Follow the Smoke

ation, completely unorganized, cold food are just a few of the many reasons I would suggest avoiding working with Brandon and his crew. We would have pushed for a complete refund or taken him to court if we had the desire to see them but we were DONE. We were so sad our guests did not get a quality meal but I was happy to finally not have to try to get in contact with them ever again.

food tasting for our wedding and should have never used him. He is not a man by his word, so don't trust him and also he clearly did not stand up to his contractual obligations. His communication is extremely poor, with one excuse after another. He also changed from " follow the smoke" to Flynn Crew BBQ so don't use that company either. He scams people and completely ruined the food aspect of our wedding. There was a point of concern due to recent review prior to our wedding in which our wedding planner reached out to him directly and he promised us there would be no issues moving forward/ concerns for our wedding. We should have pulled the plug on him then. Let me tell you some of the the issues we had with him. Never want this to happen to another couple. He was contracted to ON SITE pig roast and cooking, did not happen at all. The food was transported from PA to the fingerlakes region. This was not in the contract, everything was to be done on site. Not cooked then driven 2 hrs. Horrible, would have NEVER USED HIM if that wash is plan, but he is a lier! Ordered him additional table and set up he did not use, but I paid upfront for his set up. Got the wedding venue to allow him to set up one day early which he requested.... but kicker he never came early. His workers showed up 30 mins prior to the wedding starting! He also turned off his phone, when our wedding planner was trying to get in contact with him the morning and early afternoon because no one was onsite cooking. We concerned him a no show at that time and our wedding planner was making moves behind the scenes to figure out food while my friends came to the rescue and constructed amazing charcuterie boards for apps. Then his "workers" show up. Honestly, wish they didn't. The +$1,600 I paid for charcuterie boards as quoted "Local meats, cheeses, seasonal fruit, jams, spreads, olives, crackers, fruits & veggies".. was legit boxed crackers, pepperoni + soppressata, two types of cheese. Not to mention they laid out napkins with other weddings name on it. Food was not what was at the tasting. Meat was dry. Brandon said at the tasting the best things to do is break it down so it has more flavor and juicy, well let me tell you it was dry. Brisk over cooked. Chicken was ok. They ran out of ribs when serving people but then at time of clean up they found another rack! I mean, I can't make this disaster up. Salt potatoes had no butter. The roasted veggies were mush. The salad was quoted as "seasonal salad" and was lettuce with a couple tomatos on top. There is more issues but I think people would understand after reading above to stay away for ANY company with Brandon Flynn from PA. I write this because I don't want someone else wedding food ruined/ run into the issues we had working with him.

wanted to make sure that we gave our guests the best possible food we could afford, but we are not happy with how it came out. If you are debating on having barbecue style food for your wedding, just go for it. So delicious and not pretentious. Our guests raved about it. Follow the Smoke provides amazing, high-quality food for a wedding. There is not a doubt in my mind that Brandon was born to make good food for a crowd - he is truly skilled at that and is a very nice person. That being said, I have to give them 3/5 stars, solely due to poor communication on their end. We booked them in March 2022 for our wedding in June 2023. In that 15 month timespan, I had initiated nearly every email/text conversation about the logistics of the day, and was hardly met with a response from him. He uses a vendor-client portal called Honeybook where you can make your payments for the services you’re seeking. However, we have it in writing that he’d take 10% off for any cash/check payments. All of our payments were made via check and we never saw this discount. There were a few occasions where, after booking FTS as our wedding caterer, we thought it would be nice to have my bridal shower and our rehearsal dinner catered by him too. Any time I inquired about an additional service, I was met with a response from him, but following up on details was made so difficult due to him not responding or taking a very long time (weeks, months) to do so. We ended up not needing him for those other services anyway, but looking back, I don’t know if I would have wanted to, simply because of how difficult it was to plan for anything. A month and a half before our wedding, I had asked for clarification on our contract details. I wanted to double check that utensils and napkins and glasses and NA drinks were included in our package (the contract stated they were, but I just wanted to double check since the wording of the contract seemed ambiguous). Should I have checked sooner? Perhaps. However, it took multiple emails and follow-ups and texts in that time span to finally get his full answers. In the days leading up to my wedding, I didn’t want to have to be the one confirming details only to be met with no response. I think anyone would agree that the vendor should be initiating conversation for these details. On the day before my wedding, I learned that Brandon never communicated with our venue about scheduling when to set up his belongings until the day before. He reached out to me that day, informing me that my venue wouldn’t let him set up. When I got this text, I happened to be with the planner of our venue and she informed me that he hadn’t even contacted her about these logistics and she was appalled that he was putting that on me to figure out and reassured me that she’d take care of it. And she did. I’m fully aware that FTS is a business and has multiple clients. But proper communication with a client is not only professional, but essential. Especially in the wedding industry. I really wanted to give Brandon 5 stars because his product was great. But I don’t know if the anxiety was worth it all. Edit: Dropped to 2/5. 6 months after our wedding, many of our guests admitted they did not even get to eat because there was little to no food left. Absolute disappointment.

of people and it seemed like my wedding was the first time they ever catered an event. I think whatever Brandon Flynn is doing, he needs to change. The communication leading up to the event was awful. Despite reaching out to them many times and not receiving answers, to finally receiving an answer and getting asked questions I had already given answers to. The communication is god awful. On my wedding day we were short food ( I mean I had guests get one tiny leg of chicken because they were running out of food), not having the orders of the guests right, bringing the wrong soup, to my wedding cake so Crooked and practically falling over. I was promised a refund and only received part of it. They should go out of business or get someone trained in management.