CloudKitchens, the ghost kitchen company led by Uber founder Travis Kalanick, is in legal trouble again. A lawsuit filed last month accuses the company of discrimination and sexual harassment against a female employee.
The lawsuit is the latest strike against the company, which has faced a cascade of complaints from restaurant operators who said they were misled and mistreated after leasing space in one of its food delivery hubs. And yet CloudKitchens has continued to quietly expand behind a series of nine-digit funding rounds. It now has more than 90 ghost kitchens across the U.S. and was valued at $15 billion as of late 2021.
The company had not responded to a request for comment on the lawsuit by publication time.
The suit was filed Aug. 21 in California Superior Court by Isabella Vincenza, a former salesperson at the company from 2017 to 2023.
According to the suit, Vincenza was one of CloudKitchens’ top salespeople, consistently breaking records for deals closed. She was also one of the only female employees in a workplace the suit describes as a “boys’ club” led by Kalanick.
The suit alleges that despite her strong performance, Vincenza was regularly harassed and discriminated against because she’s a woman; was paid less and given a smaller equity stake in the company than her male colleagues; and was retaliated against when she stood up for herself.
In particular, the suit claims that higher-ups at the company began treating Vincenza differently when she told them she was pregnant in March 2022. Her boss made inappropriate comments and insinuated that she could lose her job if she went on maternity leave, and Kalanick stopped engaging with her and acted rudely toward her.
The suit alleges that during a quarterly dinner at Kalanick’s house in August 2022, Kalanick asked Vincenza to sit somewhere else after she sat down across from him. He then refused to make eye contact with her and demeaned her during the dinner. Vincenza was nine months pregnant at the time and was the only woman at the event.
After Vincenza returned from maternity leave in early 2023, the atmosphere at CloudKitchens turned more and more hostile, the lawsuit claims. Management was condescending and expected employees to work outside of their normal hours. In the second quarter, Vincenza went to human resources with her concerns. In July, she was fired without warning.
Vincenza’s accusations are similar to those that plagued Uber while Kalanick was CEO. He resigned in 2017 amid a series of sexual harassment scandals and allegations of a toxic culture. He became CEO of CloudKitchens parent City Storage Systems several months later.
The lawsuit was first reported by TechCrunch.
It comes a year after a proposed class action in New York that alleged CloudKitchens' virtual brands mislead customers into believing they are real brick-and-mortars rather than simply online menus produced by another restaurant.
Correction: A previous version of this story indicated that the New York lawsuit was filed this year. It was filed Aug. 22, 2023.
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