Web Tips: Always Sign a Contract

This story serves as a painful reminder for those of us who have been burned in the past from an agreement based on trust. The lesson? Always sign a contract.

WARNING: Story is a raw re-telling, with an instance of sexual abuse. 

The Back Story

My husband and I were living our best lives in SoCal for a few years when we decided to try our luck in the coffee business after his company was bought out and they were all laid off. We spent years building on our idea, branding, ingredients and checking out every café we could find for inspiration. We ended up moving back to the east coast after my parents decided to go in on this business venture as our financial backers. Shortly after moving back, my parents backed out because they “decided to buy a house instead”, we later figured out it was all BS to get us to move back closer to them.

At this point we were still determined to open our concept so we exhausted every available option until we finally found a financial backer who AGREED to be our SILENT partner. At this point there are now 3 partners;

1 – Us

2- Silent Partner, and

3- MP (he came with the silent partner, and a wife, the bookkeeper, we’ll get to that later).

Silent partner also came with a daughter, we’ll call her SB. Silent and MP also refused to sign papers because that meant we “didn’t trust them”, everything was done by their word and a handshake.

The Actual Story

We finally got this shop open (we’ll call it Coffee Hell for the sake of the story). We couldn’t afford staff yet so husband worked 5am-11pm with an hour commute each way, 7 days a week for around 6 months in a row. At this point he is just exhausted and needs help from someone reliable. I was working full-time with 2 side jobs to make up for the lack of money he was being paid so my availability was close to none. We decided to hire SB since she had no clear career path yet, as she was still in her early 20s, and had vested interest being the daughter of an owner. MP did not like this. He and his wife, the bookkeeper, fought to keep her out because “she was going to take over everything”. Little did husband and I know, that was the secret plan of Silent Partner the entire time. 9 months in, we’re turning a profit, 12 months in numbers across the board are on a steady rise and people keep approaching us to franchise, that’s when they hired a ‘consultant’ who walked in off of the street offering his services.

Now, MP. I was invited on a boat for a birthday party, bookkeeper invited herself. After the boat docked we decided to go get some food then go to the bar. MP showed up to the bar, had one drink and played the drunk card. This is a 6ft tall, 200+ pound dude we’re talking about and 1 very weak drink. Bookkeeper, MP and I are all chatting when starts bringing up overtly sexual topics. At this point I’m uncomfortable and try to change the subject. That didn’t work, he kept talking about gross things then for some reason groped my breasts. I didn’t know how to react so I walked away, found my friends, he followed and DID IT AGAIN. Yes, his wife saw, no she didn’t care. I decided to leave. The only thing going through my head is how badly I want to kick this man in the balls, but, business.

On my hour long drive home I’m battling with what I’m going to do, if I tell my husband, he’s going to murder this fool and the business is going to suffer but if I don’t, I would never be able to live with myself. Who else has he done this to? What has he done or said to the young girls we had on staff? Why doesn’t his wife say something? Why does he think he’s entitled enough to touch me? I decided to tell husband. MP was ripped apart and kicked out of the business.

Circling back to the consultant. Consultant claims to have been in the restaurant business for years and wanted to help us because he loved our branding and wanted to see the place take off. Silent Partner and SB fell for his nonsense and hired him basically as SB’s consultant. Consultant knew how to manipulate Silent Partner by using SB, that’s when we started getting pushed out of meetings, decisions, and even who our coffee vendors were. We chose our coffee roaster because they had the perfect bean- THAT’S the coffee we started Coffee Hell with that put us on the map so quick but they wanted to cut costs.

Gradually over a year we were pushed out. They changed the account passwords, security system code, and the POS system password. This caused a lot of tension between husband and I because I wanted to fight these guys for what was ours and he just wanted to get as far away from the headaches as possible. One and a half years later (almost 3 years in and haven’t been paid 1 cent), in March of 2020, right before Covid-19 hit the east coast HARD, we signed the documents over to Silent Partner with an agreement that they would pay us back our investment in installments. We just wanted to be free of the drama. 2 weeks later they got hit with karma round 1 and I couldn’t be happier. Silent Partner decided to try and sell masks at a 400% markup and is being sued, charged with wire fraud, and also could be facing 30 years in prison.

Fast forward through quarantine and here comes karma round 2 for the knockout. One Saturday I received a random friend request on LinkedIn. I didn’t know the guy so I shrugged it off and completely forgot about it until Monday when LinkedIn reminded me (thanks LinkedIn 👍🏼). I decided to just add the guy, 5 minutes later he sent me a message stating that he was waiting for me at Coffee Hell for over an hour. Obviously it wasn’t me, I want nothing to do with that place. A phone call was made, 1 hour later husband is in a business meeting with him that lasted 3 hours. SB dropped the ball. While he was sitting there waiting for her to show up, he researched the place, found what her father did and who the real creators of the brand were thanks to the local papers who wrote up an article about us when we opened. That’s how he found me on LinkedIn. This man reached out with the most epic business proposal anyone could receive and wants us to help with concept ideas. We will now be opening our original concept with a REAL businessman AND a contract. Moral of the story, shitty things happen to shitty people. Stay honest.

TL;DR- Business partners stole our concept, forced us out and now we’re opening several locations across the state while 1 faces jail time.

This story came from u/Boober88.