Why hasn't SpaceX, worth $2T, paid this Bay Area chef the $70K it owes him?

This year, SpaceX, the aerospace technology company founded by Elon Musk, went public and hit a record market cap of $2 trillion, making Musk the world’s first trillionaire. It recently launched its supersize Starship into orbit, bringing the company one step closer to sending astronauts to the moon. But Bay Area restaurant owner Darryl Bell says SpaceX still hasn’t paid the roughly $70,000 that it owes him for two catered dinners at the Texas company’s Palo Alto campus. “That’s not even a penny for them,” said Bell, who provided invoices for the events to the Chronicle. Advertisement Article continues below this ad In July, Bell’s Napa barbecue restaurant, Stateline Road Smokehouse, catered the first of what Bell had hoped would be six monthly dinners for 425 SpaceX employees. At the second dinner in August, Bell said SpaceX’s culinary team gave positive feedback. Yet payment for the dinners, set at just over $35,000 each, or $78 a person, is now months past due, according to Bell. In an Oct. 2 email reviewed by the Chronicle, SpaceX acknowledged that “Stateline has not been paid yet and is past their payment terms.” Bell did not sign a written contract with SpaceX, but said he verbally agreed to the company’s terms of payment within 30 days. Two weeks before Stateline’s third scheduled dinner, Bell mentioned involving a lawyer to a SpaceX accountant and the company put his future events on hold “until the payment issue is resolved,” according to messages reviewed by the Chronicle. Advertisement Article continues below this ad “It’s uncomfortably tight right now,” Bell said. “Restaurants are already tough.” Because his business is built around meat, which has sharply risen in cost this year, he said, “the margins are even smaller.” “We’re building stuff three months out,” he said, “and there are things we can’t move around anymore because we spent it expecting to get $70,000.” SpaceX did not respond to the Chronicle’s requests for comment. When Bell was contacted by SpaceX this spring about the possibility of providing monthly dinners between July and December, he was attracted to the opportunity to “ramp up the catering side” of his business. But he had to buy roughly $7,000 worth of equipment — including eight carts and 100 hotel pans — to pull it off. “We figured, if we’re going to commit to doing these on a six-month (basis), we can commit to buying some stuff, knowing that it will eventually be paid off,” he said. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The screening process was intense, Bell said, as his team had to complete numerous security checks and sign a non-disclosure agreement, which was also reviewed by the Chronicle. To staff the dinners, several of Bell’s employees agreed to work 14-hour shifts on what would have been their days off. While Stateline usually requires a 50% deposit for events with more than 100 people, SpaceX had “no (deposit) structure like that,” Bell said. “I thought, ‘They’re a big company. It’s just how they run it.’” Every two months, the company sent Bell and other hired restaurants a schedule for the dinners, which take place every Wednesday and Thursday. According to a July email sent to SpaceX’s eight Bay Area “vendor partners,” which the Chronicle reviewed, Stateline was scheduled to provide dinner on Aug. 26 and Sept. 30. Bell said both dinners in Palo Alto on July 29 and Aug. 26 went well. The first red flag came at the end of the August event, when he asked the SpaceX head chef about payment for the July invoice for $35,885, and didn’t receive an update. Advertisement Article continues below this ad By September, with the July payment past due, Bell said he started “constantly reaching out” to SpaceX. “I was just trying to get some answers,” but he rarely got a response, he said. At times, he was directed to another person, asked to resend his invoice, or to add a P.O. number to the invoice, he said. Desperate, Bell called SpaceX’s senior accountant on Sept. 17 and left a voicemail. “I said, ‘Something seems a little weird, and I don’t know if I should be getting a lawyer,’” he said. Bell said he received two responses within the hour. The first was a call from the accountant, who told him his payment had been initiated and should land in his bank account in the next few days. Bell said that as of Oct. 9 it had not arrived. The second was a text message from a SpaceX chef, which the Chronicle reviewed, notifying Bell that the company was “postponing” the remaining Stateline dinners. The chef also told Bell that his voicemail “was perceived as a threat of legal action” and he’d “done all I can do at this point.” In a follow-up email, Bell asked SpaceX if Stateline could still cook the upcoming Sept. 30 dinner, as planning was already underway, but he said he received no response. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Bell estimated that by the end of the first two dinners, he’d break even, accounting for the equipment he purchased, plus food and other costs, including a U-Haul rental to bring everything to Palo Alto. But he hoped the remaining dinners would help him “actually see some profits.” Now, those dinners appear to be off the table, and Bell said that “all that equipment we bought doesn’t have a use,” as Stateline is not currently doing other events with that volume. On Friday, shortly after the Chronicle reached out to SpaceX for the second time, an accountant called Bell and told him payment was on its way. Bell said this is the third time the company has told him payment has been initiated. Bell said he’s been unable to pay his staff for the SpaceX dinners they worked, and in the past several weeks, it’s been difficult to pay his own bills, including for purveyors, on time. “It just kind of hit me,” Bell said. “We’re the blue-collar guys cooking this food, hustling to make this work for these young kids making like six figures, and this entity that has a trillion dollars, can’t pay us?”