This should be like any other professional job. If they don't call at a certain time, they still have to pay. **** them, OP. And **** their lousy excuse.

I work in an industry where we book restaurants and other things for large groups. Our restaurants won't even make a reservation with us until there is a contract signed, and they don't start prepping or setting aside tables until the group has pre-paid in full. While it sucks OP made all that food and then they cancelled, if the restaurant didn't set a contract and get paid upfront, it wasn't very smart on the restaurants part.

I hope they still had to pay for the food & prep time. I can barely handle when my kids don't eat their dinner let alone how much work you put into a meal they never showed for.

I would think they'd be nicer in Australia, but I guess asshole isn't just an American thing

maybe some homeless people got really nice donated meals?

Wow that's really unprofessional. I would never do business with them again.

That really sucks. I'm a cake decorator so I know it takes time to put things together, and then when the customer calls last minute and tries to change the color or something else on their order and it's already done, or if they just don't show up all of our hard work goes down the drain and we have to throw it out. Usually we give it to a homeless shelter so it doesn't go completely to waste, but it still hurts our feelings that someone placed an order just to not show up. Its also a waste our time we could have used to do someone else's order that we had turned down.

as a chef, this also pisses me off. it's happened to my work too. I really hope they were already charged for the meal at least!

I bet the staff and all their families ate great yesterday, courtesy of the party that canceled! What a great day! You got to do your favorite thing, someone else paid for it, and you got to treat all your friends, coworkers and their families.

eat it yourself