ChrisH

Very Unprofessional and lacking Accountability

We hired Austin Elite for our wedding. We decided to order our food from a restaurant. Austin Elite was responsible for picking up the food and plating the meals. Days before the wedding, I made a spreadsheet showing who was at each table and what each person was eating (this was not requested by Austin Elite). I did this to make it easier for them. On the wedding day, interactions with the staff of Austin Elite were unpleasant. My wife was told by our venue that she could park her car in the driveway to unload her car of items for our wedding. The driver from Austin Elite was unaware of this and was very rude towards her about her car being parked there. The staff was also rude to a few of our guests…not giving them charger plates and a table setting because they “thought they were our vendors.” I ordered water goblets for each table from an outside vendor. We paid for full bar service from Austin Elite and they informed us that they had their own plastic cups. They served alcohol from our water goblets because they thought they were for our signature drinks. We had no water goblets left over for actual water. When the driver went to pick up the food from the restaurant, he never checked the order. The restaurant forgot to pack mashed potatoes. When the food arrived at the venue, the food was not checked for nearly 2 hours until they started plating it. Checking the food order is a part of Austin Elite’s policy. Because of this slip up, they had to go back to the restaurant and get the potatoes. We were supposed to be served dinner at about 7:15 pm. We were not notified about the slip up until they made the decision to hold dinner until they got the potatoes. Our guests were not served dinner until almost 8:30 pm. In addition to this, the plating of the food was wrong. Austin Elite sent us home with nearly 27 pieces of chicken cutlets that were supposed to be served to the guest who ordered chicken. We ended up having to pay an additional amount of money to extend our time at the venue. I spoke to a supervisor at Austin Elite about the issues and she seemed to understand and wanted to accommodate us. That supervisor spoke to Kim (the owner) and she did not agree with what we were asking for. When we spoke to Kim, she was extremely rude and unprofessional. There was zero accountability on her behalf and she had no idea what happened at our wedding. The staff that night kept trying to cover for themselves. The driver communicated to Kim that he had arrived at the restaurant on time and that the restaurant took 45 minutes to bring out the food order. Kim said that had the restaurant brought the food out on time, they would have had time to check the order when the driver got back and dinner wouldn’t have gotten pushed back. Upon investigation with the restaurant and their camera footage, the driver lied. The restaurant brought out the food immediately. Kim would not acknowledge or address this. She said we didn’t hire enough staff for what we wanted done. We had communicated with Austin Elite several times about exactly what we wanted done and it was never communicated that we needed to hire more staff. Kim also said that it wasn’t their responsibility to know how to plate the food. She said that her supervisor went above and beyond creating a spreadsheet for plating the meals - she was unaware that I created the spreadsheet without them requesting it. This was a terrible experience and I would not recommend hiring them for your event.