‘Poaching my company’: North Carolina caviar business receives strange message request. Then the owner realizes it’s a trap

A North Carolina business owner thought she was dealing with an indecisive customer. But one strange detail in a message he sent her prompted her to do some digging.

What she found made her wonder whether the prospective customer had ever intended to book her services in the first place. 

Tamu Curtis, owner of Charlotte-based La Pearle' Caviar (@lapearlecaviar), accuses a competing business owner of posing as a customer to gather information about her company's pricing and services.

“I just don't appreciate those kinds of business tactics,” Curtis says.

Her video has since gotten nearly 315,000 views.

A Customer Requests a Quote

Curtis says a man contacted her business through social media in a July 2026 exchange.

“Hello, can I get pricing?” he reportedly wrote via Instagram, as shared by Curtis.

She says she directed him to an inquiry form that would allow her to prepare a quote based on his needs. He filled it out and indicated that he was planning a wedding in Charlotte for 100 guests. He requested two hours of service and showed interest in her company's mobile caviar bar.

However, after receiving the quote, the man followed up to confirm the pricing of a separate package. Curtis says she responded, but she never heard back.

“That's part of business,” she says. She didn't think much of the interaction until another email arrived months later.

The Man Sends an Odd Follow-Up

Curtis says she then received a new message from the same man. This time, he reportedly asked about a different service.

“Good morning, are you guys still a company? I don't see your stuff anymore?” the email reads. “I was wondering how much your caviar tasting is?”

This is when Curtis started to get suspicious. For one, the man had never followed up on his original wedding inquiry. Now, he was asking about a caviar tasting rather than catering for a large event. But strangest of all was his suggestion that her business had disappeared.

“The only reason why you wouldn't [see it] is because you were blocked,” she says. This reminded her that she had recently blocked a competing business in Charlotte on Instagram.

The company, which Curtis identifies as Dolce & Pearl, offered some of the same services as La Pearle' Caviar, including mobile caviar hosting and tasting.

She says she doesn't mind competition. She was bothered by the possibility that a competing business owner would contact her under the guise of a prospective customer. So she decided to investigate.

Curtis Connects the Dots

Curtis unblocked Dolce & Pearl's Instagram account and began reviewing its content. She eventually discovered that the name attached to the inquiries matched that of Dolce & Pearl's founder.

That led her to suspect that his repeated inquiries were an attempt to obtain information about her company's business strategies. 

“What I don't appreciate is you poaching my company, my business, my Black-owned woman business, for my pricing and my strategy,” she says in her video.

Curtis says she spent years putting in the work to “figure out what worked and what didn't work in the Charlotte market” and that competitors should be doing the same. 

“Try to create your own strategy,” she says.

Despite her frustration, Curtis ends her video by saying, “Good luck to you. I hope you thrive, but what you're not gonna do is thrive off of my back and my work.”

In an email to Subplot News, Curtis says she hasn't heard back from the man and “didn't expect [she] would because he already showed what his character is.”

Curtis' account reflects her interpretation of the correspondence. The video does not independently establish why the owner of Dolce & Pearl contacted her or whether he used the information he received.

‘He Told on Himself‘

Many of the commenters under Curtis' video shared her frustration, with one writing, “That's so lame. A better approach would've been for him to introduce himself properly out of respect and network.”

“You'd be surprised how many businesses do stuff like this, and it makes me so mad b/c why can't you be yourself!” wrote another. 

A third added that “An honest person would be straight up and pay you a consulting fee for your time.”

“Your brain locked in!!” praised another, adding, “He told on himself.”

One viewer even suggested that the competitor's business name was deliberately chosen to include the word “pearl” in order “to manipulate the SEO” via search engines. 

“If he has a website and does the keywords, etc better when they search for you, he will come up,” they theorized.

“I've been an entrepreneur for over 10 years, and this is not the first time a situation similar to this has happened to me,” Curtis tells Subplot News. “My advice for small businesses is to expect that this is part of doing business. What I won't ever do is change how I do business and engage potential customers and their experience with me because I'm afraid of other shady, unimaginative, opportunistic, and mediocre small business owners.”

“The best advice I can offer to other small businesses is [to] make sure you protect your business by trademarking it and its categories. Get a trademark attorney and invest the money to do that,” she writes. 

She also adds: “Never forget that social media is a platform that you can use to share your story. Just make sure you have the receipts and let the people decide.”

Is it Illegal to Pose as a Customer?

Researching competitor pricing is a common business practice. Companies routinely monitor and set their prices based on what their competitors charge in order to stay relevant and get an edge.

But there's investigating publicly advertised prices, and then there's using deceptive tactics to access private business information.

Still, posing as what is essentially a secret shopper generally does not qualify as illegal, though it's ethically questionable.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) notes that “the sharing of information relating to price, cost, output, customers, or strategic planning” is “sensitive information,” but legality is circumstantial and depends heavily on how the information was acquired and whether it is confidential.

In Curtis' case, the video established that she received inquiries she believes came from a competitor, but does not establish whether trade secrets were stolen or if that competitor used the information in an illegal manner.

Regardless, Curtis makes it clear that she has no problem sharing the Charlotte market with another caviar business. She just doesn't appreciate the possibility of a competitor using her hard-earned knowledge as a shortcut toward growing their profit margins.

“When they say Charlotte is a crabs in a barrel town, it's because people exhibit this type of low vibrational behavior,” she writes in the caption of her TikTok.

@lapearlecaviar

Subplot reached out to La Pearle' Caviar and Dolce & Pearl via email.

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