AP Events catered my wedding weekend. Alex at AP Events catering seems like a good chef, so it's a shame that frankly his team doesn't seem to have its shit together, and I can't recommend them at this time for similar events.
On the positive side
-The food was mostly very good. Especially the pizza, but also the artichoke and risotto appetizers, and the Mediterranean mezze plate situation. Also the pastries they brought in from local places.
-Alex seems very nice and apologetic about the issues I discuss below
-They left the food out and kept bringing more until substantially later than the agreed upon time, which was nice for late guests
-It seems like they do a wide variety of foods well, and they were generally flexible and tried to be accommodating of our needs.
But the negatives were, unfortunately, pretty big, and added substantial stress to our wedding, so I can't recommend them right now. In particular
-Several meals started late because the food wasn't ready. The rehearsal dinner started ~45min late. The pre-wedding lunch started about an hour late. This caused our whole schedule to be late, inconveniencing other vendors substantially.
- Many of our guests were vegan (the whole wedding was vegetarian). They were really inconsistent and sometimes inaccurate about labeling food as vegan or not, even though I emphasized in advance that there would be many vegan guests, including the groom, and it was important to label correctly. This caused some guests to be too nervous to eat, and others to eat food that wasn't in accordance with their dietary requirements, causing them disgust and discomfort. If we had had folks with serious allergies, it could have been a dangerous situation.
-One item was just inedible. Alex had said there would be a vegan plant-based egg option at brunch using Just Eggs, a brand of vegan egg-like product. Instead, it seems like he used a gray egg replacer intended for baking, which created a gross gray sludge when you try to cook it like scrambled eggs. We had to send this back, leaving us without that option. If he had trouble finding Just Egg, I would have been totally fine with a tofu scramble or a fake meat dish like fake-meat breakfast sausage, I understand you sometimes have to make last-minute changes, but the substitute was clearly not acceptable.
-We specifically, at least 3 times, asked him to not include items with a certain ingredient I hate, and he repeatedly forgot to take them out on the menu drafts, then at the wedding itself one of the dishes had this ingredient, and I accidentally ate it
More minor issues
-The draft menus had lots of typos (not an issue directly at all, but I think indicative of the lack of detail-orientedness)
-Some food we had agreed would be there just, wasn't there at the wedding. Like the vegan butter and plain butter with the bread, in addition to flavored butter, which was on the menu plan, was not actually available.
-Alex seemed sloppy/not detail-oriented leading up to the wedding. When we sent him lists of changes we would like to the plan and menu, we would often see that a few had not made it into the next version (this wasn't due to his pushback, he would later do it if we reminded him again, it seems like he just forgot). This created more work for us.
-The wedding planner thought Alex's team didn't do a good job serving drinks/making drinks consistently and quickly available. I don't actually know what she meant by that since I was distracted by other things, but maybe it's true.
This also caused me (the bride) and my parents substantial stress, and my parents spoke to Alex or members of his team several times during the wedding.
Because of these issues, Alex didn't end up charging us for some add-ons we added to our contract late, and said he would tip his staff from the money we already paid him. This was nice but in my mind not enough to make up for the stress he caused me and my parents, and us not getting several things that were in-contract; I would happily have paid 30% more than we ended up paying to not have all these issues.
Alex seems like a good guy with a lot of talent. I hope he finds a more type-A person to partner with to better use his skills. But I wouldn't hire him for a complicated event on a tight timeline with a bunch of constraints, though he could be a good pick for something more laissez faire. read more