I’ve read this thread with great interest and have a few comments think back on my time in the kosher food business and as a consumer.
#1 I just came back from a quick trip to Johannesburg and was there when Stan and Pete lost their hashgacha. The supervising agency did the right thing and made sure consumers who had booked affairs would be accommodated by other establishments under supervision.
In the 1970s I was in the kosher bakery business and later the kosher catering and restaurant business in the New Haven area.
Bakery supervision was lax. the mashgiach only visited monthly and was happy that I could light the ovens and take challah. Problem was workers on the night production shift (when owners were not present) would bring in their own treif meals and heat them in the ovens. I reported this to the mashgiach, but nothing happened. I left for other opportunities.
The kosher catering and restaurant business had great on premises supervision, BUT our keilim went out to synagogues of all varieties and were washed in their dishwashers and used ion their ovens with only the supervision of the synagogue Rabbi, not our kosher supervising authority. Once I saw that, I never ate from our catering division again. (It was housed in a separate building and there was no mixing with the restaurant).
Problem is that if you were a kosher consumer and you knew X caterers was under Y supervision and you were invited to a dinner at the JCC or Synagogue Z catered by X, you assumed it was kosher. BUT, as I learned, once the sealed containers left Caterer X’s facility kashrut was no longer at a guaranteed standard.
In most cases, unless I know who is supervising the facility where the affair is held, I come to the simcha, will have a drink and maybe a bit of fresh fruit and that’s it.
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Another problem that is encountered out of town. Many brides like a particular baker for ‘wedding cakes.’ The baker is under ‘reliable’ kosher supervision, so area kosher caterers are permitted to allow brides to order and buy their cakes from the baker and the caterer plates and serves them at a x$ per head fee.
Mrs. CTL ordered our wedding cake form the baker all those decades ago. At the chasunah, I heard her tell the caterer: ‘make sure to save the riser posts used to set the tiers, I have to return them to the baker and get my $100 deposit back’
Turns out this baker charged a deposit on all these post/risers and had no control over where they went, many non-Jews ordered form the baker. Who knew how these items were washed and then reused on the next customer’s cake.
We made a symbolic cut of the wedding cake and the caterer cut sheet cakes he had in his freezer to our guests for dessert.
The caterer’s supervising rabbi had never considered this problem and had allowed these cakes for years. That ended with our chasunah.