It takes a lot for me to publish a negative review of a small business but given my recent experience with Patty's Catering, I feel this review is necessary to convey the facts of our experience and allow others to have a full perspective of what they might encounter with this caterer.
We hired this caterer for a bereavement luncheon based on the direct recommendation of a family friend who is close with the caterer owner, Leslie, thinking surely this would mean a positive and seamless experience. However, instead we found this experience to be the opposite. To start, when discussing the menu and logistics up front with Leslie we generally found her to be a bit rude and unorganized. She complained that we kept changing the menu/order with her. However, the changes we were making were limited to a single day and an hour window of time as we tried to finalize our own expectations of the guest count and what food should be served given the short notice and our lack of experience in hosting a luncheon of this nature given we aren't frequently hosting funeral luncheons for close family members. However, we were willing to look past this behavior from Leslie given the direct recommendation. Unfortunately, this initial interaction was only a precursor of the experience to come with her staff and Leslie again after our event.
During the event we experienced a long list of issues, which I'll summarize here:
-The catering staff were supposed to arrive at our venue for setup per the contract at 9:30am (no later than 10:15am per our verbal discussions with Lesley); however, our venue hosts informed us that they didn't arrive until 11am, which explained why the serving station was still being setup as all of our guests began to arrive
-The catering staff didn't provide the disposable tablecloths for the serving station, instead our venue had to scramble to provide (luckily we had planned ahead and bought a few extras which they were able to use)
-The catering staff refused to allow our guests to have a mix of both meats being offered in the buffet, which is a direct contradiction to the guidelines that Leslie confirmed should have been followed
-Most appalling of all, the catering staff made themselves their own food plates, with their gloves still on, in front of our guests while everyone was still eating and guests were coming up for seconds and preceded to eat at the buffet table in front of everyone. This is not only unprofessional but also highly unsanitary.
-We were informed by our venue hosts that the catering staff were complaining about members of the family to them and also did not serve all of the food that they brought to the venue, which we had paid for based on an assumed head count
-The catering staff never checked with us (the hosts) before breaking down the serving station to confirm we were ready for them to do so; further, they also started throwing away food that could have been saved and stored in the on-site refrigerator claiming that it was our responsibility to have told them we wanted to keep the food before they started disposing of it.
-Lastly, the catering staff were overall highly unprofessional pulling several members of our family aside during the event in the main event space making negative comments about specific family members, making personal comments about some family members (addressing the pregnant status of one and making a blatant comment directly asking who died that the event was for which delivered in an extremely insensitive way), and in general creating a scene that was very uncomfortable for several of us who were trying to enjoy this time with family, remembering our lost loved one. Instead we were forced to deal with this unprofessional behavior that overall really tainted this event for us.
Perhaps most disappointing aspect of the entire experience was when we conveyed the above facts and circumstances to Leslie, the catering company owner, the next day we were met with a highly defensive and unprofessional attitude as opposed to a small business owner who wanted to make things right for us collectively as a group/customer, given the bulk of the issues were a result of the staff selected for our event as opposed to the food itself. Given this experience with Leslie and her staff selected for our event, I would highly caution anyone from hiring this caterer. There are numerous other caterers in the St. Louis area with great food who will treat your families professionally and with the respect and courtesy you deserve. Please think twice before hiring Patty's Catering. read more
