Dish Passionate Cuisine was, by far, the most difficult vendor we dealt with through our wedding planning process. We first went to look at CityView a year before our wedding and we were aware that if we booked CityView as our space that we had to use Dish for our catering. Colleen, one of the owners and main point of contact, was late to meet with us and her sister, Liz, another owner, came to meet with us instead.
Liz was very kind and gave us great information about the space and what Dish could provide. Later that day, we did meet with Colleen and she seemed very preoccupied with whatever event she was preparing for that evening.
We waited several weeks to get an estimate from Colleen as we did not want to book the CityView space until we were sure what the pricing would be. After multiple requests, we finally got Dish's proposal and decided to book CityView.
After a couple of months, Colleen emailed us to set up a tasting. Since we live in Chicago, we arranged a weekend tasking when we were able to come to Champaign. We tried many times through phone and email to confirm the date and time of the tasting in the days leading up to the tasting. After many phone calls and emails with no response from Colleen, we started our drive down to Champaign around 3PM that Friday. About an hour outside Chicago, Colleen emailed to cancel due to an emergency with the head chef. We understand that things like this happen, but she definitely could have called us to speak with us personally. We then had to reschedule the tasting and rescheduling took multiple emails and phone calls just to get ahold of Colleen.
When the tasting finally did take place, the food was delicious and we really enjoyed our tasting.
Once we had decided on the food and we knew what we wanted out of the space, linens, etc., we wanted to get all of this in writing from Colleen. Apparently this is a very difficult request. For THREE MONTHS, we called, emailed, even sent Facebook messages to Dish in an attempt to get ahold of Colleen to get a contract. We even emailed the manager of the CityView venue because we were having so much trouble. We were told that Colleen's "emails weren't going through" to us.
After the holidays when we STILL had not heard back from Colleen in regards to a meeting and/or contract, we went to CityView in person to find Colleen. While making our way to the CityView space in the Illinois Terminal, we ran into a Terminal employee who was shocked at the experience we were describing. He called Colleen in our presence, and, of course, she answered right away. She told the employee that she knew we'd been trying to talk to her and she would call us. She did not call us. In fact, throughout the entire course of planning our reception, we never once spoke on the phone with anyone from Dish.
We finally received an email from Colleen a few days later and were able to set up a meeting. At that meeting, we had to remind Colleen several times of things we had previously discussed and agreed upon.
It was only a week or so before our wedding day that it felt like Colleen was finally ready to deal with us. However, even during that time we struggled with communication from Dish.
One thing we want to make clear is that the day before and the day of our event, Colleen and Liz were very attentive and had very good last-minute ideas. They each checked on us multiple times during our reception, grabbing drinks and whatever we needed. They did secure additional tables for the space when we realized the layout wasn't working the day before the event. They even agreed to wash the vases we had rented from our florist, except they didn't follow through. They also assured us that the elevator would be locked until the specified times so guests would not arrive before the designated start time. The elevator was unlocked and guests were permitted to enter the venue prior to the start time despite multiple reassurances that they would take care of it and this would not happen.
While our reception was lovely, it is not a complete reflection on the experience we had with Dish and especially Colleen. It's hard to fathom how Dish can stay in business with such poor customer service and communication. We were ignored for three months and never once did we get an acknowledgement or anything more than an obligatory "sorry" about delays in responding and communication. While Dish's prices and the end result were both very nice, if we had to do it again we would rather pay more in order to have a vendor that promptly answers emails and questions. We were contacted by a friend who knew we were working with Dish and was also having communication difficulties even before booking CityView. Future couples beware - no matter what Dish says up front to secure your business, you will have the same difficulties. read more
