Cater to Me

We used Cater-​to-​Me (C2M) for our June wedding in Honolulu (80 people) and he nearly ruined the day. The owner, Christian, is rude, unprofessional and couldn’t care less about customer service.
Lest anyone think my review is too harsh, I’ll say that early on Christian was flexible and helped us create dishes that weren’t on the menu. We did passed apps at cocktail hour and family style dinner. To his credit, the food was delicious. But, that is where my positive experience ends.
So what went wrong? Everything.
— We paid for 2 bartenders but he only staffed one. No one wants guests to wait in line at their open bar wedding!
— His staff forgot to pour the Champagne for both the first AND second toast. My parents were embarrassed and frustrated.
— They did not follow directions re: which wines to serve when — including some very special wines for the head table.
— They didn’t even begin pouring wine until after the 2^nd course was already served! Yes, this means people were eating with empty glasses. My wedding planner literally picked up bottles and started wine service because she could see I was about to do it myself.
— He was contracted to provide 1 staff per 8 guests but delivered more like 1 to 15. The staff was unprofessionally dressed and seemed more interested in smoking than serving food.
— We had contracted for 2 signature drinks to be pre-​poured and served, but they only made one.
— C2M does not provide any bar service items (ice, ice chests, tongs, shaker) but did not clarify this with our wedding planner. It was an 11^th hour scramble to obtain these items, and Christian couldn’t have cared less. When asked if we were missing anything, he did not respond. Yet, he did not provide any carafes for coffee/​tea so our guests did not have coffee with dessert even though we paid for it!
— His staff showed tremendous disrespect for the property (a private residence, my mom’s house) and left trash in the patio plus let ice melt and form puddles on the house floor!
Christian’s attitude was ‘not my fault.’ I attempted to make-​good with him after the wedding and asked for a partial refund for the contract items where he didn’t come through. He has been totally unresponsive, except for an early email that must have anticipated my frustration because he tried to point blame towards my wedding planner.
I don’t know what kind of clients he’s worked with, but his customer service is the worst I have ever encountered. Do yourself a favor and do NOT hire C2M — for a wedding or any other event catering. They will appear flexible and accommodating early on, and yes the food itself is tasty, but the delivery is a huge mess. I cannot stress enough how his service, or lack thereof, nearly ruined our wedding.

I wish I’d never considered using Christian to cater our wedding. I wish, even more, we had not chosen him.
My wife and I were married in August of 2008. We had run into Christian at a Kailua street festival and went back to meet him for a dinner to sample his food. The food was amazing. We were so happy with his vision and style we quickly arranged to have him cater our wedding through our wedding coordinator.
We all came to terms with our menu, prices, and details. We had a verbal agreement on the terms. Christian and our coordinator worked together often and we felt we could trust them.
One week before the wedding we did a site walkthrough with Christian and our coordinator. We decided to, at that point, make a few changes in our table settings and rentals that saved us just under $ 1000 (lets $ 980 for illustrative purposes). Christain overheard our discussion on the rental adjustments (it seemed odd he was listening) but we thought nothing of it at the time. A few hours after the walkthrough we received an email from Christian explaining that he was raising our price for catering by — can you guess the amount? — exactly $ 980. We protested and raised our previous agreement and he refused to honor it. He told us, clearly, that we could pay an extra thousand dollars or go find a new caterer. We entreated our coordinator to fix this problem (it was her job, after all) but she refused to get involved (turns out she and Christian are old high school buddies).
We had no choice, we had to pay the extortion. But wait, it gets worse. This extra $ 980 dollars wasn’t going to get us our original menu. Nope. It was going to get us the original menu for less people. It also, was going to exclude our previously arranged children’s menu. Little Jimmy doesn’t like raw fish – too bad, he has to eat it. Suzy is allergic to chicken? Too bad, no mac and cheese for you!
I’ll sum it up for those of you who didn’t follow it fully:
We arrange contract with Christian
Christian learns we have extra money
Christian charges us exact amount of extra money we have
Christian decreases amount of food
Christian drops menu items for children
Result: We got screwed into paying a thousand extra dollars over what we had verbally agreed upon for far less service and food quantity.
To credit his staff though: the food was great.

Nine months after my wedding, I’m finally Unilocaling about Cater to Me :(
Christian at Cater to Me was great to work with. He invited us to his restaurant (Lucy’s Bar & Grill) in Kailua and had us sit at one of the tables in the back. He asked us what we liked to eat and yelled a bunch of orders to the kitchen. Then out came lamb, cod, salad, shrimp, pork… The food was so good that we hired him on the spot.
Flash forward to our wedding a few months later, his staff was awesome and our food was phenomenal. They brought the grill and cooked everything on site at Lanikuhonua. Our guests returned to the grill many many times.
Flash forward to Christmas 2009, people are still talking about the food we had at our wedding. We definitely spent the most on catering, but it was totally worth it.