Cranberry Resort Cranberry Golf Resort CranberryInn Mother Served Bloody Chicken Food Unfit to Eat Caterer Unwilling to Admit Mistakes Management Unavailable Collingwood Ontario Canada
Guest of Honour Served Raw Chicken
What can you do when the food and service at a catered event are suboptimal? As a party organizer do you run and bury your head for fear that 45 of your closest relatives beat you up? Do you make a scene at dinner and send back the entire buffet which is not even close to what was negotiated on paper?
Promised quality specialty baked goods, got processed grocery slices. The contract said roast beef au jus and that sounded great! If you ordered this would you expect a nice roast carved to your liking or accept grisly and tough slabs of meat in a tray of gravy? What if your mom celebrating her 80th birthday got chicken running bloody?
Would you stop the party to get a new truckload of grub sent from way across the road? You wouldn't dig into the same pan of low grade wings and paltry poultry. You'd probably just push the meal aside, say nothing and keep drinking. That's what my family did because they didn't know the high price tag of the meal and didn't want to embarrass the hostess or make a scene. Good enough, no way!
The caterer claims that all tables were asked if the meal was ok and they nodded. The person responsible for paying the tab (me) wasn't asked how we liked our meal. It wasn't until several hours later that I learned other tables found the food uneatable too. Complain in the morning, it did. Leaving quietly and never returning or never referring your friends can erode a small town business especially where word gets around, especially when two local mayors and veteran tourism representatives attend.
Why complain? This information is valuable input for business improvement. It can even mend business relationships if the customer is thanked and compensated for their inconvenience. Apparently the day after the event was way too late to remedy this food faux pas. More than a week after the party our business with the resort is still not resolved. After our event the unapologetic food and beverage manager talked to several staff members bent on keeping their jobs. Manager Angie Law coincidentally sharing the same name as the owner/manager away on holidays for two weeks sides with staff claims that their deplorable fair was indeed cooked and was worth what I was charged for it. They ate it before we did interesting that's where the good must have gone.
Was the detailed customer feedback that revealed countless mistakes in the food and service only imagined? Were the comments ignored because the customer was too polite to point out the mistakes as the over worked staff scrambled to simply do their job? Did the food and beverage staff ever consider that this information actually could help their business?
No apologies, no compensation, no explanation of charges on the bill, nothing! So what gives the Cranberry Resort Collingwood, Ontario the right to claim this: Our commitment is to provide the highest standard in quality, service and personal attention, and we most certainly wish to hear when our guests are not completely satisfied. Your comments will make a difference in our continuous efforts to service our guests to the best of our ability.
After three attempts to settle our business with the resort, I am still unclear if the Resort can ever really make it up to me. No longer a repeat guest, no longer a resort promoter, now I'm now a disgruntled ex-customer who knows many people who might have once considered hospitality at the Cranberry Inn.
Linda
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Angie
Collingwood,Ontario,
U.S.A.
Cranberry Resort Response
#2UPDATE Employee
Tue, January 08, 2008
This function was for a Birthday Come & Go Tea for 75 people and a buffet dinner for 45 people (dinner guaranteed for 50 people). 156 people unexpectedly showed up for the Tea portion; not only did this exceed our legal occupancy of the room, the unexpected numbers required additional employee assistance from other departments and additional trips to our main hotel. We persevered and did our very best to accommodate these extra, unexpected guests for the tea service.
The organizer complained about the chicken entrees that were served on the buffet. It was not until the day after the function that we learned that the organizer's mother (who was the guest of honour) had supposedly been served under-cooked chicken. As the chicken was kept in a hot box for 30 minutes prior to the function (as is customary), temperature and condition of the chicken was closely monitored. As well, both the Executive Chef and Sous Chef did a taste testing of the entrees. Our Director of F&B consulted with both our Executive Chef and our Sous Chef, who were both personally involved with the preparation, and determined that the chicken entrees were fine. Even if the chicken entrees were found to be less than perfect, it should have been brought to our attention during the function, when we could have immediately remedied the situation, not well after the fact.
The Assistant F&B Manager, who was present during the entire function, made multiple quality checks at every table to ensure the quality of the meal; he received no complaints. Had he received any, he would have acted promptly to correct the situation. He had even commented on the success of the evening.
Our Director of F&B, Assistant Food & Beverage Manager, Director of Sales, and Credit Manager all had correspondence with the organizer after the function to discuss the situation. The organizer is dissatisfied because she has not received any financial compensation from us on a well executed function.
We feel that we did everything possible to ensure a successful event.