Upper Crust Catering

**Edit**: as of May 2012, The Upper Crust Catering contacted me after posting this review. I was happy that they took the initiative, even if it was almost 3 years our event, to reconcile. Ben was gracious in hearing out my complaints, and letting me know they're striving to better their company. While it does not change the service we received at the time, I appreciate Ben, and Jim, addressing my concerns and receiving clarification and answers to some of our questions we've had for so long. ***



My husband and I hired Jim and The Upper Crust Catering for our wedding and unfortunately we did not have a good experience with them.



When we initially met with Jim (the owner) to go over packages to see if this company was a good fit for us, he was great. He seemed understanding that we were on a budget and promised he could provide a great product for the amount we had to spend on catering. We spent more than an hour there talking about our wedding plans and such and walked away feeling truly blessed to have found a vendor that "cared" about their clients and provided an estimate inside our budget. Unfortunately this was not how it panned out.



Not only were they extremely difficult to get a hold of (several emails AND calls were required to get one response), but a week before the wedding when we provided our final head-count they tacked on an extra $1,000 to the bill because we had 25 more guests RSVP (considering we were spending only $2,500 on appetizers for 200 people, paying $1,000 more for only 25 people seemed overboard). He explained that they wanted to make sure they didn't run out of food (which is totally understandable) and that we needed several more tables (and therefore linens and such) even if it was only 25 people. He explained that because it was so much extra on top of our deposit and estimate he'd do us the honor of personally being at our wedding to oversee everything and make sure it went smoothly. Knowing that it is worth the money not to run out of food and make sure our guests were cared for, we happily paid the extra amount even though it went way above our budget.



The day of the wedding 1) They ran out of food, which sucks (I didn't even get to eat at my own wedding). 2) The "bartender" they provided did not check ID's and we therefore had underage drinking at the event -- something the venue AND we would have been personally liable for. 3) Jim did NOT, ever, show up to the event. We paid for him to be there and he never showed. 4) At the end of the night when they were packing up, they started carting the alcohol we purchased INDEPENDENTLY from the catering company into their truck to take back with them. My mom had to stop them from taking it, explaining the bride and groom purchased that themselves....they left it all on the sidewalk for my mom to pick up.



Obviously being seriously upset with the service we received and paid for, we sent SEVERAL emails and called dozens of times within a month of the wedding to speak with Jim and explain to him what happened -- simply just to hear that he was sorry for their poor service or to just acknowledge what happened was wrong. Not only did it take several emails and phone calls to receive a response, but Jim denied any of this happening and that since he wasn't there he couldn't confirm that our complaints were valid. No apology, no attempt to make things right, not even an acknowledgement or consideration of these complaints.



Sadly we were left feeling scammed us out of money on the most important day of our lives. On top of that, the company failed to even respond or acknowledge our complaints, which are 100% legitimate. If Jim had owned up to these shortcomings and even apologized once for any of them we would gladly forgive and move on, but I do not want any other bride or groom to suffer a similar fate.