Do not give them your business!!! Late and unresponsive!
After great experiences attending a couple parties catered by Martin Wine Cellar, and many visits to the Uptown location, my fiancée and I decided to use them for our wedding. This review covers our catering/rental experience with Martin, which was absolutely terrible. How they handled it from the manager on down, even after attempts to reach out, is shameful and cowardly.
THE BAD:
***The spread of food was awesome***
***Bartender was awesome and had a great attitude***
- One of our bartenders I had time to interact with before the reception was awesome and helped me serve a couple custom cocktails which were a big hit.
THE BAD:
***Arrived late to the ceremony without notice***
- Martin was supposed to arrive an hour before the ceremony to serve lemonade and iced tea. Instead, they left some warm plastic jugs underneath a small, uncovered table. The server and the glasses/ice didn't arrive until after the ceremony started. It was 95 degrees for our outside ceremony so this was a big miss.
***Arrived late to the reception without notice***
- They were still setting up when guests arrived at the reception. This was exacerbated by the next point:
***ALL rental tables and chairs were set up incorrectly***
- Instead of putting tables/chairs inside/upstairs where we agreed, they were set up outside/downstairs. I have no idea how this happened as we did two separate walkthroughs and drew up a map together. At no time was outside/downstairs part of the plan. This was made worse by the fact that they were late setting up so guests were just standing around while they rearranged everything.
***Didn't bring the red wine we ordered***
-My fiancée he had plenty to sip on but prefers red wine so she made a point of choosing one for the wine menu even though it was a warm day. For an unknown reason, they didn't bring any red wine without informing us or offering a substitute.
***The bartenders put out a tip jar***
- Extremely tacky at a wedding IMO, especially when this was not a cash bar.
THE UGLY:
***Unreachable on day of***
- Our main point of contact didn't answer her cell phone the day of, despite multiple calls trying to determine where she was/where the server was, etc. When I finally saw her in person, I asked why she didn't answer her phone and she said she "was busy" and walked away.
***Management was completely unresponsive***
- In an attempt to track down our point of contact the day of, I called the store directly. After no less than ten calls, many of which I was disconnected during a transfer, I was finally transferred to the manager, who promised to call our point of contact and call me back. He did not, and my numerous attempts to contact him afterwards went unreturned. What a coward!!!
DO NOT GIVE MARTIN WINE CELLAR YOUR CATERING BUSINESS.
