DENVER — Vendors are trying to get their money back after part of an event they were supposed to work was canceled last year.
The Taste of the South was a two-day event held in August to celebrate Black excellence. The second day of the event was abruptly shut down for security reasons. Since then, vendors said they've been asking for a refund for the hundreds of dollars they spent on registering.
"I think I’ve spent about $1,800 alone, maybe about $2,000 alone, that’s including the vendor fee plus the product," said Renee Giron, one of the vendors that registered for the two-day event. "So all together, I should have made about $4,000- $4,500 for the event, so I lost out on all that money and then having to pay my staff as well."
The event took place at the George Washington High School parking lot but was not a school event. The organizers rented the space from the Denver Public Schools.
Giron said the first day was busy — her food was flying off the tables. It was the first major event for her new business.
On day two, everything changed.
The event was abruptly canceled by DPS security. The school district said organizers didn't hire the required number of safety personnel they had agreed on.
"We all pulled in, nobody, nobody said anything to us," Giron recalled. "The event is supposed to start at noon. At about 12:05, the Denver Police Department came up and told us the event is cancelled and we have to vacate the premise. I seriously thought they were joking."
Giron and her staff packed up their belongings and left. She gave the food she had already cooked to the homeless and was disappointed that none of the organizers warned them.
Giron is hoping for a partial refund.
"It’s our first time, that was our first event, and we lost a lot of money," she said as she began to choke back tears. "It caused me a lot of hardship, a lot of financial problems, you know, it's been a storm for me."
Organizers sent an email to the vendors a day after the canceled event that said they were working with their legal team to resolve the matter. It also asked the vendors to send the organizers invoices for any expenses.
Since then, Giron said they have not heard from them.
"We’ve all been reaching out to them, no response," she said. "It would have been nice if they would have just kept in contact with us, kept us updated but instead they ignored us, they’re not responding to us like at all."
In a text message sent Wednesday, one of the event organizers, Eric Harris, confirmed they sent that email to vendors the day after the event cancellation. He also said, "We are actively in the process of suing DPS and [the vendors] need to allow us time to do so as lawsuits are very time consuming. Unfortunately we cannot speak further on the matter."
When 9NEWS asked if a lawsuit had been filed, Harris did not respond. DPS said they had not been served with one.
Giron and other vendors are in contact and hope to do something about this case so that no one is impacted by this again.
"It was our money, our income, and it put us back," she said.
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