Yelp launches a new ‘Open to All’ filter to find inclusive, welcoming businesses

Yelp’s newest filter is designed to help people find welcoming business that don’t discriminate based on, basically, anything. Called Open to All, the team is partnering with a coalition by the same name to launch a badge on businesses’ profiles that say they don’t discriminate by race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, immigration status, religion, or disability. The team already allowed businesses to identify themselves as Open to All, but now users can filter by that qualifier. The filter will be available on the web, iOS, and Android with the visual icon showing up on iOS and Android in the future. It’s available on the web today.

Yelp cites the Supreme Court case about a cake shop in Colorado that didn’t want to bake a cake for a gay couple as an example of why this filter needs to exist. Yelp notes that any businesses can mark itself as “open to all,” and I wonder if most would mark themselves as such, regardless of their beliefs. The company says more than 300,000 businesses are currently listed as Open to All, and the company hopes that as people make decisions based on the filter, more businesses will join. Yelp says that although any business can identify as “open to all,” people can contact its support about behavior that doesn’t align with that tag, and the team will investigate.