Long lines, disorganization at CrabToberFest anger customers. Carolina Food Market issues defensive apology, but no refunds.

The event promised all-you-can-eat crab to people who paid $40 a ticket to get in. But dismayed by the line, many people decided to leave rather than wait hours for their food.

And despite promising refunds to certain customers, Carolina Food Market will not be issuing refunds.

Carolina Food Market owner Jim Seidel responded to a request for comment from the Agenda: “We have decided not to issue refunds. There was plenty of crab available and we also had a number of attendees who clearly had their fill of crab and wanted a refund after they ‘heard’ we would be offering refunds.”

Jim shared with the Agenda, “We put out approximately 7,700 crabs on Saturday for people to eat. People who stayed ate a lot of crabs. As only 300 people per session were allowed in and some of those were listed as non eaters.”

On Saturday, about 500 people attended the “All you can eat blue crab” CrabToberFest at Unknown Brewing organized by Carolina Food Market.

Unknown Brewing just rented out their space, they had nothing to do with the event.

“That event was very poorly managed,” an attendee named Tiana told me. “To have to stand in a line for hours to only get four crabs and to have to stand in the line again was a joke.”

Nancy Jones summarized her experience, “They knew exactly how many tickets had been sold. They knew how many crabs they had. This had been in the works for months. Then the day of, they don’t know how to cook or season the crab. They are surprised by the crowd that shows up. They are severely understaffed. And during the whole of the event there was no public communication to the people who had concerns or issues. I still have no idea if we’ll get our $80 back (tickets cost $40 each). Zero customer service present yesterday.”

Carolina Food Market had planned to partner with Tailgaters Crab Feast because of their big crowd steaming expertise, but a Tailgaters Crab Feast representative told the Agenda, “We were a part of the planning as a 50-50 partner for months until four days before the event when Jim Seidel of Carolina Fish Market stopped answering our phone calls, blocked my number and sent us an email saying our services for blue crabs and steaming were not needed.”

In response to the Tailgaters Crab Feast organizations claim, Jim from Carolina Food Market stated, “I had no contract of any kind with them for anything. No 50/50 split as you wrote he said. We were going to purchase crabs from them and pay them to steam them. It’s only when we requested a vendor W9 form completed that they never gave us and then they approached us for cash money up front not a check, up front for crab bait we decided to not purchase from them.”

How bad did it get? Carolina Food Market went from just deleting complaints on both the CrabToberFest Facebook event page and their Carolina Food Market Facebook business page – to deleting both pages.

In response to the deletion of these complaints and ultimately the deletion of both pages, Carolina Foods Market owner Jim Seidel said in a statement to the Agenda, “A few of you (attendees) were screaming obscenities, became violent and threatened bodily harm. A few used vulgar language towards my wife and even to my 12-year old daughter. She left in tears. For these reasons, we felt it necessary to temporarily suspend our Facebook page.”

The 2016 CrabToberFest Experience

CrabToberFest was comprised of two different sessions – the first session took place from noon to 3:30 p.m. and the second session ran from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

After looking at the large volume of angry comments from the first session, a 4 p.m. session ticket holder decided to call Unknown Brewing. The Unknown employee answered with “Hello, everybody’s crabby at Unknown…”

That was an understatement.

Attendees that showed up around noon reported waiting around 45 minutes just to enter the event space. Without paper tickets, there was a major bottleneck created at the door because the person checking people in had to manually find the name of each single person.

Carolina Food Market refutes the claim of 45 minute waits and told the Agenda that they have “detailed records can prove we started checking people in at 11:25 am and continued by the minute.”

Once inside, it didn’t get any better.

One attendee told me that she waited “Two to three hours before getting near the crab station.” Another said, “The noon session was a complete disaster. Long lines, no communication, no crabs, crabs that were not cooked. No customer service.”

The most detailed account came from a patron named Amanda, “We arrived right before noon and stood in line until around 1:45 p.m. We got about five feet past the entrance/registration table. No one was getting food. The line moved because people were leaving. So we never received any food. We made the decision to leave because (1) no one was being served, (2) we were hungry and (3) the handful of people that did get served couldn’t eat the crabs because they were so undercooked. Blue crabs shouldn’t be bright red, not blue.”

Amanda then told the Agenda, “Everyone that was leaving said the person checking everyone in said to put our name on a list and they would refund our money on Monday.”

Amanda wasn’t alone. Several attendees report writing their name and phone numbers in order for the event organizer to refund their $40 tickets.

One attendee told the Agenda they clearly asked a Carolina Foods Market representative, “Are you issuing refunds?” at which time the representative said,  “Yes, just give me your name.”

Attendee reports from the afternoon session say that crab, potatoes and corn started to come out at a good pace around 6 p.m.

Full Statement from CrabToberFest organizer Carolina Food Market owner Jim Seidel

CrabToberFest Patrons:

We would like to begin by thanking all of you who came out to this event and had a great time. We served over 7,000 crabs, 400 lbs. of potatoes and 1,200 ears of corn.

We understand that there are a few of you who attended the first session and had a few concerns. We would like to address those now. We received several complaints about wait times, and for this, we are truly sorry. However, we had hopes that attendees could remain patient as this was billed as a four-hour event. It was unrealistic to think that you could come in and in just thirty minutes, eat and leave. As we started steaming, we had a number of people in the beginning of the line piling large amounts of crabs onto trays and leaving none for the people behind the line. We should have made it clear that the trays were meant to be used for discarded shells and that other plates were available for bringing crabs back to the table. Once we became aware of this issue, we stopped this practice and started serving people at the tables. In cooking over 7,000 crabs, it is quite possible that some of the crabs came out undercooked, and maybe even overcooked. However, there were plenty more that were available and these could have been discarded and replaced.

We even offered those who had to wait in line for the first session, to stay for the 4pm session. If you stayed and were patient with us, you were fed. Again, over 7,000 crabs were consumed. A number of people became quite impatient from the onset and decided to leave. This was your choice to do so, but if you would have remained patient, you would have enjoyed yourself. The people who decided to remain patient and stay, had fun, danced, and sat and ate crab for hours. We have pictures and videos of these people having a great time.

We are very disappointed in the behavior of a few attendees. A few of you were screaming obscenities, became violent and threatened bodily harm. A few used vulgar language towards my wife and even to my 12-year old daughter. She left in tears. For these reasons, we felt it necessary to temporarily suspend our Facebook page. As the day went on, people were becoming more abusive and vulgar with their language. We will reactivate it shortly.

We have decided not to issue refunds. There was plenty of crab available and we also had a number of attendees who clearly had their fill of crab and wanted a refund after they “heard” we would be offering refunds. We have decided, however to donate a portion of the proceeds from this event to a local food bank in Charlotte. We will inform everyone to whom this donation was made.

In closing, we again would like to thank everyone who attended. This was our first CrabToberFest event. Nothing is ever perfect and we learned a lot from this experience and will be making changes if we decide to do this event in the future. We also want to thank The Unknown Brewing Company for allowing us to host this event at their facility. The Unknown Brewing Company had no participation in this event. We understand that some of you were dissatisfied with your experience, and for this, we are truly sorry. We are very happy and thankful that the majority of those who attended were very satisfied, ate a ton of crabs, and had a truly wonderful experience.