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 you'd 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.
more