory. We rewrote them from each venue's own material — menus, opening hours, the way a place describes itself — so a write-up says something specific rather than restating a star rating.
A practical limit worth being honest about: not every Brisbane business has a usable web presence. Plenty of very good places here operate on a phone number and an Instagram account. Where a venue gives us nothing substantive to work from, we publish a short factual listing and leave it out of the indexed guide rather than padding it into something longer than the evidence supports.
Events are handled separately. Brisbane's calendar runs heavily through The Tivoli, The Triffid, The Gabba and Riverstage alongside a constant churn of markets and community events, so we pull from ticketing and listing platforms daily, remove anything that has passed, and link every listing back to the official ticket page rather than reselling anything ourselves.