Local piemaker Joyebells sued by its main lender, owners file bankruptcy

Moore pitches Joyebells on “Shark Tank.” (Disney/Christopher Willard)

Months after pitching famed investors Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary on “Shark Tank,” a local pie company is now swimming in troubled waters on the legal front.

Joyebells, known for its sweet potato, peach and pumpkin pies, was sued in recent weeks by its main lender for defaulting on a $350,000 loan.

And the company’s owners, wife-and-husband duo Joye D. Berry-Moore and Eric Moore, filed for bankruptcy just days before the bank’s lawsuit was filed.

Now the lender, Henrico-based Locus Bank, is looking to collect on the debt, which the Moores personally guaranteed and came with a lien on “substantially all property of Joyebells,” according to court filings.

Locus Bank (formerly known as VCC Bank) filed suit in Henrico Circuit Court on June 30, naming Joyebells LLC and the Moores as defendants. Joye Berry-Moore serves as CEO of Joyebells, while Eric Moore is COO, per their LinkedIn profiles.

The bank claims it originally loaned Joyebells up to $350,000 in May 2023. After renewal last year, the loan maturity date was set for May 11 of this year.

Around May 12, Locus sent a notice of default and demand for payment to Joyebells, court filings state. Locus is currently seeking no less than around $344,500 from Joyebells.

Three days before Locus’ lawsuit was filed, Berry-Moore and Moore filed for Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy, court records show.

The two noted in the filing that their debts are primarily business-related and credit card debt that total around $1.27 million. The money owed to Locus is among the largest of those liabilities.

Among their unsecured debts is $144,000 owed to the IRS and around $570,000 owed to Apple Valley Foods, a pie manufacturer in Minnesota.

The Joyebells website lists all of its products as sold out.

This isn’t the first time issues have cropped up for Joyebells, which was founded in 2019 and is based in South Richmond.

In 2023, more than 300,000 of its peach pies were pulled from retailer shelves after a manufacturing issue led to the pies being made with unripened peaches.

As a result, Joyebells lost its partnership with Sam’s Club and pulled all of its shelf-stable products from stores. It sold only through QVC for all of 2024.

“We were out of alignment, no matter how you try to slice it,” Moore told BizSense back in February when her appearance on ABC’s “Shark Tank” aired. “It was time to stand still, take a look around, see where we are and where we want to go.”

Joye Berry-Moore (Disney/Christopher Willard)

Moore’s “Shark Tank” pitch came as she was trying to relaunch production and retail sales after the peach incident using the company’s original recipes. Moore told the sharks that Joyebells has reached $16.1 million in lifetime sales since its launch in 2019, but that her annual sales fell from $7.7 million in 2023 to a projected $4.3 million in 2024.

Though the sharks raved about the pies, Moore ultimately walked away empty-handed.

The sharks cautioned Moore about her manufacturing relaunch, voicing concerns about Joyebells’ production costs versus retail prices.

Moore at the time said the company was set to bring its new pies to Midwestern Schnucks grocery stores in April, mid-Atlantic Kroger stores in June and Northeast Costco locations sometime this year, along with launching online orders through the Joyebells website.

It is unclear whether Joyebells pies launched in the grocery store chains.

It’s also unclear if Joyebells is still operational. The number listed on the Joyebells website goes straight to voicemail, while all four pie options listed for online purchase are labeled as sold out. The company’s LLC status with the State Corporation Commission was “voluntarily cancelled” as of June 2.

A message left on Moore’s personal phone was not returned by press time.

Moore started Joyebells in 2019, selling sweet potato pies made from the recipes of her third great-grandmother, Susan Mae Howell. Moore said in February the company had three employees and is headquartered in Hatch Kitchen RVA on the Southside. She said at the time the company’s pies were made by an unnamed manufacturer.

Locus Bank is represented in the lawsuit by attorneys Robert Chappell and Christopher Hurley of law firm Spotts Fain. They declined to comment.

No legal counsel is listed for Joyebells in the lawsuit and the company has yet to file its response in the case.

The Moores are represented in their bankruptcy case by Kimberly Kalisz of Conway Law Group. Kalisz did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

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