Alta Bistro Catering

• 

  Sarah · Married on 17/08/2019

  3.0

  • Quality of service:
    3.0
  • Responsiveness:
    3.0
  • Value:
    3.0
  • Flexibility:
    3.0
  • Professionalism:
    3.0

  Food is amazing but business model can use some work

  I’ll start off by saying the food was absolutely amazing, taste wise, local and farm to table as we wanted. I do hope that Alta can get it together, however, when it comes to their customer service and professionalism. As the bride, I really had to be on top of what was happening with menus and timelines and, despite meeting in person to go over expectations (at my suggestion), things still did not go to plan. I asked for a final invoice several times so there wouldn’t be any surprises (we made a couple changes). I was told not to worry, that it would not be much more than the original quoted invoice. It was almost $1000 more than the original invoice which, to me, is a lot. They had also charged us for extra overtime because they served dinner late. We ran 15 minutes behind on our ceremony (8pm) but dinner wasn’t served until almost 10pm. This to me was totally unacceptable. When I brought it up via email all I received was defensiveness and putting the blame on us. Luckily none of our friends noticed and everyone thought the food was phenomenal. FYI they don’t do a food tasting for brides and grooms which I think would be greatly beneficial. We had to come to the restaurant and order like everyone else (super pricey) without any discount. Considering it’s $55 a head catering you’d think they’d have some sort of set up for tasting. I hope this helps other brides in making an informed decision and that Alta can take this as some constructive criticism. My wish is that no bride be needlessly stressed out on their wedding day and afterward!!!

  Sent on 08/10/2019

  Alta Bistro Catering's reply:

  Firstly, thank you Sarah (and the dozens of people during your wedding) who acknowledged that our food is and was incredible. We thank you, and we love food. We are caterers and restauranteurs. We are not wedding planners or wedding coordinators.
  
  Dear all Brides and Grooms to be,
  
  To all the future brides and grooms planning an offsite or considering planning an offsite wedding in this wonderful part of the world, the Sea to Sky (Squamish, Whistler or Pemberton). We urge you to contact a few reputable wedding planners in your area with experience in offsite events/weddings before you book your venue, certainly before your book your caterer. They will inform you of the real costs associated with hosting and offsite wedding. Doing so and will better inform you of the budget required to execute an offsite event smoothly.
  
  Unfortunately, Sarah's wedding did not have a wedding planner and the person nominated as the day of coordinator was a family member, who despite their loved one's best efforts, they were ill-prepared and lacked expertise for this task. Many problems arose during set up, during the day and evening that coordinator was either not available, or didn't have the answers for to help our team, nor any of the other vendors.
  
  We are sorry to inform any prospective clients, that this wedding set precedent for our company as we no longer accept wedding catering without a wedding planner as too problems arise, and in this case, being publicly blamed for
  
  Our contract agreement clearly states that any overages will be charged after the event to protect us in the case where the event runs overtime, has added last minute costs, etc. which are not our doing.
  
  We need to make a correction to the review, as the client paid $719.00 after taxes and gratuities more than originally quoted after adding to original quotation: changing service menu type, adding coffee and tea service, adding vendor meals, and labour overtime for our cooks.
  
  
  

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