MOUTON FOODS Chef Jude Mouton Celebrity Chef Mouton Thief, disrespectful, rude, unprofessional bad attitude, liar RIverside, California

Chef Mouton Balboa Music Festival Statement

In September 2012, the producers of the Balboa Music Festival presented one of the worst productions in its history. Gladys Knight failed to perform as advertised and record breaking heat that exceeded 100 degrees led to an emergency triage by the Red Cross. The festival did not deliver the experience that yearly brings thousands to wade through long lines, heat, crowds and traffic to see their favorite artists, while hanging out with family and friends.

The aftermath of the poorly organized festival, failure of the events producers and organizers to take responsibility has had some unfortunate far reaching effects. Included in the myriad of negative postings about the Balboa Music Festival on ripoff.com, blogs, print media and Facebook postings--ranging from fraud to assault at the Festival is an erroneous and slanderous posting about Celebrity Chef Mouton.

Chef Mouton was approached to be a contracted vendor by the event planner due to his outstanding food service; experience in working with celebrities and capacity to serve large Crowds. As it is with many of the participants of the festival, Chef Mouton was a victim not only to a chain reaction of events caused by the festivals fouled logistics and poor planning; but of the festivals negative impact on his brand, negligent accusations by the event planner and a breach of contract.

Chef Mouton arrived at the venue early. He and is staff of 13 were setting up as directed when he was asked to tear down and set up in another area. This setting up and tearing down occurred 2 additional times. Prior to serving food the health dept. shut down the vendors for approximately 2 hours due to the Balboa organizers failure to have the water tanks connected to the hand sinks for vendor food use. Again these logistical and failed planning repeatedly plagued the entire Festival.

Chef Mouton was contracted to provide his famous Creole style food and Po' Boys to general ticket holders and was told by organizers he'd be the only food vendor, which in fact was not true. Chef Mouton was also contracted to serve the 300 backstage VIP and celebrity guests. Due to Balboa's poor organization, security allowed the backstage area to be overrun by non VIP ticket holders, which far exceeded the 300 people Chef Mouton was contracted to serve. This was further complicated by the emergency Red Cross triage being set up in the VIP food area. Chefs resolution to this was to have his staff boxing up the meals and while the organizers determined who was fed.

Due to the mass confusion as well as ticket holders request for refunds, the organizers tried to cut costs by reneging on there contracts. Although the contracted amount of food was prepared, the organizers wanted a refund to compensate for the dissatisfied guests. However, the dissatisfaction of the guest was due to improper planning and preparation by the organizers, not Chef Mouton. The Chef has a long history of doing successful events of this magnitude and honored his contractual commitment.

Although food is an important part of any gathering, it is impossible to believe that a chef or any vendor could be responsible for all the negative outcomes, bad press, complaints to the host city, a forming class action lawsuit, and the demands for refunds by the Balboa Festival attendees.

Festival attendees are still waiting to be refunded ticket monies as promised for the poorly executed event, while festival organizers continue to shift and pass blame to their vendors and other contractors. The negative experience will probably lead festival fans to choose from a plethora of other music venues this year, although booking the right artists in the future may bring forgiveness of die hard fans to the festival in coming years.