Darryl Bell, owner of the Stateline Road Smokehouse restaurant, had entered into an agreement with Elmo Musk's SpaceX, in which he would cater one meal a month for the company's 425 employees, for just over $35,000 a meal. To be able to do that, Bell bought a lot of new equipment, figuring he would break even after two meals.
However, even though he's provided two meals for the company, he hasn't received a penny from them, which goes against the agreement that they had to pay Bell within 30 days.
A couple of weeks before Bell was supposed to cater the third meal, he started pressing for payment so he could pay off his vendors and his staff, some of whom had worked 14 hours on what should have been their day off. When Bell wondered if he needed to get a lawyer involved, the company abruptly canceled the remaining meals that Bell was to prepare for them.
The San Francisco Chronicle called SpaceX twice to ask questions and was told that the check was in the mail, but as of October 9, Bell has not been paid for the August or September meals he had prepared for them. Furthermore, he is stuck with all the equipment and supplies he was going to need and is struggling to meet his own bills because SpaceX won't pay theirs.
It should be noted that SpaceX went public and hit a record of two trillion dollars, which is how Musk became the world's first trillionaire. There is no reason in hell why they couldn't pay their $70,000 lunch tab. But it does explain how Musk got so rich. You can make lots of money when you don't pay your bills.
