A Black women-owned bakery in San Jose, California put Tesla on blast after the electric car company canceled a $16,000 order at the last minute.
Voahangy Rasetarinera, owner of The Giving Pies, wrote on Instagram that Tesla ordered 2,000 mini pies for a Black History Month party.
The order was placed on Feb. 14, to be delivered the following week.
Rasetarinera said she was redirected to Tesla’s vendor City Flavor for payment. But the payment never arrived, despite Tesla’s contact person calling to double the order.
By the end of the week, Rasetarinera still had not received payment.
The next time her Tesla contact reached out, it was to cancel the large order at the last minute.
“This abrupt reversal left me reeling, realizing the extent of the impact on my small business,” she wrote on Instagram. “I had invested time, resources, and effort based on assurances from Tesla, only to be left high and dry.”
The Giving Pies has a cancellation policy, but because Tesla never paid the invoice, Rasetarinera was not able to recover the $2,000 cancellation fee.
Her employees worked extra hours to fulfill the large order. She turned down three other Black History Month catering jobs to devote time to Tesla’s order.
Rasetarinera said Tesla snubbed a Black-owned company during Black History Month. “It felt like we didn’t matter,” she wrote.
Rasetarinera told Fortune that a Tesla representative reached out to her on Wednesday to apologize after she posted about the cancellation on Instagram.
The Tesla rep. claimed the contact person who placed the order did not have the authority to promise to pay her.
Tesla’s representative invited Rasetarinera on a factory tour and offered her an opportunity to cater two Tesla events in March.
Tesla also came under fire last month for removing diversity, equity, and inclusion language from its annual report right before Black History Month.
The removal came after Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s criticism of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which he called “propaganda words” and “literally the definition of racism.”
