A number of eager diners heading to A Moveable Feast (AMF) over the weekend – a part pop-up dinner, part pastel picnic organised in partnership with celebrity chef Luke Mangan – have taken to social media to vent their frustrations over long queues and poor organisation.
“We had to get uberEATS as the food ran out,” said Gareth Pask on the event’s Facebook page.
Tracey De Vries, another disappointed foodie, expressed on social media that her group had waited two hours for prepaid alcohol with “not even so much as a glass of water on the table”.
“Our table couldn’t even dine together as a party as we had to take turns to stand in the unmoving drinks line,” said De Vries.
A spokesperson for AMF told SpiceNews that “out of the 3,500 guests who attended on the night only a very small percentage of the guests experienced problems like the experiences described above”.
“Notwithstanding the unforeseen problems encountered on the evening, we had an overwhelming response from guests who had a good time.”
The spokesperson explained it wasn’t any one operational event which led to complaints, but a number of concurrent events including “individuals taking more hampers than they were entitled to and bar lines and sales exceeding our expectations, all of which needed to be managed in accordance with Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) regulations and adherence to our liquor license conditions”.
“When our event staff saw this occur on the night, we took steps to immediately manage the guests affected by taking down their details and concerns.”
Affected patrons have been contacted by AMF organisers to discuss “appropriate agreed compensation”.
“We value the reputation of the event and the positive outcomes from last year’s event, which led to our promoting of the 2017 event,” the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Mangan also apologised on his behalf.
“Unfortunately these issues were due to some operational challenges that sat beyond our control.”
“We will be working on these issues with the event organisers to ensure the next A Moveable Feast event is run seamlessly.”
concurrent events including “individuals taking more hampers than they were entitled to and bar lines and sales exceeding our expectations”.
These two things are entirely in control of the TWG, they were basically out of their depth and trying to take too much profit. If I were Mangan I would be suing them for brand reputation damage – he just curated the menu and put his name to it, and yet he’s taking all the heat.
Not sure if this is really “opening up” about what went wrong. Managing expected guest numbers and controlling the distribution of food are surely in the control of the caterer. Maybe this was a caterer trying to manage an event and not employing a professional event manager?
Bar lines due to sales exceeding expectations? The biggest bar line was for pre purchased alcohol, so prior to the event even starting, they were aware of the (very) high number of people who we going to need to pick up the bottles they ordered. We spoke to staff whilst in the line (for an hour and a half) and all they could do was apologize and explain that they were employed to manage the crowd, not help out with service itself.
Individuals took more hampers than they were supposed to because there was absolutely no control on who was picking up a box or not. It was meant to be ‘one box between two’ but this was not regulated in any way once you got inside the event.
Two massive errors directly attributed to Trippas White Group not having control of the crowd or employing enough staff to serve the food and drinks properly or in a timely manner.
Mangan’s apology for ‘issues due to operational challenges’ fails to respond to comments of tiny portion sizes, counting a bread roll with oil and dukka as a course (1 course of 8), and all 8 courses being cold and similar to that of aeroplane food.
The worst thing is that this is also a lie.
We were early to the event and saw that the management of the distribution of boxes meant that many people did not have to show a partner, and were given boxes meant for two people!
Passing this off as ‘individuals taking more hampers’ is just another nail in the coffin for me of attending any event these idiots choose to do again in the future.
I also agree with the post below that LM should be considering his position legally – as although his food was sub par, thats not the reason this event failed. The security staff were good and helpful where they could be with food issues, but there was zero assistance from the food staff, and a half baked apology half way through the evening was really just offensive.
Also for the post below – there seemed to be no logistical arrangement for how to do 3500 covers at the same time, nor how to provide the pre booked drinks in a timely manner to the required people.
I said it at the time – that I was actually embarrassed to be there as an Event professional with friends thinking this was the type of shambles our industry provides.