Isabella Vincenza, one in all CloudKitchens’ earliest workers, by no means imagined she could be suing her now-former employer.
Employed as a full-time salesperson in 2018, she turned a mainstay at President’s Membership dinners hosted by CEO Travis Kalanick at his Bel Air residence all through 2020 and 2021. These dinners had been prized, invite-only occasions for prime salespeople at CloudKitchens, an organization that gives delivery-only business kitchens often known as “ghost kitchens.”
The gatherings began with cocktails by the pool. Then the partygoers would mingle indoors till they sat for a chef-prepared dinner. Vincenza recalled Kalanick would greet her with a hug and reward her work. Generally, he would invite her to take a seat close to him throughout dinner and they’d chat all through the meal.
“In case you had been the perfect salesperson, you had been his favourite individual since you had been making the corporate some huge cash,” Vincenza instructed TechCrunch, including that she was additionally CloudKitchens’ first feminine salesperson.
In August 2022, she arrived at one President’s Membership dinner visibly pregnant. When she tried to take a seat throughout from Kalanick on the dinner, she recalled him asking her to maneuver over. She stated he hardly checked out her, wouldn’t have interaction in dialog, and didn’t say goodbye. Vincenza left the dinner unsettled.
“That was the start of me being a pariah,” Vincenza instructed TechCrunch.
She and one other describe a “boys’ membership”
Vincenza was fired in July 2023, a bit over six months after coming back from maternity go away, in accordance with her lawsuit and the corporate.
After receiving a right-to-sue letter from California’s Division of Honest Employment and Housing in August 2024, she filed the go well with in Los Angeles Superior Court docket. In it she named Kalanick and two different executives, CloudKitchens’ father or mother firm Metropolis Storage Methods, and its affiliate firm CSS Payroll as defendants. The go well with alleges wrongful termination, intercourse discrimination, and a hostile work atmosphere, amongst different claims. TechCrunch has obtained a replica.
Vincenza claims in her go well with that she spent years “dodging all of her employer’s sexist curveballs,” that the “workplace tradition was that of a boys’ membership,” and alleges she acquired much less pay and a smaller fairness grant than her male counterparts. She additionally claims she was “retaliated in opposition to for standing up for herself” following her being pregnant and subsequent maternity go away.
The corporate rejects her allegations. “Isabella Vincenza had one of many highest salaries amongst lots of of account executives, but within the final 12 months of her tenure on the firm she was one of many lowest performers,” firm spokesperson Devon Spurgeon instructed TechCrunch. Spurgeon added that an “inner firm assessment” discovered Vincenza’s claims of discrimination “to haven’t any benefit and the irony of all of that is that the fabricated and fraudulent allegations had been in opposition to the individuals who had been her largest supporters.” Spurgeon additionally denied that the seating preparations for the President’s Membership dinner had been influenced by Vincenza’s being pregnant, and stated seating was a mirrored image of the seniority of individuals in attendance.
Vincenza’s lawsuit echoes a few of the allegations that led Kalanick to step down as CEO of Uber in 2017 after Susan Fowler’s viral weblog submit sparked an investigation into that office’s tradition. The investigation revealed a tradition so rampant with gender discrimination and office harassment that Uber fired greater than 20 individuals later that 12 months. Whereas Kalanick himself wasn’t personally accused of sexual discrimination or harassment, shortly after the report and firings, Kalanick resigned.
In 2018, he purchased a controlling curiosity in Metropolis Storage Methods, proprietor of CloudKitchens, turned CSS’s CEO, and introduced some ex-Uber workers together with him. By 2021, some workers felt CloudKitchens’ office was Uber once more, with lengthy hours and a boys’-club mentality; with one govt, the pinnacle of recruiting, resigning after an inner misconduct investigation, in accordance with studies in Enterprise Insider that 12 months.
TechCrunch has considered Slack messages from 2022, unrelated to Vincenza’s case, by which workers had been cajoled for not being at work after 7 p.m.; male workers had been brazenly messaging about one other male worker having intercourse; and CloudKitchens co-founder Barak Diskin used a courting profile-style shirtless photograph of himself for his Slack profile photograph.
Feminine workers have sued CloudKitchens earlier than. One girl sued alleging unfair labor practices like being compelled to work additional time with out pay, and being denied meal breaks. One other sued claiming gender and race-based pay discrimination (Kalanick was additionally initially named on this go well with however was later dropped as a defendant). The primary case was moved to personal arbitration; the second was settled in 2023.
These girls are usually not the one ones who discovered CloudKitchens’ tradition tough. One former worker who labored within the Los Angeles workplace instructed TechCrunch that folks had been regularly fired and workers labored to the sting of burnout, typically staying within the workplace till 2 a.m. This worker, whose id is thought to TechCrunch, requested to stay nameless for worry of retaliation.
This worker additionally used the phrases “boys’ membership” to explain CloudKitchens’ tradition. Slack messages considered by TechCrunch confirmed workers utilizing the N-word in a public group. At one level, somebody hung a photoshopped image of Donald Trump on the wall, exhibiting him as a muscled, bare-chested boxer standing in a hoop, full with boxing gloves and a championship belt, in accordance with a photograph seen by TechCrunch.
Whereas Vincenza didn’t touch upon these incidents, she did inform TechCrunch: “It was at all times a bro tradition.”
Spurgeon denies the characterization of a boys’ membership or bro tradition, declaring that girls maintain senior positions on the firm, together with the heads of HR, authorized, and the enterprise gross sales staff. She additionally stated that the corporate has “no proof” of Slack messages containing the N-word and that its coverage is to “promptly” tackle and take away any inappropriate messages or photographs dropped at administration’s consideration.
Fired after going to HR
Vincenza’s lawsuit claims that in 2020, when Vincenza was a prime gross sales performer, Jessica Morton — CloudKitchens’ head of enterprise growth and partnerships, and one of many different defendants on this go well with — by chance revealed on a Zoom name that two of Vincenza’s male teammates had been being paid greater than $20,000 greater than Vincenza was. Afterward, Vincenza acquired a $5,000 pay improve. (Morton didn’t reply to TechCrunch’s requests for remark.)
Along with the dinners through the years earlier than her maternity go away, Vincenza remembers routinely being praised at all-hands conferences the place the highest salespeople had been named.
“It was an enormous deal,” Vincenza stated. “You had been a pacesetter. You had been an instance. And I used to be introduced that option to the remainder of the corporate. ‘Isabella is primary.’”
In January 2022, Vincenza knowledgeable her supervisor, in addition to Kalanick, that she was pregnant and planning on taking maternity go away. Vincenza claims within the go well with that her supervisor “insinuated” she might lose her job if she took go away, and reportedly requested how she was going to work whereas pregnant. Whereas the corporate has a maternity go away coverage, Vincenza says the corporate struggled to finalize particulars of how hers could be dealt with.
“Two days earlier than I went on maternity go away, they couldn’t determine it out,” she stated.
When she returned to work in January 2023 after her three-and-a-half month go away, the go well with alleges Vincenza discovered that her largest accounts had been reassigned. The spokesperson says that her accounts had been assigned to others in her absence however denies that the adjustments had been punitive.
“Let me show that I’m nonetheless primary,” Vincenza remembered telling herself after returning to work. For example, salespeople got a objective of closing at the very least one bigger 5- to 10-kitchen deal — which means signing a shopper that might hire a number of kitchens. One quarter, she says she was the one salesperson to land a 10-kitchen deal however acquired no public congratulations, nor an invitation to the President’s Membership, her go well with alleges. Spurgeon says of the 10-kitchen deal that it by no means really closed. “Nothing was really signed. No funds had been acquired by the corporate.”
Vincenza’s go well with additionally alleges that Kalanick teased her as soon as when she known as residence to test on her four-month-old through the day, and that management would name her or schedule conferences within the evenings and early mornings once they knew she was unavailable, that are additionally allegations the corporate denies.
Vincenza says she went to HR in early 2023 to debate her general remedy since coming back from maternity go away and was terminated shortly after.
“She was not given any reprimands. She was not given a efficiency plan to assessment. The termination comes out of the blue,” Vincenza’s lawyer, Patrick Downes, a companion at Manteau Downes LLP, instructed TechCrunch. “That is actually unparalleled for an organization of any dimension in California.”
The spokesperson denies this declare as nicely, saying Vincenza’s supervisor did have ongoing discussions about her efficiency.
As for why Vincenza determined to sue, given how tough such lawsuits are to pursue, she says, “I don’t need different individuals to be handled that method at this firm.” Then she added: “I don’t need this firm to be that method for different mothers, different girls.”