Vinescommunities Reviews 14

Absolutely appalling! Vines came to coop in bourne as they were doing a pizza night, I pre ordered a couple of days before. We ordered 1 bbq chicken pizza, 1 pepperoni pizza, a kids meal pizza that should of come with wedges and a drink, mozerella dippers and a large cheesy garlic bread.

To begin they were 20 minutes late saying that the ovens hadn't reached temperature which fair enough it was very cold and they gave us some free cookies to apologise.

Then we got our food, we didn't have the cheesy garlic bread or the wedges (i thought the wedges would be in the kids box) they weren't.

I went back to day they'd forgotten the cheesy garlic bread so had to wait another 10 minutes for them to do that. Eventually got home with the food which was now obviously cold. The cheesy garlic bread wasn't cheesy at all it looked like they just got a pizza base and shook a whole carton of garlic granules on it, it was vile. The bbq chicken pizza was processed chicken with a tomato base and a drizzle of bbq sauce.

So after an hour of waiting in the end I will not be going back there again.

Vines did the hog roast for our wedding and it was incredible. The meat was cooked perfectly, the sides were delicious, and our guests haven’t stopped talking about it since. The team made everything run smoothly and added a really special touch to our day. Couldn’t recommend them enough!

Imagine for a moment you are a catering company and arrive at the venue of the event you’re catering, only to find the power point is further than your extension cable reaches. The event organiser is on-site. Would you a) simply ask the event organiser for an extension or generator (both would've been easily accessible) or b) think ‘never mind, we won't bother to mention it and just cook on a backup barbecue instead even if the food gets burnt’?

Vines staff settled for option B at my event last weekend, and with catastrophic results that ruined the entire catering service for my event of almost 100 people. Imagine not caring or being bothered enough to just ask for an extension. How hard could it be?

Vines had been on site for several hours setting up, but failed to even mention the issue of the power even once. It was only discovered an hour into the event when they started to serve fish and chips, with fish that was black and burnt to a cinder on the underside. At that point, when questioned, Vines told us about the power for the first time since they’d arrived 3 hours earlier. Because of this, they were cooking on a backup gas barbecue, and ‘couldn’t control the temperature’. We had to ask them to stop serving fish and chips altogether and save ourselves further embarrassment. Our guests therefore just had to share pizza that we’d ordered for only 75% of guests. I was really upset

My event planner was mortified, and understandably did raise her voice in disbelief at the staff, although not screaming or being abusive or swearing etc.

We figured we’d pull things out the bag with the vintage icecream cart (which looked like a shabby prop from a kindergarten play) we’d ordered and the churros. Unfortunately, the waitresses who we’d employed separately, approached us to say we really couldn’t serve the ice cream as it was unfit to serve guests. On inspection all of the ice cream on the truck had quite clearly previously fully thawed then been refrozen. The ice cream tubs contained solid blocks of compacted ice cream that were granular and icy, indicative of icecream that’s been refrozen. I have videos and photos of all the food mentioned which I've submitted to Vines

Serving ice cream in this condition breaches the guidelines set out by the Foods Standards Agency, and poses a serious threat of illness due to high probability of listeria and salmonella proliferation. My guests included vulnerable groups, over 50 children and over a dozen elderly people. Once again I had to make a decision not to serve a course I’d paid for, and in doing so narrowly averted what would’ve been a disastrous food poisoning outbreak. ** This has been reported to the relevant Food Standards Agency department and is currently under investigation **

At this point my event planner was extremely upset, and shouted at them to just stop attempting to plate up the ice cream (it was too solid to scoop up!) and please let us have the Churros, however instead of this, the staff member announced that his boss was on the phone and demanding to speak to her. At this point things got even worse; he was actually shouting down the phone at her about it not being their fault that they couldn’t reach the power outlet, and that he’d instructed his staff to pack up and leave. My planner stood close to tears and watched in disbelief as the Vines staff packed up all of the Churros, refusing to let us have any, loaded up the truck and left. And just like that we were left with almost 100 hungry guests, who’d had only 25% of the food we’d paid for and no dessert.

After contacting Vines this week I can only conclude that the management couldn’t care less about the customers who pay them to cater at their special events. They won’t even consider negotiating a partial refund, not a word of apology, not even one bit of acceptance of responsibility. They have a rule that don’t do any communication by phone (I should've spotted this red flag earlier), and they mostly refuse to answer emails. Instead of taking even the smallest steps to resolve issues on the night of the event, or since then, they smugly jump straight to referencing their T&C’s with no care whatsoever for their client satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Do yourself a favour if you’re planning an event, save yourself a lot of cost and disappointment which could ruin your entire event, and save your guests from food poisoning. APPALLING EXPERIENCE

I would've rated Vines ZERO stars if it were an option. Jess and Joe Vine; you should be ashamed of yourselves!

Please DO NOT BOOK. I cannot stress how appalling Vines Catering is as a company. They lack customer service and are completely below average when it comes to serving good-quality food.

We hired Vines to cater for our evening wedding food. We ordered a simple BBQ menu as the pizza reviews were shocking. Food was cold and the server had to be prompted to heat the food up. Some of our guests were served raw burgers.

When we complained to Jess, she basically refuted our claims (indirectly calling us liars) and offered a pathetic £50 Amazon gift voucher despite paying nearly £1000 for their service. What a joke.

How they expect to survive in this industry with such awful service, I have no idea.

AVOID AVOID AVOID.

We would highly recommend that all potential customers avoid this company. We used them for our wedding and they were unprepared/overwhelmed from the start. We paid for 150 guests at our wedding, to which 20/30 guests weren't fed as their 'pizza oven broke'. Queues were not moving most of the time they were there - despite the maid of honor giving two remedies to help them manage this - and the majority of guests complained that their pizzas were undercooked. We brought this up with Jess and asked what can be done to compensate for this and much to our delight we were told the server didn't say this - (basically stating we were lying) - and we were instead blamed for these guests not being fed... fantastic service! Upon providing further support to our claims on 14 August we are yet to hear back from Jess - despite us sending a follow up email - thus giving us the impression they have no desire or care to resolve this. Thankfully we had two other vendors that day who experienced no issues whatsoever and were able to uphold our agreement; so please for whoever is reading this avoid this company as there are plenty of other companies out there who can give you the service you deserve on your big day.

I recently booked ‘Vines Pizza Shack or Vine Communities’ - Peterborough based pizza horsebox/bus & Vintage sweet tricycle for my Wedding Festival and was extremely disappointed with several factors. We paid for 125 full pizzas per person and were given only 60 boxes with 3 slices of pizza in each box. The ‘horsebox’ was a tiny little cart that looked very shabby. The sweet tricycle looked like a wooden table prop from a school play. We paid for 75 bags of pick and mix supposed to be displayed in jars for people to help themselves and were given only 20 already made up bags of sweets with barely anything in them. Also they sent two 16 year old girls to deal with everything and no manager in charge in case of complaints. The girls did really well considering what they had been given. The 2 girls were supposed to be picked up by there boss after they had finished at 9pm and weren’t picked up till midnight which luckily we could stay there till to make sure they got home safe but if not they would have been left in the middle of nowhere on there own. We have emailed Jess Vines to explain all of our complaints and she hasn’t offered even a small amount of money as compensation. Avoid booking with them at all costs and watch out as they have used several different names for their company.

DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!

They do not fulfil their contract!

We booked these charlatans to provide a “grazing table” for our wedding in June and they ruined our wedding breakfast!

Absolutely disgusting service, there was nowhere near sufficient food for 100 guests (they only sent 10 small trays of food, a bag of bread still in the supermarket cellophane, and some cheap Asda jars of condiments).

They sent us the wrong order, with several “selections’ missing. The food they did send was just dumped in plastic trays in the serving area and the one guy and young boy (possibly 12yo?) that brought it weren’t prepared to set it up as contracted, “Oh I’ve never set up a grazing table before” the adult said when challenged. They even had still another ‘delivery’ in Brighton later that day, which was a further 2 hours away! How were they ever going to provide us with the 2 hours set up promised in the contract!

In fact, what they sent was simply bought from Asda, mostly still in Asda jars and packaging, even delivered in an Asda bread tray and certainly didn’t resemble the “artisanal delights and exquisite flavours” or the “Fresh, high quality ingredients, beautifully styled to impress and satisfy” that they promised in their contract!

On submitting a complaint via Poptop, who we booked them through, Vines Catering Services have lied to the mediation team and have refused to offer any refund or compensation whatsoever.

We’ll be taking them to court!

From start to finish vines have been terrible. They refuse to have any communication that is not via email and take weeks to respond to the point that I had to contact them the morning of my wedding to make sure they were still coming.

When they arrived they had the wrong names on the board outside the pizza van. They had 2 members of staff that were rude to my guests and the event planner and refused to cook all the pizzas. We had paid for 90 pizzas and received somewhere around 70. When asked for the remaining pizzas to be cooked and put out for guests, the staff refused.

After the event I emailed Jess to complain and request compensation for not fulfilling the order. She took 2 weeks to reply, offered a weak apology and refused to compensate as the staff had been there for the agreed 2 hour time slot. This made no sense to me as the agreed order was 90 pizzas and not 2 hours.

A very negative experience that tainted our otherwise perfect wedding day. Avoid booking with them at all costs.

I complained to Joe and Jess (Vines, the owners) the next day about the horrible service we received on our wedding day and was told they would get back to me by the end of the following week - I waited, and they did not get back to me. I've patiently given them a chance to make things right, so here is my review. The van was initially parked on site with the wrong names on the side and the man who brought it couldn't be found for an hour. After myself and the bar manager phoned to ask where he was, he was incredibly defensive and rude, which was quite an awful experience on my wedding day. He didn't put our names on the van later and did not serve the pizza buffet style as agreed in writing twice with the supplier, which caused long queues. He then continued to complain to guests as he was serving. It was a really unpleasant experience on an otherwise absolutely perfect day, and we are so sad we didn't go with anyone else. Joe and Jess are obviously not that concerned about sorting it out. This is in addition to their only communication being via email and their customer portal giving a 404 error when trying to access it. Wish I could get back the time and experience on my wedding day.

I ordered 3 pizza's and only received 1 and a half. The company employed one member of staff to deliver roughly 80 pizza's which was not feasible and ran out of pizza dough. The pizza i did receive was hard and had hardly any topping. Please avoid at all costs as they take money up front.

Awful, over priced tasteless pizza from a very unprofessional company. Avoid at all cost.

I recently had a very disappointing experience with Vines Pizza. We had a contract for 79 full pizzas to be served at our event, but unfortunately, they failed to deliver the agreed amount. As expected, the pizzas were served in half portions, however, no one was able to get their actual full share and we were left with people with no food. This issue was not related to the size of the pizzas but rather the insufficient bases and product to deliver the full 79 pizzas as paid for.
While the server completed the full 2-hour service window, it was clear that Vines Pizza should have provided another experienced server and ensured there was enough product to meet the contract. They refused to refund any money and instead offered a voucher of an undefined value as a resolution. Do not leave your guest hungry – avoid.

We ordered the pizza bus for our wedding. Informed a few days later it was double booked but that had an equal quality horsebox - well that was a lie….said Horse-box turned up to our wedding and the manager of the venue said “did you order that?!” And not in a good way. It looks shabby and hand painted green. Note you will see no high definition images of it. It was frankly embarrassing. We complained to the staff who said they would ask the manager to call. Nearly a week later no call or response to my email. They also removed my posts on Facebook and blocked me so clearly a company which doesn’t value feedback or complaints- AVOID