Jon Dean

After 24 years in hospitality, I can honestly say this has been the worst experience I've ever had with a food service supplier.

Over the course of a month, Brakes repeatedly failed to deliver complete orders, and on several occasions failed to deliver at all. This wasn't an isolated mistake—it became the norm.

During one of the hottest weeks of the year, with temperatures approaching 40°C, we were left without bottled water, soft drinks, milk, chocolate, napkins and numerous other essential items. Our customers didn't blame Brakes—they blamed us. My staff had to deal with angry members and guests because we simply had no stock to sell.

Some examples include:

Entire deliveries failing to arrive.
Orders arriving a day late.
Full cages of products missing from deliveries.
Wedding supplies, including spirits, missing from orders, forcing emergency trips to local retailers.
Drivers informing us that milk and frozen products had been "left out in the sun" and were therefore spoiled before delivery.
No proactive communication whatsoever about unavailable items, despite Brakes advertising live stock tracking and customer notifications.

What frustrated me most wasn't just the mistakes—it was the complete lack of communication. Time after time I discovered products were missing only when the lorry arrived. Nobody contacted us beforehand to explain what wouldn't be delivered or to help us make alternative arrangements.

My Business Development Manager, Luke Styman, apologised and explained the company was suffering from a failed IT update and a depot move. While I appreciate businesses face operational challenges, those problems should not become the customer's problem. If you know you cannot provide the service you've promised, be honest and tell your customers so they can make other arrangements.

The contrast with another supplier couldn't have been greater. After placing an emergency order elsewhere late one afternoon, I received a phone call within six minutes confirming delivery for the following morning and advising me of one item that was out of stock. That's customer service: honest, proactive and professional.

Sadly, Brakes offered none of that during our experience.

The result was weeks of unnecessary stress, hours spent sourcing emergency replacement stock, disappointed customers, damage to our own reputation, and a significant amount of management time wasted fixing problems that should never have existed.

I've now taken my business elsewhere and, based on my experience, I cannot recommend Brakes. If reliability, communication and accountability are important to your business, my experience suggests you should consider other suppliers.

Cameron was extremely helpful and dealt with my query efficiently and in good time, in a professional manner.

Ordered same day delivery flowers for my wife who was going into hospital the next day for a procedure. Got an email at around 3pm saying the delivery was now not going to happen and would be delivered the following day instead. Completely useless to me as she would be in hospital by then.

All I was offered was the £3 difference on same day delivery to next day delivery. When I suggested this was totally unacceptable practice and how angry I was, all of a sudden I was offered a 25% discount. Should have been offered that at least without having to rant at the poor sod who runs their twitter account (who deals with relentless daily complaints I might add)

I always used to use Interflora for all my floral needs but the last two years their service has gone completely downhill and this is now a regular occurrence with them. Don’t believe me, just check out their twitter account and all the daily complaints sent to it. It’s embarrassing. Avoid and go elsewhere. I will be.

Fantastic trip away to Newcastle for my friends stag weekend. Chilli Sauce made the entire very simple for us, with easy payments and a breakdown of what we would be doing for the weekend. The accommodation we were given was superb, very clean and tidy, easy check in and out a great breakfast every morning. The activities laid on like bar crawls and paint balling were superb value for money, very well organised and we thoroughly enjoyed them. I cannot praise Chilli Sauce enough. They gave our stag a great send off which was well priced and well organised from start to finish. Great experience and will definitely use again.