Crazy Good Bakery And Cafe — Restaurant in South Lake Tahoe

Terrible.

We ordered 13 dozen donuts for our wedding in late July. This was our only desert, as we opted not to do cake. The whole process was beyond bad.

Initially I reached out to Christine, the business owner, explaining that we wanted to do donuts instead of cake and she was very friendly and excited and told me she could make any flavor under the sun. I replied with a list of Italian themed donuts like tiramisu, affogato, limoncello, etc. She said that she could do it and we would re-connect closer to our wedding date, so I put down a $200 deposit.

We live in LA but go to Tahoe often to ski and visit friends. We were there in February and we stopped by the bakery... oddly there were no donuts but we asked for Christine and asked her if there was any way we could try a donut prior to our wedding. She said no and explained that they didn't make donuts on a regular basis anymore, but reassured us that they would be delicious. I honestly should have asked for my deposit back right then and there. We spent over $700 and were not even able to try a donut... insanely poor customer service.

A few months later, I reached back out, as our wedding was getting closer and I wanted to confirm all of the details. Christine then informed me she could not make the flavors I had asked for and suggested doing far more simple flavors. I was very upset, but I agreed. I was in the midst of wedding planning and already stressed enough, so I just let it go.

Fast forward to the week of the wedding, I can't get a timely response from Christine. She can't seem to figure out how a Cc on an email works and replies to the wrong people, her staff have no idea what's going on when I'm calling trying to pay the rest of our balance and my venue coordinator had a very hard time coordinating a drop off because no one was responding to her. My husband ended up going into the bakery in person and paying.

We ordered a lot of donuts on purpose. We wanted to make sure we had more vs. not enough if people loved them. Unfortunately, this was not the case. we had 10 out of 13 boxes left over. For perspective, we had about 100 wedding guests. The donuts were not only disgusting, heavy, chewy, soggy and weird tasting but they were also not the flavors we agreed on. Our guests complained... it was a total let down.

I don't ever want to harm a small businesses, so I reached out to Christine privately to see if we could resolve this, and she replied once, saying "I never said we make traditional donuts"... basically, I never said the donuts would be good... and then sent me the list of flavors she made... which was not the list we agreed on. I responded politely asking for a 50% refund, acknowledging cost of materials and labor and she has ghosted me. Absolutely appalling considering the amount of money, time and stress I spent. Avoid at all costs. Including my email post wedding, her response and the list of flavors...

This bakery really deserves a 5-star rating and for multiple reasons:

Pastries - ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!! We tried the walnut apple turnover, apple croissant, chocolate zucchini cake, the blueberry coffee cake, vanilla cupcake and the chocolate croissant. We even tried a savory spinach artichoke croissant. All of these were fresh, clearly made with good quality ingredients and everyone was happy.

Service - this place gets crowded on weekends, yet the staff manages to move the line along very effectively. One of the kids in our group had a number of allergies, so her parent posed a few questions about the ingredients of a few of the pastries. The staff was knowledgeable, helped guide the parent on her selection and everything went smoothly.

Coffee/Espresso - none of us are perfect, so this is perhaps the one and only area in which I see some room for improvement. On one occasion I ordered a cappuccino. What I got was a very milky latte :) On another occasion I ordered a macchiato. The macchiato was made perfectly but the espresso was highly acidic. This could have just been a light roast, but I would have loved a more balanced espresso flavor.

Bottom line - I will continue to come here again and again, every time I'm in South Tahoe. And if you're a fan of awesome pastries and top notch customer service, this...

Our experience with this bakery for our wedding donut catering was disappointing due to significant challenges.

Despite satisfactory donuts, we faced confusion, poor communication, and organizational issues. We never received a contract despite repeated requests, and they couldn't provide a basic menu or accommodate our flavor preferences. We didn’t really care about the flavors, and just wanted a variety, but the lack of clarity on flavors over complicated it. Communication was sparse before the wedding, forcing us to seek alternatives without a confirmed plan.

A mix-up with the delivery address (luckily caught ahead of time when we called yet again)and being overcharged post-event added to our frustrations. We only received a response about our refund after filing a credit card dispute.

Overall, the process was needlessly stressful and time-consuming, overshadowing what should have been a joyful occasion. This was the simplest of vendor requests, but resulted in as much time and energy as we spent on our other, more complicated vendor requests. This just isn’t the way to run a business or interact with clients. Based on our experience, I cannot recommend this bakery for...