The Catered Affair

I first approached the Catered Affair in September/​October of 2011 for a wedding in September of 2012. Right off the bat, I felt like I was being rushed off the phone and that the company didn’t really have time for me. I realized it was a busy time, but I felt like the service could have been better. Ultimately, they did put a proposal together, but I’d say it took them at least a month to respond to my initial request. When I called to try and ask them to expedite my request, I was basically told that I was needlessly concerned about the timing. Finally, we got to a point when it was time to set up a tasting. Because they were so busy, the company was unable to accommodate my schedule — I am from out of town so I needed to do a tasting on a weekend. In late October /​November, they said that their only availability was in mid-​January and they could only do my tasting on Saturday. All other caterers I spoke with were much more accommodating about scheduling and were willing to compromise and do a tasting on Sunday due to the fact that I was traveling over the weekend for specifically that purpose. So, finally, the tasting was scheduled. I must say, the food and presentation were excellent. No complaints. However, the price differential between this company and their competitors was over $ 10,000! This included all rentals, staff, etc. There was some back and forth with my sales person on this point. They reduced the price about $ 3,000, but because their original estimate did not include everything I needed, the overall quote I got back came out to roughly the same spot. When I spoke to my salesperson about this differential, I was told that there was no way they could come down on pricing. I was truly disappointed. I thought the food was great, but there was no way I could justify the huge differential and the poor value proposition. In particular, I had problems with the fact that the mark-​up is about 30−40%. This is HUGE and to be told that it can’t be reduced at all just felt like a ripoff. There was an 8% admin fee which they did explain, but the services that it included should have been covered by the enormous mark-​up priced into the estimate. The icing on the cake was that throughout the whole process, my salesperson kept referring to their excellent staff and service — service that I didn’t experience. My fiancé and I ultimately ended up going with a caterer that had great food, was very accommodating and offered excellent service. I would say that if you’re just looking for great food and are not very value conscious nor very sensitive to differences in service, this company would do a great job and has delicious food. However, for me, even though I could certainly afford the difference, the fact that the value proposition was so inferior and that the company refused to compromise on price just left a bad taste in my mouth. At the end of the day, even though we could pay the extra $ 10,000, I realized that I would not enjoy working with the team due to their lack of flexibility.