Feast Imbibe - Evanston

Booked a wedding before covid and were treated like utter garbage. Kept changing the contract, wouldn’t be reasoned with. Sarah is a terrible business woman and should not be trusted to keep her contract or word. Tried to enact a phantom “abuse clause” because she’s a bad business woman, lied about it with witnesses and refused to refund a down payment based on said lie. Go to anyone else for your wedding. She’s a liar and cheat. If I couldn’t give her zero stars, I would. Awful business.

Do not hire Feast Imbibe. Due to turnover at the company, my fiancée and I had to set up all portions of the planning process. We were contacted within a month of our wedding on a Friday night by Feast Imbibe stating the cost of catering would increase. At this point, our contract had been signed and feast imbibe refused to honor it. We were not able to find a new caterer the month of our wedding and instead had to pay feast imbibe SIGNIFICANTLY more than our contract. We were able to negotiate the charges to be approximately 10%, which we had not budgeted for, considering we had a signed contract. Additionally, the event coordinator who we were communicating with was not at our event, after she told us multiple times she would be. Planning a wedding is stressful enough, do not let feast imbibe make it more stressful with their last minute price increases, lack of honoring a contract, and flakey staff.

I debated on writing this review because I wanted to empathize with businesses during the pandemic, but ultimately feel it’s important to share my experience with other couples that may lock themselves into a contract with Feast Imbibe. Two weeks before our wedding, they emailed us on a Friday evening that they would need to increase pricing which amounted to a couple thousand dollars. I’ll paste the email below. One week prior to receiving this email, we went for our tasting and despite it being one of the primary reasons for choosing them as our caterer, they served me an appetizer with gluten when we explicitly discussed and even emailed back and forth that I was Celiac. I even confirmed this while onsite at the tasting. I was very understanding of this mistake even after becoming extremely ill and having to take personal time off from work, etc., so when I received this email a week later and felt stuck because I had less than 2 weeks to react, I wanted to share my experience so other couples would understand the terms they were agreeing to. Also for those that have serious allergies, they should be aware of this mistake. I added one star because our service the day of our wedding was incredible, and I truly hope they used some of the extra money we paid to fairly compensate their employees. Email below: We hope this message finds you and your family happy, in good health, and looking forward to the exciting celebrations to come in the year ahead! We regret having to send this message, but with the steady increase in food and staffing costs, we are no longer able to honor 2019 and 2020 and even early/mid 2021 pricing. It’s extremely important to us that we maintain the level of service and quality promised to you when we began working together, and feel strongly that this additional investment in your event will ensure its success. Knowing that this has been an incredibly difficult time for everyone who has had to make adjustments to their celebrations, we have done all we can up until now to remain flexible in changing dates and avoid imposing penalties for these changes. We have been happily absorbing additional costs wherever needed to ensure that your event remained unaffected, despite these changes being fueled by outside economic factors. However, it is no longer sustainable for the business to continue absorbing these costs. While our current pricing for new services has unfortunately increased almost 60% from early 2021 to now, to be as fair as possible we are asking for a 25% increase in food and staffing charges and 20% increase on rentals, effective immediately. The additional funds will be directly applied towards covering the expenses we are paying out of pocket on behalf of your event. We are extremely grateful for your trust in us executing your celebration, and appreciate your understanding as we navigate the evolving changes in the industry. Please feel free to reach out to with any questions or concerns around this updated pricing. We’d be happy to discuss what these changes mean for your event in more detail or to look for ways to help you get closer to your original budget. We’ll be back in the office on Monday, ready to work with you to find the best solution for everyone. Looking forward to hearing from you, and thanks again for your understanding. Best, The Feast Imbibe/Soul Smoke team

We hired Feast Imbibe for my daughter 's wedding on September 17, 2021. They were recommended by the venue. Sarah informed us via email on September 3, 2021, at 5:30 on a holiday weekend (exactly 14 days before the wedding), that they were increasing our food and staffing charges by 25% and rentals by 20%. WE HAD A SIGNED CONTRACT FOR THIS EVENT DATED 12/19/2020, THAT HAD NO PROVISION FOR A PRICE INCREASE. They had us in duress in the final hour and they knew it. After several discussions with my attorney, we chose to try to negotiate the increase, due to timing. We did negotiate the increase down a bit, but they insisted on cutting some of the services they agreed to on the contract. Sarah wanted to turn it into a passed food, hors d 'oeuvre wedding, to cut her costs. We negotiated to a buffet service, instead of a manned station service, again to cut costs on their end. THIS WAS THE WORST BUSINESS PRACTICE I HAVE EVER SEEN. Sarah kept passing the blame to the owner , but I was unable to have a discussion with the owner, as he/she was protected by Sarah. DO NOT EVER GET INTO A CONTRACT WITH THIS COMPANY, AS THERE WILL BE A BREACH OF CONTRACT TWO WEEKS PRIOR TO YOUR EVENT! My apologies to the cook and wait staff for the decreased gratuities...you may want to talk to your employer about sharing some of the increased profits from this event.

Feast and Imbibe was our incredible caterer for our wedding in May. They navigated all of the COVID Wedding Struggles beautifully, were always quick to answer our questions, helped us make decisions, and most importantly- the food was amazing!!! All of our guests commented on how great it was and thanked us for not having chicken and green beans (ha! . Every guest had a different favorite food- it was all so incredible. Thank you to the chefs, staff, and Sarah for making our day beautiful and delicious! Here are a few food photos from our photographer, Lisa Kathan.