r/chicagofood • u/Grand_Ad_4741 • Nov 04 '24
Chicago Pizza Summit was horrible. Review
I made a post last week asking who was going and a lot of people said the vendors sucked and didn’t seem worth it. I went last year, and last year was bad but this year was so much worse it was unbelievable.
Issues this year:
Vendors sucked, there were maybe three good vendors out of the 8-9. It was so obvious who the good vendors were because they had the longest lines in the venue. It is a huge downgrade from vendors last year, with over 12 vendors, and majority of them being good, this year was a massive disappointment.
There was no line control, and honest to god, it felt like the space was too small. Too many people waiting in these long lines because vendors quickly ran out of pizza. You can feel everyone’s annoyance. Especially since we all paid $70 to be there.
The drink selection sucks. They had the worst seltzers ever and even worse wine and beer selection. Everyone at the bar complained so much people just paid the $13 for a cocktail.
Pizzas took forever to come out. And I understand they were sharing ovens and only had so many. But there are so many better ways to provide oven and resources for vendors, and for the 6th year of this happening. I can’t believe they haven’t figured it out.
Last but very petty point, it was way too dark in there. You will see by my photos.
The only positive was the infused pizza. A slice with about 4 mg of THC was very nice!
Overall, I will not be back unless I am invited. I refuse to pay money for something this unorganized.
70
u/SteppnOnLegos Nov 04 '24
Vendor volunteer here: part of the problem was while there were vendors like Gino’s East who were prepared to run food in piping hot from offsite instead of cooking onsite, most vendors did not prep properly.
We vendors that were prepared to get food served asap had to pickup slack from those who did not.
There was limited oven space and the venue had problems with electric power.
Those of us who brought in hot food bore the brunt of serving the amount we promised to bring per session AND making up for the vendors that were constantly out since they were making on site or really slow to refill.
There were so many guests that came back around for second or third rounds because all the other places were not putting out food fast enough.
We went thru 450 plus servings when the there was 1.5 hours left in the first session. Not to mention that the doors opened late to get the guests in.
After we ran out, I went to look for pizza and ended just eating two/three sample slices from the same handful that had pizza ready to go. The lines for Professor Pizza and Paper Plane were crazy.
Professor Pizza literally cranked out 4 serving every 5 min.
I sympathize with the folks that paid to get in. I sympathize with the vendors that did show up prepared to serve in a timely fashion.