Help! Hotel Banquet Staff Keeping Cake????
Business By mocakes Updated 26 Aug 2006 , 3:19am by TheCakeSmith
When I spoke with the Banquet Manager on the phone Monday morning, one thing she said was, "Was I supposed to cut one ring around the 16"?" Those would have been huge pieces if she only circled it once!! That's why I specifically leave my own cake cutting chart with whoever is cutting the cake. You would think hotels would have a pretty good idea, but I leave one with them anyway. I laid one out for them...obviously, they didn't use it!
In my honest, gut feeling...after the Banquet Manager went home for the evening, the cake got divided up among the banquet servers. It makes my blood boil everytime I think about it!!!! 
Thanks for all the suggestions and feedback!
Surely they wouldn't help themselves to leftover booze?
Oh, yes, they would. I worked summer parties at the Yacht Club when I was in college. I don't remember eating anyone's cake but I remember drinks coming back to kitchen and wait staff hot and heavy late in the evening. We always got the place cleaned up and put back together for the next day, but... we also ate anything left on the trays when they came back. Of course we usually worked without a designated break from 4 pm to 2 am and no one ever offered us food and we did get hungry.
In my former life I was a conference coordinator and worked with hotels/convention centers on a daily basis. I have found that you do have to be very specific as to your expectations when you work with caterers. If you have an expectation that any food you have ordered that is not eaten by your guests be boxed up for you to take home, I would get it in writing. Same with the expectation on how many servings you should get from the cake if they are cutting it.
Check your state laws.....As a caterer (I do food in addition to wedding cakes) I am obligated to dispose of any leftover foods, except for the wedding cake. It's a safety/health issue. There is a limited amount of time that food can be allowed to be set out. Even if it's only out for your guests for one hour, it "could" be sitting on a back counter for the duration of the night, waiting for you to take it home. Ergo - health issue / contaminated foods. That's why you are not permitted to take the leftover food home.
My contract with my brides also indicates that their other wedding vendors are welcome to help themselves to the buffet at no extra charge to the bride. I'm amazed how some brides expect the band, the DJ, the photographer to work 8+ hours in a day and not feed them. I look at it as "if the bride is not going to take care of them, then I will.....out of my own pocket."
And while I stand by my earlier post in which I am shocked and appalled that a facility would take the leftover cake, with the added comments that have been posted regarding food at an event, I need to point out that I, like most other caterers, always bring extra food - more than the bride ordered - as a "just in case" factor. If the bride ordered food for 100 and I served 100, then the bride got what she paid for. The extra food that someone may have seen my staff eating (afterward ..... always afterward! because everyone gets a dinner break on their job, but the guests come first!) is not food they have paid for, but it's food that came out of my pocket.
In case anyone is interested, I've done a number of weddings in which we've served more than the bride ordered (ordered food for 150....served 165; ordered food for 60...served 80) and I have NEVER gone back and billed them for the difference. But because of these rules of food disposal, it is my personal mission to work diligently with my brides to get an accurate headcount so she DOESN'T have a lot of food leftover.....no wasted food, no wasted money. I would much rather book a buffet for 125 with no wasted food, than I would for the 200 the bride THOUGHT she would need and then end up throwing almost half of it away.
It's a touchy subject, I agree. But sometimes there's more to it than what you see on the surface.
Wow indydebi, that's really cool of you!
As for the OP, that is horrible!! Sorry there isn't more you can do!
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