THE BISOU EXPERIENCE — Attraction in Town of Babylon

I recommended this venue to my family for my great aunts repass and will never forgive myself. After watching my aunt cry at her mothers funeral I had to watch her cry out of embarrassment and frustration due to unprofessionalism and pure lack of human compassion.

I reached out to see if a date was available and was told yes and that they were having a summer special for a 4 hour event with 60 guests. After explaining that I was expecting 100 guests they claimed that the space could work so I set up a viewing. The next day my aunt and two cousins were late only because I didn’t know about the location change. I did the research myself to find the new address because whoever I was texting had abruptly stopped responding. I was on the phone and can vouch that the owner herself stated she understood and it happens all the time because she’d been having a hard time getting the address updated. My Aunt explained that she wanted the space set up with 10 round tables with 10 chairs each. They noticed that second section of the space had bare floors but were told floors were getting done the next day. She also insisted that we had to use her bartender for a $50 fee. My aunt decided to leave a deposit and book the space because we were crunched for time (planning a funeral in a week) and the cementary was 10 minutes away. After asking multiple times and waiting days, a contract was sent with discrepancies than what was verbally agreed to and insane fees that should’ve been disclosed prior to taking our deposit. Firstly the bartender fee went from $50 to $50 per hour, security was $150 an hour which we didn’t need for a repass, extra setup time $250 an hour. When my aunt brought up the misinformation about the bartender fee the owner responded by bringing up them being late and her being preoccupied and still accommodating them after acting so understanding at the time it happened. Feeling trapped because the funeral was now days away and she had already paid a deposit my aunt had no choice but to proceed with the plans.

When the decorators arrived they found 5 round tables instead of 10, and the same large oval table in the middle of the room that had been at the viewing. After being told that they couldn’t move the table and denied the extra 5 tables they called me so I had to leave the burial early and miss my aunts casket be put into the moseleum. I had to argue with nonchalant dismissive staff to get extra tables and have the filthy table nobody asked for wiped down. I also noticed the floor was wrapped not actually done. The decorators had no tablecloth for the table because it was not in our plans. We also were supposed to do draping which the venue knew and the full draping could not be done as planned because of the table. My Aunts whole vision was RUINED. Even though we said we didn’t need security there was a large grumpy man dressed in street clothes walking around our event the whole time. For a space that large, they had ONE vent in ONE section on an 85 DEGREE day. I had to make a scene to get two ugly fans that didn’t help. We had one speaker so the baby shower music next door drowned out our sound. The bartender they forced us to hire sucked and was being cheap with liquor we provided. We had strangers in and out our event all 4 hours. I could literally go on for dayssss! Every time I had to walk some stranger over to the baby shower I noticed the extreme difference in events. The ac was clearly working and their event was going great while we were miserable. I’m sure the owner will just have her staff flood Google with positive reviews, and if she responds to this one she’ll be talking to herself. However, 100 people at our event witnessed this absolute disaster “experience”. To anyone with a brain please find somewhere else for your...

SUBJECT: Beautiful venue – not worth the hustle!

We were so excited to host our first baby shower and found a location close to home and reasonably priced. Seeing that there are so many overwhelmingly priced/underwhelmingly serviced venues available, we went with Bisou because we thought we were going to get the best service. Additionally, we wanted to support black-owned businesses seeing that there are not that many close to us. Unfortunately, the rug was pulled out from under us once gave our first cash deposit. We can summarize our experience by centering on the “lacks’: 1 Lack of communication • We never received a contract. In good faith, we continued to make payments towards the final balance in hopes that the contract would not be something that we would need to complain about. Once we started to ask questions about logistics and additional services, we were met with short responses like, “refer to the contract”. When we stated that we never received a contract, their response was “We would’ve never reserved your event if we didn’t get a signed contract.” They later admitted that the contract was “bounced back” to them. Why did reserve our event without a contract? • There was a whole street festival – hosted annually by the local town! The street festival blocked our access to the venue and our guests had a really hard time finding the venue. When we asked for 30 extra minutes to accommodate our guests, we were told that they had no idea about the festival (even though the town confirmed that the event was publicized, and event staff got to the location hours before our event to “set up”) Why did no one give us a heads up? 2 Lack of professionalism • To accommodate for the street festival mishap, we asked if they would refund us $150. Their response was, “We compensated you for the festival by providing additional decoration services costing $850.” Another manager replied with another form of “compensation for $1250” Little do they know that we had friends book an event the night before and said that they paid for the additional decoration services. Not only did they not properly clean up from the night before, but they also lied to us about “compensating” us! Why would you lie to us rather than issue a refund? 3 Lack of courtesy • We wanted to have a conversation with the event space manager to address our concerns. When we told them that we would give them a call, they did not answer and did not call us back. We know that they had our phone numbers saved. We called a second time (from a different number) and got through. Excuse after excuse was given. We cleaned up after the party, escorted guests through the festival, tipped their bartenders (in large plastic jars that crassly read “TIPS”). We only hoped for some courtesy. None was given. In all, our guests made our shower worthwhile and meaningful. We paid so much money to rent the space, decorate it, and pay their “required” security guard fee (for a Sunday afternoon event). We didn’t deserve to be hustled like that. I would suggest spending your hard-earned money supporting another business. This one needs some work with...

We rented this space for a baby shower in February 2024, we were initially very pleased when we booked because we were supposed to be the 1st booked clients of their new location in Lynbrook - we were offered free balloon work and cold sparklers for being their 1st booked clients- the permits did not come through on time so we had to move the baby shower to the Lindenhurst location, our offer was still honored - great!.......fast forward to 3 weeks before the baby shower. we booked 2 servers and a bartender through the venue..I spoke with one of the owners (male) 3 weeks before the event at the event space he asked me the final # of guests I advised him 140, he suggested 2 bartenders, we declined and said we had done events before with this # of people with 1 bartender and he said ok. One week before the baby shower I get a text confirming everything that I had previously confirmed with them...# of people etc. Again I was advised in the text that we needed 2 bartenders, I advised I spoke with one of the owners (male) already and received an OK. The day before the event, I received a call from the same owner I previously spoke with advising me that they never do an event of this size with 1 bartender and that it would no look good for them or their venue if there is a line at the bar, so I asked him if he was "FORCING" me to get another bartender at $65.00 per hour, his exact words were " I wouldn't want to say force" he then said " look I don't make money from the bartenders it all goes to them" against my better judgement and so that there were no issues I said ok. the night of our event the two owners were at the location, I thought it was just to oversee the event, but low and behold they were the bartenders!! the nerve.....I was confused, neither of them said anything to me about staff not being able to make it..etc. I truly believe that was the plan from the start and to me that is bad business!! *I made a request to keep the bar clear so the counter did not look crowded full of bottles - there was an excuse as to why that could not be done. *Our guest were approaching us, saying the bartenders were rude, and their overall attitudes were not pleasing. *some guests advised they were denied ice ( that we of course paid for and we overbought)

*At one point my daughter in law asked me if we had anymore cups because one of the guests approached her and advised her she was denied a drink because there were no cups...I was confused and annoyed, no one came to me and told me we were out of cups, of course we had additional cups but to deny a guest a drink and say there are no cups and not bring it to the renters attention is ridiculous!

*overall experience being the renter was not pleasant, and I would advise you to take caution especially if you are not using them to set up your event, in my opinion if you do not use them to design/set up your event they will try to get the money another way and they don't treat you as a...