Completely RUINED our engagement do - WORST most chaotic bottomless brunch ever, INCREDIBLY RUDE manager, AWFUL customer service!
I regretfully had my engagement do here with 18 of our closest friends for a bottomless brunch because it looked pretty and seemed friendly when booking. The bottomless was so disorganised - despite them asking me to collect everyone's drinks preferences ahead of time so they could have the right stock, they came out with individual drinks one at a time and called out the name of the drink for someone to accept. It was complete carnage - everybody had to keep going up to the bar to request a top up. I was sat there with an empty glass for most of it and kept going up to ask the staff to top me and my friends up. The bottomless drinks was £30pp - most of the guests had only 3 drinks during the 90 minutes (confirmed by the manager's tally), which is awful value for money considering the price of a glass of prosecco there is £8.90, so we actually paid more than if we'd just ordered drinks normally. I've been to many bottomlesses, including ones where they only top up your glass when empty, but never have I encountered such mayhem and difficult, slow service. I felt stressed the whole time trying to look at everyone's glasses and spending my time asking the staff to top up instead of celebrating with my friends. All my friends were incredibly disappointed and I literally had friends messaging me afterwards saying how crazy the experience was and how few drinks they had.
Plus, about halfway in drinks were coming out in weird glasses e.g. espresso martini in a prosecco glass...
At the start, I gave the staff mini pegs and our wedding Save the Dates to clip to everyone's first drink. They did this, however the folded all of the invites before attaching, which was really upsetting because it ruined the invites which were very expensive and supposed to be nice keepsakes but they now all have big creases and fold lines. They also later used this as an excuse for the slow service for the bottomless drinks (even though attaching the invites was done before the bottomless time had started).
The bill came to ~£800 and instead of going round asking everyone to pay their share, I had to front the whole cost and then spend ages after the event adding up how much all of my friends owed me, chasing and sending bank details etc.
The staff also did not do a good job at alerting us when the bottomless time had ended - my finance and I both had no idea for instance. This meant three people had gone to the bar to ask for a drink top up just after the time had apparently finished, which the staff cheekily added to the bill without saying anything. Upon inspection of the receipt afterwards and realising the 3 added on drinks, I contacted Café Luca to describe our really disappointing experience and ask for the £36 for those 3 drinks to be refunded because they would not have been ordered if we'd known. Also this is particular frustrating, because I didn't know who'd "ordered" the add-on drinks, I paid this money on top of what I paid for my own bottomless and food (which I didn't eat because I was too busy trying to get refills for people), so this horrible experience cost me personally >£80.
In my email exchanges, the manager would take 2-3 weeks to reply and I would have to send several follow-up emails chasing to not be ignored. When he did reply, he would be incredibly rude and unapologetic for the bad experience, which ruined a once-in-a-lifetime event of our engagement do. He also refused to refund anything - giving loads of excuses, saying they did an amazing job and it was our fault the services was slow and "extra" drinks were ordered. Under consumer rights, I'm actually entitled to more refund than just the £36, but as I say this has been consistently, rudely refused by the manager at Cafe Luca.
I have posted on their Instagram advising people to be careful, but they quickly remove this every time I post.
I can't express enough DO NOT GO HERE!