This is a difficult review to write, but thankfully our experience seems to be the outlier here.
We called about 50 caterers for a 100 person luncheon. We landed on Donna because she was responsive, didn't shirk away from our estimated budget, and helped us create a menu that frankly felt very indulgent.
Throughout our planning, Donna was responsive, but she was also quite disorganized. She doesn't create an official contract so there's nothing to sign between two parties which resulted in a lot of back and forth and having to remind her of conversations we'd already had. When she sent over a payment request for a deposit, she got very confused and sent us a receipt for a different customer - and then called us panicked that she couldn't find our deposit and couldn't remember which customer had sent what.
Throughout the year, Donna had multiple issues with her email not working which would result in her calling us panicked that we may have not received her messages; and in the final weeks before our event she had cell phone issues that she seemed confused about how to address with her phone carrier.
I really was naive and thought this might all add up to a quirky older lady that had a big, fun personality.
A few days before our event, Donna sent us our final invoice, which was just an extremely blurry photo she'd taken that could not be easily read. We immediately notified her of this and she responded by forwarding the same email from her partner's email with the same blurry photo attached.
The email that went along with the invoice was truly the most confusing part of this entire interaction: Donna went on a rant about how she was doing us a lot of favors by under-charging us for our event and how she even made a dish for us for free. She added that we should tip her to make up for this pricing discrepancy. This seemed to all add up to Donna that she could take advantage of us on the day of our event.
On the day of our event, Donna was quite rude to our Temple employees and even more rude to the (amazing) high school students that work these luncheons often and whom we'd hired to help us with our luncheon. Donna argued with the Temple manager with the way the Temple employees set up the luncheon tables, she argued and bossed around our student helpers; and she again reminded us that she was doing us a favor.
In all the talks about our numbers, Donna decided (without discussing with us) not to bring food for 100; instead she brought food for 50 because she estimated that the kids would not eat as much as the adults, if at all. However, we ran out of food! The lox and cream cheese were gone in the first 10 minutes. Sorry, but when 45 teens are sitting through a 2 hour service, they are going to be hungry. Donna did not account for this, but still charged us the full price for 100 people.
Finally, although we'd agreed that Donna would bring her items in foil containers for easy clean up, she instead put her food in containers that she wanted back. And although she was scheduled to come at 2pm to come pick up those items, she came instead at 1:15pm and (unbeknownst to me) demanded that our teen helpers wash all her items at that time. I had to come to the back room to see where my helpers were once I noticed them missing and Donna was rudely barking at them to wash her items faster.
When she asked me how the food was, I told her that the food ran out in the first 10 minutes. She replied that it only ran out because I "didn't hire real staff." She insisted that had we had real staff that weren't students or Temple staff, that they would have policed how much people were taking at the buffet table. I mean, Donna had two small tubs of cream cheese for 100 people.
Insulting Temple staff who man these luncheons every week, and taking employees who aren't on your pay roll to do your cleaning, is not...well...kosher. read more