PEORIA — A local sushi restaurant fed up with repeated pressure by salespeople from Yelp mounted a protest against the online reviewing juggernaut last week.

Happy Fish Sushi, which opened in Campustown seven years ago this month, publicly declared its revolt on May 1 with a Facebook post urging people to post sarcastic, one-star reviews on Yelp. The actions followed months of consistent calls from Yelp salespeople asking the restaurant if it would pay Yelp to "optimize" their page on its site, according to Steven Reeves, owner of Happy Fish.

Reeves said this contact began last fall at a time when he was open-minded about the potential of advertising with Yelp. Those inquiries became unwanted by the start of 2017, Reeves said, but persisted with more frequency over the last four months. Reeves said a message was left at the business every day and then several times a day by the end of March.

At the end of April, Reeves then noticed that the Happy Fish rating on Yelp had dropped, which he claims was in response to his refusal to advertise with Yelp.

In Reeves' opinion, the pressure from Yelp was a form of extortion. (The initial Facebook post mentioned that the restaurant's attorney recommended that Reeves clarify that it was his opinion that this was extortion to avoid litigation.) That's when the restaurant turned to Facebook last week to voice its displeasure.

"We were nervous, but we felt like we had no choice," Reeves said.

When contacted about the Happy Fish protest, a Yelp spokesperson responded with a prepared statement (with its statement's links included): "Businesses can’t pay to change their ratings or reviews and our salespeople don’t tell businesses otherwise. There has never been any amount of money a business can pay Yelp to manipulate reviews. Any claims that Yelp manipulates reviews for money or that advertisers are treated any differently than non-advertisers are completely false and have been repeatedly dismissed by courts of law, thoroughly researched and disproven by academic study, and investigated by government regulators, including the FTC, who closed a nearly two-year investigation without taking action."

Beyond the statement, the spokesperson also said that Happy Fish had not been contacted by a Yelp salesperson since October of 2016. It was one of several points made by Yelp in response to Happy Fish's protest. In the initial Facebook post, the restaurant claimed it had a four-star average rating before the advertising calls and were then dropped to a 2.5 star rating after it refused to advertise.

But Yelp pointed to the business' star-rating history feature, which details the last five years of star ratings on Yelp for a business, to show that Happy Fish was never at a 4-star average over the last five years by its metrics and that the ratings decline had begun over a year ago in March of 2016.

A deluge of satirical one-star reviews were posted to Happy Fish's Yelp page over the past week. One such post said, "You call this sushi?" with an attached image of the singing Big Mouth Billy Bass. Many of the reviews are obviously sardonic, with phrases like "the fish was raw" and "they expect you to dip it in soy sauce." One was even written in the structure of a poem.

Reeves said that some reviews have been deleted by moderators for not being real and also claimed that Yelp contacted him over the weekend to offer him $300 in free advertising.

Though he considered the negative ramifications of the protest, including the prospect of losing business and laying off employees, Reeves said he thought the restaurant's devoted customer base would pull through for him. The response has been almost uniformly positive, and even drew the praise of a few kindred spirits in the food and beverage industry, like Los Cabos Cantina and Grill, which commented its approval on the first Facebook post.

Reeves has heard from several other restaurant owners voicing their support and also mentioned the forthcoming documentary about Yelp titled "Billion Dollar Bully," as increasing evidence of the site's tactics when dealing with small businesses.

Reeves acknowledged that an out-of-town traveler probably will not seek out his restaurant in the future because of Happy Fish's lowered rating. But he also said the influence of Yelp is waning and not something that matters as much to a local establishment. The priority is local customers.

"For the people from out of town, yes, we've lost that business," Reeves said. "Everywhere else, we're well-rated."

Happy Fish does have a rating consistently in the 4's across other online rating sites. And the restaurant hasn't suffered any consequences from the protest; in fact, the past week was the restaurant's busiest ever, according to Reeves.

"Not only did it not backfire, we're looking at hiring now," Reeves said.

Thomas Bruch can be reached at 686-3262 or tbruch@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @ThomasBruch.