Spork Bytes - Catering Services Portland

I used Spork Bytes as caterer for my wedding last Summer, and while all of the staff was very friendly my overall experience was a little rough. They offer a lot of options to make the catering more affordable which we really appreciated (free cups, making signs, cheap non-alc beverages, and bringing catering from multiple different food vendors). They also had worked at our venue many times before so they were well-versed in how set up should go and what vendors to use, and all of the servers were friendly and fun to have at the wedding. Unfortunately the communication is where our experience with Spork struggled. I often had to email multiple times to get responses to simple things, always giving about 4+ weeks response waiting time because I wanted to be considerate of how busy the wedding industry is. I had to double email to receive an initial catering guide, then again to get a response to my survey for a personal quote. The main person helping me then moved positions and did not let me know, while I was waiting for responses for pending questions, and then my new point of contact didn’t even know what venue we were using and was cc’ing the wrong venue. I was then moved to work with the HR director for our walk through who was wonderful and much more accommodating to our needs. Many of the items the 2 previous points of contact told me were not doable were a very easy “yes” with the HR director. She did a great job making us feel heard and understanding our questions and concerns, but when we were back to working with one of the original point of contacts, we felt very uneasy as to what to expect on the wedding day since his responses had been so different and attention to detail had been lacking. This original point of contact was asked multiple times for our layout in advance, but did not send the correct one to me until 2 days before my wedding, leaving me to franticly create a seating chart with no help from Spork, literally drawing the layout on excel and placing name tags in order in bags and writing out details which took hours while hosting welcome dinners and rehearsal dinners. The last negative I have is that it’s tradition in my family to eat the wedding leftovers together the next day while opening wedding gifts, so when we were explicitly asked if we wanted our left-overs donated we let them know that we definitely wanted all of the left overs boxed up to take home. We even kept our guest count at 120 knowing that we only had 106 guests at this point. So when I discovered that the Spork staff had taken all of our leftovers home at the end of the night (14 peoples worth) I was very upset with the miscommunication. Again, our entire experience with Spork was not negative, they did have their strengths and we did have all of our food and drinks show up on the day of which we’re thankful for. But I definitely wouldn’t recommend them for a wedding to anyone, maybe they’re just better suited for more casual events.

Working with SporkBytes was by far the best decision we made for our wedding. We had the pleasure of working closely with Harrison and Amee, who took our vision for the menu and brought it to life. We spent almost 2 years planning our wedding, and in that period, there came about many questions and changes from us, and never once did they raise any issues or approached our requests with reservation. They were always available to meet and check-in, whether through e-mail or Zoom. They always had a positive attitude and a smile on their faces, and that made all the difference. Our menu was quite unique, working and coordinating with 5 different restaurants in Portland. Harrison took the lead, helped us come up with a menu, and offered his professional insight on items to spend more or less on. We ended up going a bit over budget than what we expected (by no one’s fault, just how numbers worked out), but Harrison offered some additional items free of charge to help offset our final number and even honored initial pricing from restaurants if they had increased from previous meetings. We looked forward to every meeting we had with Harrison! We ended up going with a BYOB option for our open bar, and they helped us forecast exactly how much of everything we needed to purchase. Items that we were unable to source, Amee had us covered by the day of the wedding so we didn’t have to scramble and find things with less than 48 hours. Amee was such a joy to work with and I felt relieved knowing Amee would help fill in any gaps. The staff they brought to work our wedding were amazing. They were all kind and respectful. Our 2 bartenders were incredibly friendly. A handful of my guests praised how quickly they served over 130 people in just a few minutes at the start of our cocktail hour, and how lovely they were to talk to. Their staff went above and beyond by staying almost an extra hour to help load our cars with all the leftover alcohol, décor, and miscellaneous items. Two of their staff members saw how overwhelmed we were by all the extra food, and kindly asked us if we wanted to donate it, and that they would take care of it. This wasn’t expected for them to stay behind, but they did it anyway to make sure we still rode the high of our wedding day. Working with SporkBytes was completely stress free, which is almost unheard of when wedding planning. I felt so comfortable and trusted them without any concern. I highly recommend SporkBytes and their entire team. I only wish we could do another wedding just so I could work with them again! Thank you Harrison, Amee, and our SporkBytes Team!

We used Spork Bytes for a small corporate catering event and had a great experience. They responded very quickly to my multiple requests to change the menu and had recommendations on what would work for our space. It was fun to be able to get food from two different restaurants around Portland.