A catering contract to celebrate Black Heritage Month turned into a tough lesson for a Black-owned bakery in the South Bay earlier this month.

Two days after taking a job for Tesla, owner of The Giving Pies got a simple text message canceling the order

A catering contract to celebrate Black Heritage Month turned into a tough lesson for a Black-owned bakery in the South Bay earlier this month.

What started as a $16,000 deal ended up costing the small business owner thousands of dollars instead.

On Valentine’s Day, the owner of The Giving Pies in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood received a pretty sweet call from a representative with Tesla: a catering job for thousands of mini-pies for a Black History Month event.

Owner Voahangy Rasetarinera, who started the business out of her home in 2017, says both sides agreed on a quote and exchanged an invoice for 4,000 pies for delivery this week. Because of the tight turnaround, Rasetarinera asked staff to work extra hours, she bought ingredients and packaging supplies and declined at least three other catering jobs.

  • kjake@infosec.pub
    0·
    9 months ago

    Seems like it would be fairly simple to at least sue them in small claims court. California allows up to $6250 for businesses.

    • satanmat@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 months ago

      I’m really surprised that, given the size of the order and the tight time frame, that she didn’t ask for the money up front…

      But yeah. If she has anything in writing she should go to small claims 100%

      • heartsofwar@lemmy.world
        0·
        9 months ago

        While having something in writing is always best, she doesn’t need anything in writing; verbal contracts do exist and its pretty reasonable to assume she wouldn’t have spent thousands out of pocket hiring extra temp staff, letting staff work over time, turning down other work, etc if she didn’t feel there was a verbal contract. Second, she likely has the text message which would be proof enough of there being reasonable suspicion there was a verbal contract.

        I don’t think it would be a slam dunk small claims case, but she should definitely take it to small claims if they don’t compensate something.