Elephants Catering & Events — Local services in Portland

Pardon me, but this will be long.

We used Elephants catering for our company holiday party. This party was in office, even though we are remote now. We are a company in Beaverton and contracted the Cedar Hills Elephants location for our food since it was close. Initially, everything was smooth. We received the sack/box lunch menu and ordered. Everything seemed fine.

Less than 48 hours before our party, Elephants contacted us to say that the Cedar Hills location couldn't do hot, ready to serve food and that we would need to pick up from the SE PDX location or pay for delivery (based on zip code and with a 15% service fee for said delivery). They stated that we could still pick it up from Cedar Hills but the food would all be cold. I stated that I couldn't possibly be at the SE store at 10:45 am and be back to Beaverton by 11 am. Since we are mostly remote, work from home now, we don't have a bank of microwaves to heat up everyone's food.

I emailed them back and stated that it was unacceptable to tell us this 2 days before our event. I said this should have been stressed upon initial contact, as the menu they sent had hot food on it.

To be fair, they did agree to free delivery and waiving the service fee after I sent an email where my anger and frustration was evident. However, it's still an unacceptable way to run a catering division.

They also charged a dollar, per person, to label which food belonged to which person. This is unheard of in restaurants/catering. I know this because I worked in restaurants and catering for 25 years. To charge a customer one dollar to write their name a box is not a way to run business.

The food (for 35 people) was subpar. Hot items were overcooked. Boxed salads were leaking. The soups were watery. Any pasta ordered was chewy. We had 2 people out of 35 who said they liked their food.

We have been going to the NW Elephants location for years, and we've always loved the service and quality. This experience was nothing like that. This was, no hyperbole, atrocious.

I will be actively telling people to not use Elephants catering and that pains me to say. I was really looking forward to good food with quality service. That didn't happen.

The Elephants in Cedar Hills has had numerous issues (we've tried them multiple times). We won't use them anymore, nor their catering.

This was all very disappointing and embarrassing. We raved about Elephants quality before the party and now we look...

We were struggling with another company and found ourselves under duress with less than a year before our wedding. In fact, we met Kat in early November - leaving approx 6 months before our special day. We both walked out of that meeting with such relief. It was as if the weight of the world was lifted off our schedules. My wife has worked with Elephant's in the past for her work related conferences so we also knew their quality of food was stellar. However, we can both attest that when it comes to a wedding, they are nothing short of amazing. The entire experience, from the initial meeting to the tasting to the choosing of the linens was so uplifting. On the day, the staff were nothing but professional and efficient. It turned out to be an absolutely delightful experience and the appetizers, food, dessert and beverages were incredible. Our guests were impressed and commented to us all night on the quality. To Elephant's, Kat, Polina and the entire staff - you were our saviours and we all know that the food/beverages makes or breaks most weddings. You all saved us and made our special day unforgettable. Thank you, thank...

Elephants catered our wedding and we’re so glad we went with them. To be frank, we didn’t nail our budget on catering so it was a difficult part of wedding planning for us! This resulted in negative interactions with other caterers, but then I got a follow up email from Michelle at Elephants. She had sent us a quote and I expressed that it was outside of our budget, and instead of blowing us off she hopped on a call to get more specifics on what we were looking for so we could get an idea of where we could cut costs. She took that information and came back with something in our budget and we were SO grateful. That flexibility and willingness to work with us made a really big difference and it meant a lot.

The food was also excellent! We didn’t get to eat a ton on the actual day (typical of the couple getting married) but our guests loved it and they said the staff was very sweet. We also had some guests with food allergies and they commented to us that the Elephants staff had clearly marked everything which they really appreciated. All around a great experience, we would highly recommend...