Why your Wolt rating dropped and what actually changes it

Wolt runs two different ratings on the same venue, and restaurant operators who do not know that will misread every recovery attempt they make. The public venue rating is an average on a 1 to 10 scale built from every consumer who ordered in the past six months, recalculated daily. The rating inside Best of Wolt, the programme that decides a venue’s level and its access to Ads, is built from a different period: the last two complete calendar months, reassessed on the first day of each month. Same venue, same customers, two windows, two answers.

That gap is where most of the confusion lives. A venue that fixed its kitchen in mid August can lose a Best of Wolt level on 1 September because July and August are what counted, while its public 1 to 10 rating barely moves because six months of history is holding it up.

How does Wolt calculate the venue rating customers see?

By averaging six months of consumer ratings and recomputing every day. Wolt states it directly: “We calculate the average rating (on a scale of 1 to 10) by aggregating the ratings provided by all consumers who have ordered from the venue in the past six months”, and “The ratings are calculated and updated daily.” Wolt’s user terms make the same point from the customer side, adding that ratings originate only from users who actually made a purchase from that partner.

Wolt also draws a line around what the venue is answerable for. Its merchant guidance says customers rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 10 after receiving an order, that the venue rating reflects items and service, and that delivery is rated separately so the score focuses on what the venue controls. That is a meaningful protection and it is worth checking against complaint text before assuming a late courier caused a drop. Source: press.wolt.com.

What is Best of Wolt and why does its rating differ?

It is Wolt’s merchant performance programme, and it uses a much shorter window. Wolt states that “In Best of Wolt, your rating is based on your orders from the last two complete calendar months”, and that “On the first day of each month, your level is reassessed based on your performance over the last two complete calendar months.” There are five levels, from Limited up to Best of Wolt itself.

The metrics are named: rating, uptime, lateness, cancellations or unfulfilled items for supermarkets, and pricing. And the way they combine is the part that catches operators out. Wolt says “Your overall level is based on the metric where you have the most room to improve. To qualify for a higher level, all relevant metrics need to meet that level’s criteria.” That is a weakest link rule. A venue with an excellent rating and poor uptime is graded on the uptime. Source: merchant.wolt.com.

Can a Wolt rating drop cost a venue its advertising?

Yes, through the level rather than through the rating directly. Wolt states that “Merchants who remain in the lowest level over multiple monthly reassessments may lose access to Ads”, and that eligibility “is restored once you move up from the lowest level at the start of a new monthly reassessment cycle.” Note the plural in “multiple monthly reassessments”. One bad month does not remove Ads. A pattern does, and recovery is gated to the start of a cycle rather than to the day the venue improves.

Wolt does not publish the numeric rating threshold for each level, so an operator cannot calculate exactly where the line sits. What is published is enough to plan with: the assessment is monthly, the input is the last two complete calendar months, the weakest metric decides, and the consequence at the bottom is advertising.

Does the Wolt rating affect where a venue appears?

Wolt names it as one of the parameters behind store recommendations, alongside popularity, which it describes as partner sales figures on the Wolt platform, and attractiveness. That is Wolt publishing customer rating as an input to what customers get shown, which puts it in the same category as Deliveroo and Glovo and unlike Bolt Food, whose published account of search does not mention ratings at all.

The compounding risk follows from that. A venue whose rating falls is shown to fewer customers, which reduces the fresh ratings available to lift the six month average, which slows recovery. On a six month window that loop has plenty of time to run, and it is why a Wolt slide that is caught in week two is a completely different problem from the same slide caught in month three.

Where does a Wolt merchant see ratings and reviews?

In the Merchant Portal, on the homepage and in a dedicated section. Wolt tells partners they can track performance in the Merchant Portal at any time, view recent reviews directly on the homepage, and go to Business Insights and then Ratings and Reviews for more detail. The Merchant App shows the venue rating too, so a shift manager and a head office analyst are looking at the same number from different places.

What no Wolt surface does is warn a chain that a venue is about to lose a level. The reassessment happens on the first of the month against two months of history that are already closed, so by the time the outcome is visible the inputs cannot be changed. A Wolt level is decided on the 1st of each month against a window that closed the night before, so the useful monitoring interval is daily during the month rather than monthly after it. Kitchain (kitchain.co) records the 1 to 10 rating for each Wolt venue every day and shows where a venue sits against its own history.

One organisational note about the two windows. Because the public rating and the Best of Wolt rating disagree by design, a chain should decide which one its managers are accountable for and say so. Holding a general manager to a six month average they cannot move inside a quarter is unfair. Holding them to the two month window Wolt uses for levels is both fair and aligned with the only consequence Wolt publishes, which is access to Ads.

What actually moves a Wolt rating back up?

Items and service, because that is what Wolt says the rating measures. Delivery is scored separately, so a venue chasing a rating recovery by pressuring couriers is working on the wrong axis. Packaging that survives the ride, portioning that matches the photo and accuracy against the order are the three that land in the score Wolt attributes to the venue.

Then there is the timing discipline. Because the public rating is a six month average recalculated daily, improvements show up as a slow, steady climb rather than a step, and a manager checking weekly will see nothing and conclude the work failed. Because Best of Wolt runs on two calendar months, the same improvements can move a level in eight weeks. Judging a fix on the wrong one of those two clocks is the most common mistake Wolt partners make, and it is entirely avoidable once you know both windows exist.

Wolt as a platform, its Merchant Portal and the states a venue can be in are covered at kitchain.co/aggregators/wolt/.