Catering Help?

Denver Sarah · January 2010

We're trying to make a decision on a caterer. Has anyone checked into these companies?

Gourmet Catering
Catering by Design
A Spice of Life
Food Guy

Thanks in advance!

kjyoung9 · January 2010

Spice of Life - AMAZING food, but you will pay a premium for it. They worked with us and our budget a little, but in the end they were just too expensive. I will say that Kathy Vaughan is great to work with, though.

Catering by Design - We had a solid personal recommendation for them, but honestly they were incredibly FLAKY. Our contact had a baby and ended up staying on maternity leave for longer than anticipated, which is fine but no one told us about it!!! And then the owner of the company, Ingrid, was pretty terrible about returning our calls and blamed it on a bad voice message system/machine (something) and that she lost our number. Just sloppy, so we dropped it and were sorely disappointed.

That's all I know! Good luck!

kjyoung9 · January 2010

Spice of Life - AMAZING food, but you will pay a premium for it. They worked with us and our budget a little, but in the end they were just too expensive. I will say that Kathy Vaughan is great to work with, though.

Catering by Design - We had a solid personal recommendation for them, but honestly they were incredibly FLAKY. Our contact had a baby and ended up staying on maternity leave for longer than anticipated, which is fine but no one told us about it!!! And then the owner of the company, Ingrid, was pretty terrible about returning our calls and blamed it on a bad voice message system/machine (something) and that she lost our number. Just sloppy, so we dropped it and were sorely disappointed.

That's all I know! Good luck!

COnoviaSarah · January 2010

I'm another Sarah in Denver who is working on catering. I'll share with you where I am so far, and I hope it helps!

I'm nervous to hear Kelly's story about Catering by Design: I've been working with Tara for a few weeks tweaking our menu and getting it in our budget. I'm actually hoping to schedule our first tasting for the next week or so. So far, we've had a good thing going....my fingers are crossed!

I tried working with The Food Guy, but during the holidays, communication fell apart. And I haven't heard anything since. Not a good sign, IMO.

In case you're interested, I'm also working on a proposal with Alaneyer from Occasions by Sandy. So far, she is flexible and nice to work with. I haven't tasted their food yet because we're still working on the menu, but I have heard great things.

HTH!

patrize · January 2010

Gourmet Catering-- I assume you're referring to Gourmet Fine Catering. I loved their menu on paper and initially really appreciated the customer service of the person I worked with. However, when we received our proposal, they totally missed the mark with giving us things we did not ask for. The proposals were double our budget and contained foods neither of us liked. It was like they didn't take any of our requests and feedback into account. Additionally, their proposals were filled with several hidden fees not discussed in initial meetings and when we asked for clarification, their answers were subpar. We never actually tasted their food.

A Spice of Life--Their menus and food were amazing. Everything presented on paper was unique and in person taste and presentation was spot on. I also felt they were budget conscious when helping us. We decided against them because of the travelling fees assessed when we changed our venue.

Food Guy--- We tasted their food at a couple of bridal shows and it was okay. We contacted them for a proposal because they were highly recommended for being budget friendly. We contacted them four times, each by a different medium (phone, online, fax, etc) and never got a response back. It should be noted that they were not contacted during a typical high service season.

patrize · January 2010

Just read the second Sarah's posting. We tasted food from Occasions by Sandy and it is great. They have awesome food selections. Unfortunately, they had difficulty meeting budgetary requirements. On the other hand, last week I received a call from Alaneyer stating they changed their menu to be more budget friendly, yet still maintaining the refined quality of their other dishes. We've already chosen our caterer, so we couldn't take her up on her offer for another tasting and proposal bid. Good luck, ladies.

COnoviaSarah · January 2010

Patrize--I'm glad to hear what you said about Occasions by Sandy. I'm awaiting revisions to our menu from Alaneyer so I hope they fit in our budget. That has been the hardest part of all this catering stuff--$$. I see you went with The Gourmet Kitchen. Who is your contact there? I sent a proposal request to them during the holidays and haven't heard anything back. Thanks for your input!

patrize · January 2010

My contact is owner Madhoo Seth. She is best to get ahold of via e-mail (sales@thegourmetkitchen.biz) because she is crazy busy. I often receive correspondence from her in the middle of the night because her day time is jam packed. I know she had many winter events, so we tabled some follow up appointments to mid-January. That being said, I'd give her a little slack to being slow in responding to you...to any caterer for that matter. The holidays were busy for most, so they need time to get back to their day-to-day stuff.

numinous · January 2010

IAfter looking at most of those and narrowing it down to Greens Point and Spice of Life I am using Susie at Greens Point Catering, which I later found out was the same person that did my friend's wedding and her food was amazing (and my friend ended up having trouble with Spice of Life so didn't go with them).
Susie is amazing -she answers all of my frantic e-mails, worked out yummy stuff within my budget, AND my friend said she did a lot of coordinating day of and came over and said "ok, it's time to cut the cake" or "time to do your first dance" and basically helped her plan out the whole day. I've emailed her odd questions about timelines, weird diet stuff, and she's been amazing at emailing right back, answering all of my questions, and giving me good delicious choices for the amount of money we want to spend and she's honest about what is more expensive.
Anyway, I adore her and my friend gave her rave reviews and I've seen a few more on here about them.

jennyfaire · January 2010

Hi,
Just my two cents for future brides searching for caterers..... We are on a tight budget, but we are both foodies! We are going with the Food Guy. We did two tastings (2 caterers), privately, not at bridal shows, so it was catered to what we wanted (samples of things we wanted to serve). The food was FANTASTIC. And can't beat the price. I'm working with Cindy, and I haven't had any trouble with communication/response. As a bonus, they offer a number of vases from weddings past that you can use for FREE for centerpieces/decoration, and they'll assemble the centerpieces for you. Again for free. She has pics of what they've done. My centerpieces are simple, so i'm not worried!

That's my experience....I'll let you know how the day goes!

dambs · January 2010

My bit of experience:

Spice of Life-We tried working with Preeya, the site we really wanted to use had them as the sole caterer and we could not self cater. She did not seem able to comprehend that Spice of Life's pricing would determine whether or not we could use the site. It was like pulling teeth to try and get a bid and when we did it was wildly over our budget. She also kept forgetting the two major points we have been trying to make with all of the caterers we are considering and that is that the groom is extremely allergic to all seafood and we have quite a few vegetarian friends and family. We did try some of their food and it was just ok, definitely not what we would have expected for the price they were charging.

The Food Guy-I cannot recommend Cindy there highly enough. She has made the experience a dream thus far. We had our tasting just this past week, the food was amazing! The extra services are the clincher. We have a very small catering budget to work with and while they are a bit out of our budget the extras and "day of" peace of mind they offer I think may balance it out. As the PP mentioned they have quite a few options for candles and centerpieces that they offer for use for free. They will do all of the set up and clean up, including any of your decorations, just show them a picture of what you are looking for. For us Cindy also metioned that she works closely with the other vendors to make sure that our timelines are met and things go off without a hitch. And, to help get us close to our budget they are allowing intermingling of foods. We are preparing several portions of our evenings eats and they are providing any of the warmers, platters, risers etc that we might need and on top of that they offered to do the set up on the whole shebang! Don't ask them for a menu list though, they apparently can make everything. DO check out their monthly business specials. This is one catering company that does not seem to do the "wedding" mark up which is very refreshing. They also offered my MIL a discount on the rehearsal dinner if we booked with them.

Bay Window Catering-My FI and his family found this one at one of the bridal shows that I could not go to and were completely blown away by the owners and the food. The owner told him they would work within our budget, not go a cent over and still make it an event to remember. I called and started working with Robin who, in my opinion, dropped the ball when it came to coming up with a proposal. I gave her my budget, our requirements, the information about our venue and the style of our wedding and what items we thought sounded wonderful on their menu. And to be honest, I needed a LOT of help narrowing down what sounded wonderful on their menu because it all sounds amazing! After about 20 emails we ended up with 2 proposals that were outside of our budget and forgotten requests for vegetarian considerations. I also sent two requests for consultation and tastings that were not acknowledged. When I mentioned that we were going to have to put the catering decision on hold the owner the FI met stepped in and has been wonderful so far. He is taking everything we want to do into consideration and immediately set up a tasting/consultation and they even offered to do some research on recipes that would fit our style! Our wedding is Norwegian/Scottish in theme. We have our tasting coming up soon and while before I was very disheartened in working with them, Steve has quickly changed my mind and I am pretty excited to see what they have to offer now.

Blue Sage Fine Dining/Catering-I sent them a quote request and never heard back from them. I figured that was not the foot I wanted to start off on so I did not persue any further.

Wow that was wordy! Sorry but hope that helps.

jafreder · January 2010

My venue had 28 caterers we could choose from and I contacted all of them for a quote, some never returned calls, so they were off the list after 2 calls with no return. I narrowed it down to 5 and we did tastings with those, we are going with Continental Divine, they were amazing. For the tasting, they decorated everything in our colors, they had such great attention to detail. Shannon from there is fabulous and super attentive.

Footers-They were awesome as well and super responsive, we just got more for the money at Continental Divine. Highly recommend.

Panache Catering-The were good as well and within our budget, my FI didn't love their food, I thought it was good. We are doing breakfast and they specialize more in dinner food.

Food Guy-They were ok, in the tasting they brought out eggs benedict and potatoes and the cake. It was really weird on why they brought out cake, we weren't using them for our cake. I would have rather tasted more from our menu. Plus, they were quite a bit higher than the 3 above.

Gourmet Fine Catering-They had great food, was just out of our budget and we like Continental Divine better and it was less expensive.

Good luck!

Denver Sarah · January 2010

Thank you for all the suggestions! We're starting our tastings this weekend and will keep you posted!

I feel like this is the biggest hurdle. I had no idea feeding everyone was so complicated! Ugh!

Denver Sarah · January 2010

Okay, we had a tasting at Gourmet Fine Catering with Kristin, who was very helpful! Loved the food; now trying to figure out budget. My mom really liked them, too, but we're going to do more tastings before we decide.

I'm amazed how many caterers don't even return my calls!

Denver Sarah · January 2010

Another tasting today. We tried Spice of Life and loved their food! They were really friendly and accomodating. They are willing to be flexibile in the budget, too.

Decisions, decisions...

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