Tastings Caterers

Reviews 3

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Anonymous User

Tastings Caterers catered our wedding in August of 2009. The food was very good, with mostly positive feedback from our guests. (One person complained about dry chicken, but most guests were very satisfied.) However, Tastings’ co-owner Sue Zahner treated me in a very unprofessional manner in the weeks leading up to the wedding, and also sent me a rude, mean email about a year and a half after the wedding. The problem started when we were planning our tasting. Sue had seemed wonderful in our initial meeting. We live in NYC, but were planning a wedding in my hometown in MA. We explained our scheduling difficulties – my husband works market hours and was using all his vacation days for our honeymoon; I work at a church, so must be in NYC by Sunday morning. Sue promised to work around our schedules when planning a tasting. Starting in January of 2009, I tried to schedule our tasting. Sue had not told her employees of her promise and had forgotten all about it herself. We finally ended up with a tasting for the two of us and my parents on the Saturday night before Mother’s Day. There was a torrential downpour that night, and my parents were about 20 minutes late, but we offered to start without them. When they arrived they were very apologetic. Afterwards, I sent Sue some notes about what we liked/didn’t like/wanted to change. Sue sent back an email in which she excoriated me, my husband, and my parents for being 45 minutes late, and told me how rude it had been of me not to let her know that my father wasn’t coming. (My father was there.) She also told me how rude it was of me to demand a Saturday night tasting during wedding season (once again, she had agreed to this and we had tried to schedule in January.) In response to my request for a bit more garlic in the tzatziki dip, Sue suggested that I make it myself. In several conversations trying to sort this out, Sue never apologized and was insistent that my father was not at the tasting. In the following weeks, Sue began to treat us poorly: she added a cake-cutting fee, and did not waive it until I produced an email from her written several months prior indicating that she would not charge this fee. When we requested that some leftovers be sent to our honeymoon suite (which she had earlier said they always do), she informed us that there are never any leftovers. Dealing with Sue Zahner in the weeks before my wedding turned me into a nervous wreck; my heart pounded and my hands shook whenever I saw an email from her in my inbox. I was so anxious about how she would behave that I hired a wedding coordinator at the last second so that I would not have to deal with Sue. The wedding coordinator was not very good, and managed her time poorly so that she did not have time to change into professional attire before the wedding. I was not impressed with her, but at least kept a buffer zone between Sue and me. In February of 2011 (18 months after our wedding), I received this email, which I am quoting in its entirety: “Your wedding reception makes us laugh every time we think of it and the memories of your party planner that night at your FORMAL wedding.... dressed in her blue jeans, non-fitting sweater, chunky pocketbook and no knowledge of weddings.. .just adds to the fun. I bet you are so happy that you had her on your side. I will be talking about your particular reception at an upcoming seminar that includes these details, so others get this picture. Just thought youd like to know. Thanks so much for opening our eyes to who we like working with and who we want to go above and beyond for.” The way Sue Zahner of Tastings treated us was unprofessional, rude, mean, and vindictive. Nothing could ruin our wedding, but it seemed like she was trying her best. Shame on her, and on Tastings Caterers.

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sandra meyerson

We have had Tastings cater our family events over the past ten years, ranging from our older three childrens Bat and Bar Mitzvahs, two high school graduation parties, our 20th medical school reunion party at our house, a dinner for my large office in our home, my brothers childrens two Bar Mitzvahs, and my cousins and friends events as well. As you can see, we have had Tastings in our lives for many, many years and they have done a fantastic job making the food and environment of our events very special indeed. Sue always meets with families prior to the events and goes over the menu carefully. We also went to one of her tasting afternoons with each of our children and tried out foods for their special event. All of my children looked forward to their turn sampling the choices, giving us the opportunity to try new items to come closer to deciding what would be on our menu. At the events themselves, Sue always had the food beautifully arranged and tastefully presented, labelling the various foods and making the tables look very festive and inviting. At one of my cousins events, one of her children is lactose intolerant, another has a gluten allergy and the third has a peanut allergy. Despite all the challenges involved in preparing foods without milk, wheat or peanuts, Sue had a wonderful dessert display, labelling each item and giving these children with allergies a chance to enjoy their family celebration! Sue has also been very kind to my family and extended family and friends. She listens to what the customer wants and produces the food that is desired. She uses very fresh produce, seasonal vegetables and fruit and her husband John barbecues and cooks so much of the main dishes right there at the events. The variety of desserts that she prepares is also very impressive and delicious! The staff at Tastings is also extremely polite and thoughtful, working hard to make the events as organized and seamless as possible. We have had or gone to over twenty events catered by Tastings and I always feel very grateful to Sue, John, their two children and the staff for taking their job so seriously and creating such a wonderful catering company.

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Anonymous User

We worked with Sue from Tastings Caterers for our August 2011 wedding at the Codman Estates Lincoln MA. Sue is engaging and very easy to work with. She made sure we felt comfortable and stress-free through the entire wedding planning process. Its clear from talking to her that shes very experienced with catering, but at the same time down-to-earth and in touch with our needs. She provided us with lots of practical advice on how to best structure our day, tips on how to save money, how many/what drinks to buy and placing the table layout, and even took care of the cake! They have an extensive menu and everything is delicious. Tastings provided great food at a very reasonable and straightforward pricing structure. This was refreshingly easy compared to the back and forth quotes we had with other caterers. On the wedding day, everything went smoothly. They were in place, set up and coordinated the schedule behind the scenes with our DJ, florist and photographer as necessary, without a hitch. We had a very complicated day but they adapted to our schedule and made sure that everything ran smoothly. Their waitstaff was efficient and friendly, and our guests commented that they loved the food and also the presentation. Sue brought in greens, as well as a wonderful centerpiece’s for the buffet line and it looked great. At the end of the day they were really good about cleaning things up and making sure that we got our items and bottles ready to load up in our cars. Kudos to these guys for doing a great job. Megan

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