CloudKitchens — the ghost kitchen company owned by Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick — is facing a discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former CloudKitchens employee Isabella Vincenza: the company’s first female salesperson. She is seeking compensation for alleged wrongful termination and unlawful business practices.
Vincenza’s lawsuit describes a “hostile work environment” where she had to “dodge sexist curveballs,” was “paid less than her male counterparts,” and where she was allegedly “retaliated against” for standing up for her rights after facing pregnancy-based discrimination.
Vincenza stated that she was unjustly fired in July 2023, six months after returning from maternity leave and finding that her largest accounts had been taken over by others at the company. She also stated that prior to taking leave, her manager “insinuated” that she could be let go if she took maternity leave. Furthermore, Vincenza said that employees at CloudKitchens made comments that she “would not want to work as hard anymore now that she was a mother.”
CloudKitchens denied that Vincenza’s claims have any merit, telling TechCrunch that “Isabella Vincenza had one of the highest salaries amongst hundreds of account executives, yet in the last year of her tenure at the company she was one of the lowest performers.” A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that an internal review found her claims “to have no merit and the irony of all of this is that the fabricated and fraudulent allegations were against the people who were her biggest supporters.”
This is not the first time a Kalanick-led company has come under fire for creating an allegedly hostile environment for female colleagues. In 2017, Kalanick resigned from Uber — the company he helped found — due to pressure from investors after a series of scandals, including claims of discrimination and sexual harassment at the company.
Additionally, CloudKitchens faced a series of lawsuits in 2022, with former ghost kitchen partners suing the company for deceptive business practices, as well as another two lawsuits filed separately by former employees for labor violations, alleging missed overtime pay, and gender- and race-based pay discrimination.
In August 2023, another deceptive business practices lawsuit was filed against CloudKitchens. This class action lawsuit alleged that the company misrepresented the origins of the food it sold on third-party delivery services like Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash.
CloudKitchens did not respond to NRN’s request for further comment in time for publication.
Contact Joanna at [email protected]
