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.
This sucks but it is a hard lesson about dealing with large companies. If any company wants anything that doesn’t comes off the shelf of the store, they have to pay upfront. Pay has to be by a certain amount of days in advance of delivery date or the date is not guaranteed and will be late. Work doesn’t start until payment is done. If they want to pay after delivery, sign a contract, require an advance of at least half of the bill or materials cost (whichever is highest), non-refundable, include a cancellation fee. Put this shit up as terms of service on a website and direct everyone to that page whenever you are contacted by a new client. The larger the client company, the more important it is to be this strict. For you it might be a bankruptcy inducing amount, but to them it will be immaterial pocket change, so you have to hold your ground.
I was a small business owner in this same situation. I got a contract, I got partial payment up front, then they reneged upon my finishing the job and asking for the rest of the payment. They said they’d pay me 10% of what they owe, AND demanded additional services for free. I took my contract to a bunch of lawyers, all who said the same thing “They’re too rich to sue. They will delay, stall, and after years, even if you won, they still probably won’t pay.” What they owed me, they bragged about paying every time they flew their private jet. They could easily have paid, but instead they decided to destroy me and my company.
This isn’t something the small business owner can protect against. To the rich, none of us or our laws matter.
I assume you went on some John Wick style rampage killing them and their families?
There is such a power disparity between large corporations and normal people or small businesses. A corporation can make a small decision that would devestate a person or small business and it doesn’t affect them at all.
I don’t think this is legal, since it’s a custom order. This is not like a consumer ordering an off the shelf product, it’s more like a verbal contract IMO, but IANAL.
depends on the cancelation clause, usually there would be a time frame before the event they could cancel. There should also be a deposit-especially for events this large…non refundable would have been ideal especially if you need to get materials & OT for staff.
They exchanged an invoice which is closer to a quote unfortunately, as invoices are not contracts with clauses.
What sucks is it would cost her more in lawyer fees to sue than she lost. Fuck Tesla.
I don’t think you can bring a lawyer to small claims court, to prevent this exact scenario. Tesla might send a manager or nobody. They can’t send their legal team.
IDK if 16k is small claims, but if it is, she should definitely take it there.
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Seems like it would be fairly simple to at least sue them in small claims court. California allows up to $6250 for businesses.
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%
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