To celebrate Pride Month in June, Yelp is making it easier than ever for consumers to support LGBTQ-owned businesses. The review platform has introduced an LGBTQ-owned business attribute that will allow business owners to self-identify as LGBTQ-owned. In addition, restaurant, food and nightlife businesses that identify as LGBTQ-owned or Open to All will be highlighted on Yelp with rainbow-colored map pins for the entire month of June to help people find places to celebrate Pride Month.
According to Yelp, the rate of searches for LGBTQ+ owned businesses in the US increased by more than 150% in April compared to the same period the year prior. Today, over 581,000 businesses have indicated that they are Open to All on Yelp, and the brand hopes to encourage more business owners to take the pledge and mark themselves “Open to All.”
“With hate violence at an all time high, it’s more important than ever for people to be able to find safe and welcoming spaces to celebrate LGBTQ equality,” says Open to All director Calla Rongerude. “We’re thrilled to partner with Yelp to help users identify not only LGBTQ-owned businesses, but also the hundreds of thousands of Open to All businesses that will celebrate equality not only during Pride, but year round.”
“To continue our support of the LGTBQ+ community, we are thrilled to launch a new attribute for LGBTQ-owned businesses, as well as a new map experience exclusively for the month of June,” says Miriam Warren, chief diversity officer at Yelp. “We hope this new attribute makes it easier to find and spend money with LGBTQ-owned businesses.”
Consumers will be able to see the LGBTQ-owned attribute in the Yelp mobile app by going to the business page under the “more info” section, and on Yelp’s website in the “amenities and more” section of a business page. Yelp is proactively monitoring pages for hate speech against the LGBTQ+ community and will remove any hateful, racist or harmful content that violates its content guidelines.
To add the LGBTQ-owned or Open to All attribute to their Yelp page, business owners can log into their Yelp for Business account and follow the below instructions. LGBTQ+ businesses will also receive a “LGBTQ-owned” window decal in the mail.
- Log in to Yelp for Business (Business Information tab)
- In the Amenities section, click Add or Edit
- Select Yes next to “LGBTQ-owned” and/or “Open to All”
- Click Save Changes
Additionally, Yelp’s new rainbow-colored map pins can be found by directly searching for LGBTQ-owned and Open to All businesses or restaurants, as well as through the home page on the Yelp mobile app and a banner on the Yelp search page on desktop.
