Reserved a space for group of 50 for a 65th wedding anniversary 5 weeks prior to the date needed. We had requested 2pm on a Saturday, but were refused that time and told 4pm would be the earliest we could book the room. The purpose...of 2pm was to avoid the dinner crowd, but my guess would be lack of servers at 2pm. Initially, the room we were placed in seemed to be fine, no one else outside of our group was in the area. Then we were told we could not sit in the booths because people outside of our group would be sitting there. That became a problem because in order to get to the booths, the customers and the employees had to make their way through our group. As most would imagine, a group of 50 when everyone knows each other are talking, mingling, and taking photos, as 65 years of marriage is a very big deal and not seen very often. There was clearly irritation and frustration from the customers as well as the staff as our group was in the front of the room spread from end to end with the booths at the back of the room where the customers not part of our group were sitting. Before I go on, I just want to make a point this could have been a completely different experience had leadership planned better and used their management skills to consider the flow of traffic instead of expectations that a group of 50 was going to sit quietly and staying in our seats. This clearly became an issue of concern for revenue loss versus being certain the customers had a good experience.
The next issue was the service. The table I was sitting at ordered last and others in our group were boxing up their food and paying for their meals before we received our food. Some members of our group were being told they needed to leave due to being done with their meal, and again, we were just getting our food and we were all together. There were also 2 people in our group that no one ever took their order, then one of them was told by a server if she was not eating she would need to leave. The other one was told by a server, when brought to his attention his order had not been taken, that he could get him a burger. Which was then responded to with , " No thank you, I will go eat somewhere else." I would also like to add everyone complained of cold fries and the chicken was dry. The mac n cheese was reported to have been "not suitable for my pigs." Several people had to ask multiple times for drink refills and unfortunately, minimal to none was left for tips.
I would have to say this unfortunate situation was definitely not fair to our group, the other customers seated in the room with us, and sadly was disrespectful to the servers who were having difficulty getting in and out of the room. And due to the lack of tips, again because of poor management, this plan failed if the intention was more revenue. I post this because I do not want any other group to have this experience, and the fact that Christos also have a banquet hall, we had all assumed management of a large group would certainly have been a breeze. Christos lost 50 customers that day, and I would imagine other customers who had a poor experience that day, and possibly servers leaving employment due to poor work environment due to poor management.More