Save Your Thyme Catering & Personal Chef

e wanted to try additional entree options, one of them (ribeye) being beyond the price point that she wanted to spend. Nevertheless, I met her both times, an hour from my home, dropped off the entrees and never charged her for the additional tasting. After this, Shelby and her husband ended up signing a contract that consisted of a buffet with NY sirloin and vegetarian pasta as entrees. A few months before their wedding, she emailed me her menu for the reception and indicated that she wanted ribeye steak. When I emailed her to let her know that that was fine, but there was an additional charge for ribeye, she told me that she felt mislead, miscommunicated with, etc. because that's what they thought they were getting. I sent her a copy of the contract that they signed that very clearly stated that they had chosen NY sirloin. I told her that when we left off after the last tasting, she had indicated that they like the ribeye more, but they did not want to pay for it. This was all documented in our emails. So, again, I offered her the ribeye but told her it was an additional cost because it was a more expensive cut of meat, and again she did not want to pay the difference, she just kept complaining and stating that it was a "miscommunication" and basically wanted me to accept responsibility for her "confusion." Again, I referred her back to the contract that she signed. To address the steak issue, the catering contract was for 115 people total including vendors. The 50% deposit she paid was based on this number. Six weeks before the wedding, she let me know that they were up to a guest count of 188 people. I was pretty shocked, but agreed to make it work, and didn't ask for an additional deposit from her, even though the guest count went up by 73 people. By the time the final invoice was sent to her on 7/19/24, she indicated that her guest count went down to 168 guests. Then, she emails me AGAIN on August 4th, not even 3 weeks before her wedding to let me know that her guest count has dropped down to 153 guests/vendors, which is what I ended up billing her for. When my crew arrives the day of the wedding, one of the contact people, her aunt, tells my son who is running the wedding that there are between 178-200 guests at the wedding reception. Again, she has paid for and we have prepared food for 150 guests (plus a little extra). Shelby complained in her review that I contacted her on her day instead of one of her point people. The reason I reached out to her was because, first of all, she is the one that invited the guests and I needed to know if the information her aunt gave us was accurate. Second, Shellby and Cam were already married (back in February) and were just having their celebration that day. In this particular situation, I would not have run the risk of interrupting a ceremony. That was the only time I communicated with her that day, one text asking her about her guest count. Shelby also mentioned in her original review that I texted her a few days before the wedding to let her know my son would be running the wedding, not me. I let her know that I would be doing all of the cooking with the exception of the grilling, which my son always does anyways. I also let her know that the reason I wasn't coming was because my daughter had unexpectedly had surgery the day before and needed me to be nearby to help her. Most importantly, I have a crew so that I can send them to jobs, and frequently do without me. They are experienced and know how to run a catering job, and they are amazing! So, back to the day of the reception. Shelby assures me via text that her aunt is wrong, and that there are only 153 guests/vendors eating. But, she also says that there are 20 kids there (that she did not pay for) in addition to the 153 guests/vendors, but that the kids would not be eating. So, basically, we are now back up to 173 guests/vendors, because guess what? Those kids ate! If they were old enough, my crew said that they went through the buffet line, and if they were young, the parents went through the buffet and made plates for them and told my crew that that was what they were doing and why they had two plates. And, yes I did say that no decent parent was going to sit by and eat in front of their child/children. Because, of course they're not going to do that! It was like she thought she was pulling the wool over my eyes. I 100% feel that Shelby wanted to save money and therefore she decided that the kids didn't need to be included in the final guest count. In addition, the second entree was for a vegetarian pasta, but Shelby complained that she wanted a chicken entree but wanted it for the same price as vegetarian pasta. To keep her happy, I agreed to put chicken in the vegetarian pasta, 9 pounds of it, and did NOT charge her one penny for it. Then she complained that there wasn't enough free chicken in her pasta entree! Plus, I left her all of the leftovers even though she was contracted for a per person price. After all of this, she had the audacity to then complain that we ran out of steak! For most buffets, you plan for 50/50 on the entree choices. In this particular situation, knowing that her husband lobsters and considering that there will probably be a lot of men there, I added an additional 20% more steaks to the buffet count. My crew counts the number of people that go through buffet lines when we cater. They counted 180 and said that the last 4 people did not get steaks, not the last 2 tables as she indicated. Also, the steaks were all cooked to medium by my son, who has a meat thermometer that connects to his iPhone. I told Shelby that trying to cut steak or chicken with bamboo knives was going to be difficult, and they should rent or purchase steak knives. While I completely agree that sometimes, no matter how they are cooked, steaks can be tough. In order to be fair and give her the benefit of the doubt, I did offer to reimburse her for 20% of the steaks. I did reach out to her recently because I Venmoed (or so I thought) her a few weeks ago the reimbursement. After reading her review, I checked my account and also called Venmo, who informed me that the reimbursement had not gone through. I did apologize to her (which she conveniently left out) and accepted full responsibility for my oversight and said that I should I have double checked. I also gave her extra money for the inconvenience. Regarding the oysters for the wedding reception, I told Shelby in one of our conversations that I would have to look into finding someone that could shuck oysters at her wedding, and those people were difficult to come by. Just to be clear, oysters were NOT written into her catering contract, nor was she ever charged for them. In the interim, I had to sign a waiver with my insurance company stating that I would no longer serve oysters due to the increased risk of people getting sick after consuming. I explained this to Shelby a few months before her wedding allowing her plenty of time to hire another vendor to serve oysters, or to provide them herself and hire out the labor for shucking, both of which were valid options had she really wanted oysters at her wedding. I wish you the best, Shelby. You have been reimbursed. Hopefully, we can agree to disagree and move forward.