Imagine it: a luxurious evening on Australia's Bondi Beach, enjoying an eight-course meal and chilled wine with your favorite person. Imagine anticipating that scene … and then realizing it's not going to happen after you spent good money. That was the reality for many of the hopeful diners of this expensive pop-up.
Eater reports that the diners were promised a lavish meal catered by Australia's celebrity chef, Luke Mangan, and paid $125 for tickets to experience this event. The event was dubbed "A Moveable Feast," and was projected to deliver to high expectations. Unfortunately, it fell extremely short of those standards. First of all, the meals were supposed to be served in "gourmet picnic hampers," but arrived in what actually looked like regular takeout boxes.
In addition, prospective diners ended up waiting in line for hours just for their drinks, and many were so hungry, they left to get food outside. Those diners had a rude awakening when, as The Age reports, they weren't allowed back into the "feast." As would be expected, many of that night's 3,000 attendees are demanding refunds. Who can blame them?
Some who were lucky enough to receive the food they came for felt that they had been misled, seeing as how they were comparing their food to airline food.
Many others gave up and headed to Domino's when they just couldn't take it anymore. What probably infuriated these poor dinner guests even more was that A Moveable Feast posted about the event on Facebook in a way that might be implied that the event was a success.
Diners are posting their complaints and vehemently requesting those refunds, but by Australian Consumer Law, these guests have to be able to prove that the service did not deliver the results that both parties had agreed upon. My feeling is that there's probably some fine print somewhere that’s going to cause even more of an uproar.
You know who does deliver to expectations? Domino's.