Whether you consider yourself to be a foodie, an all-out food critic, a cocktail connoisseur, or just someone who occasionally dines out and wants to share your experience with others, we’re here to provide a platform for your voice and would love to hear what you have to say. As marketers, we developed McHenry Life as a way to get further connected with our local community while also providing a very affordable way to help local businesses and organizations market and promote themselves.

Perhaps like you, we have a few go-to favorites, but we also like to explore and try new places. But most of the time, we aren’t entirely spontaneous, throw caution to the wind about our choices. We like to see what others have said about a place before we venture into new territory.

First and foremost, our listings of McHenry County businesses are here to help you find what you are looking for, whether that’s narrowing down choices to meet a particular need, simply finding an address or contact information, or a deeper dive, learning from business owners about what makes them unique, as well as hearing from others and the experiences they’ve had through ratings and reviews.

We Want Your Opinions

We hope some of you will go beyond using McHenry Life to find places to share your own experiences by rating and reviewing the places you visit.

We’re not food experts, and you don’t need to be either. At the end of the day, we all enjoy what we enjoy, with as much or as little sophistication as we possess. And that’s okay.

We invite you to share your opinions! It helps others and it can be one of the best ways to show appreciation and say “thank you” to your favorite places.

Reasons to Join

It’s free!

It doesn’t cost a cent to become a member of McHenry Life. This is true for both individuals and organizations.

When you join, you will be able to:

• Comment on Magazine articles
• Comment, rate, and review business listings (events too)
• Save businesses (and events) to your list of favorites
• If you are a business, you can claim your listing, or add it if we don’t have it yet, for free even!

Your Reviews are Fully Accessible

Our content, even reviews, is fully accessible to everyone, even non-members. We have no intention of changing that. The review that you spend time writing will be there for anyone to read. It won’t be hidden behind a paywall or placed in a forum or group that is already or could be made private at any time.

It will also be easy for you or anyone else to find because it will be kept on the listing for the restaurant, cafe, or pub that you reviewed. So no one has to go searching through a bunch of old, unrelated posts, just to find what they are looking for.

Reviews are Uncensored

We prefer and encourage positive reviews, but negative reviews are valid and important too. We hope people will give businesses the benefit of the doubt and try to find some positives, but bad experiences happen and those reviewers deserve the opportunity to share those experiences as well.

We won’t turn off commenting or remove a review simply because it is negative. In fact, we think negative reviews can help businesses identify areas that need attention and maybe even improve. One bad review in a sea of positive ones may have just been an off experience, and most customers understand that. A string of bad reviews though may be a sign of problems.

That said, we reserve the right to remove any reviews we feel violate our terms and conditions, are clearly bogus or fraudulent, and we may block or edit “inappropriate language.”

You Can Really Share Your Experience

We really want to make sure you have plenty of opportunities to share. You might be happy to just jot down a sentence or two, or you might want to go into great detail. You don’t have to include any photos, but we also allow you to upload up to 5 high-resolution ones if you want.

We also understand that some experiences can’t simply be summed up by selecting 1 to 5 stars. That’s why we provide an overall rating as well as a multi-rating system that lets you break your ratings down into four other key areas: Service, Quality, Value, as well as Listing Accuracy. While the first three are all about the business itself, the last one also helps to ensure that the business is providing good, accurate information within its listing.

We Equally Support Members and Businesses

We support our general members by giving them every opportunity to share a negative review as well as a positive one, and, we hope, provide the ability to really share their experience as they see fit. And if you don’t see a business you want to share an experience for, just let us know and we’ll get it added.

But we’re also here to help support and promote the businesses as well. As long as a business is in McHenry County (which includes being in a city that crosses into McHenry County) they can be listed in our Directory, even freely. And if you have any questions or need help, just let us know!

Most importantly, we will never “hold a business” hostage by showing or hiding certain reviews. Reviews appear in order, as they are left, regardless of whether the business has a free or paid listing. And businesses are free to respond and comment on reviews as well.