Hometown Emporium

Write a Review559-592-1250

CLOSED NOW - Opens at 7:00am

I used Hometown Emporium for my wedding and they were AWFUL! Albeit the food was good but they were rude and did not go along with our plans that we had all talked about together. Brides, this will ruin your wedding day. The caterers arrived and began setting up with no problems. They sat out their serving tables with the linens but they put their tables in the middle of the dance floor and were the bridal party and my husband and I would make our entrance to the reception. So I had to go and move them myself because they LEFT and did not come back for over an hour later and did not have to courtesy to tell anyone they were leaving. When they came back she told me that they did not bring enough beverage pitchers for all of our tables. She did the math in her head from the number of guests that could fit at each table (the max) instead of asking us so we were shorting our guests. They only do buttercream cakes not fondant. I had an outdoor wedding in summer and also went through them for my cake. I had talked to her, the daughter who I had been working with from the begging, and asked her what we will do about the cake in the heat. She reassured me that they will bring it later in the day and keep it in their van with the AC to keep it cool. I also called the owner of the shop, her mom, and asked about the cake and she told me the same thing about bringing it later in the day. The week of the wedding my mom had to drop off fake sunflowers and burlap (to decorate my cake.) Originally the said they would provide burlap and two weeks before the wedding she changed her mind and said we had to buy it. Which wasn’t a big deal. When my mom dropped off burlap my mom talked to her again about them cake and heat and she was told once again they would bring it out later. They brought my cake out and set it up BEFORE THE CEREMONY STARTED. It melted and fell over. We had to plug in a small fan and point it on it so it wouldn’t melt anymore. It ruined all the pictures of the cake cutting. Such a waste of money for someone going against their word. As far as their services, we told them our ceremony would start at 430, they agreed to be set up by 4. They tried rushing the wedding to start. She started complaining to my parents and my husband’s parents that we needed to get going. We paid for their services and they complained at us? The ceremony started at 4:35, not bad at all. Then after when we went to take pictures, the caterers came, found my photographers and told them they needed to hurry up so they could serve everyone. We had set aside an hour for pictures after the ceremony and even finished early. I had given Hometown an outline of timeline for the wedding so they knew what everything would look like. They even found my husband and told him we need to hurry up, that the servers are just standing around. I paid $65 per server just to hand people food so if they had a little downtime, fine, I paid for that downtime. They offered to serve the head table and parents/grandparents. They served these people BEFORE we even entered the reception area. Our food was COLD. Brides, after all your hard work you don’t want to sit own to cold food. When we went to cut the cake, the servers were supposed to immediately serve the sheet cake we ordered. It took them a long time before they started serving everyone. They started with the back first so our parents and grandparents were served last. This was non-traditional and rude. When I first started working with them they were really nice and responsive. After the first few meeting they were rude. They took my money, gave me a crappy service and left. I would NEVER recommend them to cater a wedding or any other event. VERY poor service and I was not satisfied one bit. Don’t go with them if you want a smooth and peaceful wedding.