Bankruptcy Court Documents filed Monday by disgraced former celebrity chef Sharon Damante reveal the latest twist in a tale of failed entrepreneurial dreams; a woman who convinced her friends to bankroll yet another business venture and through laziness, ego, lavish spending and unchecked corporate malfeasance managed to run through startup capitol like water through a sieve, drove the few customer relationships into the ground and somehow missed sales targets by a staggering 89%, posting less than $40,000 in sales against a $500,000 self determined projection.
As the business crumbled under her leadership, she kept hidden the financials from the company investors, continually projected non-existent sales in the pipeline and routinely short paid the few vendors. After draining the company assets, this once noted Napa California Chef who had appeared as a Food Network contestant and was an on-site "Cooking Class" instructor at local Napa California wineries including Silverado, Vinyard 29 and Darioush, fled in the dark of night to Florida, purchasing a home with unknown funds and confessing the move to company investors only after being discovered.
As her third major business failure in a decade loomed over her, she took the extraordinary step of opening a second, undisclosed business bank account and diverting customer payments into this secret account. When this was discovered, she then attempted to sue the investors and defraud them of the remaining assets of the company by claiming the recipes for the wine spices sold by the company, Winemakers Pantry LLC, were in fact not company property but somehow belonged to her personally.
As her lawsuit sputtered out and sales ceased, her working-for-free lawyer/nephew Christian Scali of Los Angeles, failed to gain any traction with his little-man intimidation and grew tired of the hours spent on a frivilous suit where he had (perhaps unknowingly) made false and misleading claims against the investors in court documents. As the ethics complaints against him mounted, failed Chef Sharon Damante had to find a new lawyer and is now attempting to throw the company into bankruptcy to avoid repayment of the debt, disclosure of her spending, screw over her former friends and investors and then take the company's assets; the recipes, formulas and business plan and use them to hook another group to fund her next scam.
The failure of Sharon Damante as a CEO and her forced failure of the company, puts the existing Winemakers Pantry retail customers and winery partners in a very difficult position; will they get what they paid for, will they be able to continue selling the product, will the product sold by them to their customers ever be shipped from the now defunct spice company and how much liability are they exposing themselves to if they get suckered in to selling Damante's 'ripoff' brand of winespice when it's introduced?
The California wineries that employed her as a part-time instructor now face the very real consequences of pairing their guests with an obvious fraud; a self proclaimed 'Celebrity Chef' who has been dropped like a hot potato from any future appearances by the Food Network due to the morals clause in their contracts, a woman who bills herself as a "Napa Wine Country Chef" while living in Florida, hoping to fly back to California to swindle more people; customers, students and investors.
Sharon's Traveled Table Reviews
Bankruptcy Court Documents filed Monday by disgraced former celebrity chef Sharon Damante reveal the latest twist in a tale of failed entrepreneurial dreams; a woman who convinced her friends to bankroll yet another business venture and through laziness, ego, lavish spending and unchecked corporate malfeasance managed to run through startup capitol like water through a sieve, drove the few customer relationships into the ground and somehow missed sales targets by a staggering 89%, posting less than $40,000 in sales against a $500,000 self determined projection.
As the business crumbled under her leadership, she kept hidden the financials from the company investors, continually projected non-existent sales in the pipeline and routinely short paid the few vendors. After draining the company assets, this once noted Napa California Chef who had appeared as a Food Network contestant and was an on-site "Cooking Class" instructor at local Napa California wineries including Silverado, Vinyard 29 and Darioush, fled in the dark of night to Florida, purchasing a home with unknown funds and confessing the move to company investors only after being discovered.
As her third major business failure in a decade loomed over her, she took the extraordinary step of opening a second, undisclosed business bank account and diverting customer payments into this secret account. When this was discovered, she then attempted to sue the investors and defraud them of the remaining assets of the company by claiming the recipes for the wine spices sold by the company, Winemakers Pantry LLC, were in fact not company property but somehow belonged to her personally.
As her lawsuit sputtered out and sales ceased, her working-for-free lawyer/nephew Christian Scali of Los Angeles, failed to gain any traction with his little-man intimidation and grew tired of the hours spent on a frivilous suit where he had (perhaps unknowingly) made false and misleading claims against the investors in court documents. As the ethics complaints against him mounted, failed Chef Sharon Damante had to find a new lawyer and is now attempting to throw the company into bankruptcy to avoid repayment of the debt, disclosure of her spending, screw over her former friends and investors and then take the company's assets; the recipes, formulas and business plan and use them to hook another group to fund her next scam.
The failure of Sharon Damante as a CEO and her forced failure of the company, puts the existing Winemakers Pantry retail customers and winery partners in a very difficult position; will they get what they paid for, will they be able to continue selling the product, will the product sold by them to their customers ever be shipped from the now defunct spice company and how much liability are they exposing themselves to if they get suckered in to selling Damante's 'ripoff' brand of winespice when it's introduced?
The California wineries that employed her as a part-time instructor now face the very real consequences of pairing their guests with an obvious fraud; a self proclaimed 'Celebrity Chef' who has been dropped like a hot potato from any future appearances by the Food Network due to the morals clause in their contracts, a woman who bills herself as a "Napa Wine Country Chef" while living in Florida, hoping to fly back to California to swindle more people; customers, students and investors.
This is a developing story and will be updated.