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My policy is to do positive reviews since there are enough complainers. When I have an exceptionally bad experience that I feel should be shared I will write a bad review. This is a rare bad review.
We started planning our wedding more than a year in advance. We contacted Pure Joy a year before the wedding to see if they were available, which they were. We went to their office and met with Kristin and talked about the wedding, what we were looking for and what our budget was. Kristin was easy to work with and was responsive. We did a few rounds of back and forth with changes to the menu, service and rentals and all was looking good. We had one issue early on with the owner Lynette. There were a couple times when she responded to emails in what felt to us as a curt and abrupt manner. She was also unwilling to provide us with item counts, which is unusual. After speaking with Kristin and being quite clear about our reaction to both Lynette’s tone and her unwillingness to provide counts we did finally receive item counts for our menu.
Unlike other caterers, Pure Joy does not do a tasting of the items that you have planned for your menu. Instead they send you to “Back Door Tastings”. You go to the back door of other people’s events and the caterers give you a basket with the food that is being served. On the one hand this is great - you get to taste the actual food being served. The issue in our case is that they sent us to backdoor tastings where almost none of the food that was on our planned menu was being served, so we didn’t get a chance to taste our items. This was a big mistake on our part. It seems obvious now, but when choosing a caterer, you must insist on tasting all of your proposed menu items up front, early in the process so that you can determine if the food will meet your needs. The food we did taste at these back door events was fine, but was certainly nothing special and left us both feeling concerned.
About 2 months before or wedding Pure Joy had an open house where they showcased their abilities and we were invited to attend. It was a cool and windy day and the event was held outside their office in a large party tent. Almost all of the hot food was not hot, there was a table of 3 or 4 seafood items that were practically inedible, there were cupcakes that were dry and overcooked, and the couple of items that we were able to taste that were on our planned menu were bland, under-salted and dry. We were shocked and disappointed, and when approached by Kristin and Lynette at the event we told them. Lynette’s response was to say “I have one chef preparing multiple items” which may explain the issue in her mind, but certainly doesn’t do anything to actually address the cold and uninspired food.
A couple of days after the open house we contacted Kristin and requested that they prepare a tasting menu for us since we were very concerned about the quality of the food we had tasted. The response from Lynette was that they could do that, but that we would have to pay them $200. At that point we let them know that we were very displeased by their response and that we we could no longer work with them given the poor food quality, the brusque interactions with Lynette and their offer to charge us an additional $200 to taste the food. In response they offered to do the tasting for free, but at that point we had lost all confidence in their ability to deliver. After a number of calls and emails back and forth we were able to negotiate to split the deposit with then 50/50 and go our separate ways.
The good news is that we interviewed two other local caterers (Rincon and SBB Gourmet Catering) and tasted sample menus in both cases where the food was delicious and not just passable. We are now in contract with one of those caterers and could not be more pleased.
