Josie Duran overheard Matthew Kenney’s pitch many occasions.
As a lead server at Plant Meals + Wine in Venice Seashore, Calif., Ms. Duran usually waited on Mr. Kenney, the restaurant’s chef and proprietor, as he entertained potential traders on the restaurant’s fig-tree-shaded patio, persuading them to belief him with their cash for his formidable culinary tasks.
At a time when adopting a plant-based weight loss plan has turn out to be an environmental and moral trigger world wide, Mr. Kenney, 59, is among the many world’s most well-known vegan cooks. Plant Meals was the flagship restaurant of Matthew Kenney Delicacies, a sprawling, health-focused firm that till just lately operated, managed or invested in additional than 50 eating places throughout the globe, from Los Angeles to São Paulo to Dubai.
However Ms. Duran grew to resent Mr. Kenney’s visits — partially, she stated, as a result of she believed she was serving to the chef domesticate a deceptive picture of success.
“I simply knew the traders had been investing in a misplaced trigger, and I couldn’t say something,” stated Ms. Duran, who labored on the restaurant from 2021 till she stop early final 12 months. “I might have my examine bounced for the fifth pay interval in a row, and Matthew Kenney can be presenting to them how wonderful Plant Meals + Wine is doing.”
In truth, Plant Meals, which simply relocated to the 4 Seasons resort in July, closed in January, the most recent of not less than 17 eating places related to Mr. Kenney which have shuttered since late 2021.
Ms. Duran is considered one of greater than 60 former workers, jilted traders and annoyed enterprise associates who instructed The New York Instances of a 30-year sample of chaotic and reckless administration by Mr. Kenney, marked by companies that opened to optimistic press after which closed, usually shortly and amid a flurry of lawsuits, unpaid payments and bounced paychecks.
They stated Mr. Kenney has been capable of persist, regardless of repeated failures to fulfill his monetary obligations, partially due to his outstanding function because the mid-2000s in selling vegan cooking. Many traders and workers stated they had been keen to miss monetary warning indicators and excuse his previous failures due to their devotion to animal rights and conscious diet.
In response to questions on his enterprise practices and private conduct, Mr. Kenney referred to as The Instances’s reporting “despicable,” saying it lacked “a primary understanding of precise information” and was “not based mostly in actuality.”
Mr. Kenney’s enterprise woes had been no secret. The chef and his firms have been named in dozens of lawsuits in not less than 9 states, alleging a wide range of misdeeds together with unlawful labor practices and stiffing collectors, landlords and workers. In keeping with public data, Mr. Kenney owes $1.2 million in again taxes in New York State alone.
But Mr. Kenney maintained what seemed to be a glamorous way of life — together with renting a $20,000-a-month home in West Los Angeles — paid for partially by his firms.
Different points of Mr. Kenney’s conduct appeared to be at odds with the holistic, empathetic ethos his model espouses. He was sued for harassment and discrimination by a Black worker, for example, and in graphic textual content messages with a co-worker, considered by The Instances, he incessantly used racist and misogynistic language.
And though Mr. Kenney turned a outstanding determine in veganism, championing its virtues to each traders and the general public, he conceded to The Instances that he had eaten seafood a “few occasions,” although he claimed to have carried out so “overtly” and to not have eaten “land-based flesh” in additional than 20 years.
As well as, workers felt stress to run interference for Mr. Kenney’s romantic relationships, together with two with younger girls who labored for him.
“We had been all particularly instructed to not inform the ladies he introduced that he had a girlfriend,” Ms. Duran stated. “And we additionally knew when the girlfriend would come, to not point out the dates he would deliver to the restaurant.”
Peter Cassell, a restaurant business veteran who was normal supervisor at considered one of Mr. Kenney’s New York Metropolis eating places within the early 2000s, was blunt in his estimation of Mr. Kenney. “Checks bounced on a regular basis,” he stated. “No person that I do know that has ever handled Matthew has ever gotten away clear.”
For the Trigger
Information articles about Mr. Kenney’s failure to pay payments (together with to Donald J. Trump, his first restaurant’s landlord) have appeared for many years, beginning in New York, the place he started his profession within the Nineteen Nineties, and following him as his companies expanded to Maine, Oklahoma, Florida and California.
Pure Meals + Wine, the uncooked vegan restaurant he opened with Sarma Melngailis, his ex-girlfriend and enterprise associate, was featured in “Unhealthy Vegan,” the hit 2022 Netflix collection. Mr. Kenney was pushed out of the restaurant by Jeffrey Chodorow, the restaurant’s monetary backer, who described Mr. Kenney within the collection as “a really proficient chef who had a nasty monetary historical past.”
In January, The Los Angeles Instances printed an investigation detailing the collapse of not less than 12 of Mr. Kenney’s companies, together with allegations that he owes tens of millions of {dollars} in lease and $1 million to a former investor.
However by way of all of it, Mr. Kenney has continued to win over new traders.
Cindy Landon, an actress, producer and widow of the Hollywood star Michael Landon, stated she determined to turn out to be an investor in Plant Meals + Wine when it opened in 2015 regardless of being warned by her enterprise supervisor and others that Mr. Kenney shouldn’t be trusted, due to his earlier failed enterprise ventures.
“He’s charming, he’s brilliant, he’s passionate,” Ms. Landon stated. “I assumed, You understand what? I’m going to maneuver ahead on this.”
Ms. Landon is amongst seven individuals who instructed The Instances that they had invested in Mr. Kenney’s companies in recent times and felt he took benefit of their dedication to veganism. They stated Mr. Kenney offered unreliable monetary information about their investments, if any in any respect, and that they now assume their cash is gone.
“On the earth of veganism and animal rights, there are lots of extraordinarily rich folks,” stated Richard Weintraub, a outstanding Los Angeles-based actual property developer and an investor in Plant Meals. “We actually need to belief, and we actually need to consider that these folks have the identical pursuits at coronary heart.”
Mr. Kenney painted a rosy financial image of his companies in a March 2022 e-mail to an investor that was considered by The Instances. “We hope to be producing greater than 100M system vast this 12 months and 250 subsequent 12 months,” he wrote, including that his firm was valued between $50 and $100 million.
Six months later, New York State auctioned off the contents of his Manhattan restaurant Sestina for unpaid taxes.
Even some enterprise associates who stated they really feel wronged by Mr. Kenney specific admiration for his skills as a chef. Kyle Saliba stated he has opened 5 companies with Mr. Kenney prior to now 25 years, together with a Double Zero pizzeria in New York. He referred to as Mr. Kenney a “visionary” and a “genius.”
However he additionally stated the chef had “no entrepreneurial abilities,” and he’s suing Mr. Kenney and two of his companies, alleging fraud and looking for damages of greater than $25 million.
Transferring Cash
Chaotic monetary operations had been attribute of Matthew Kenney Delicacies, in line with greater than 30 former workers.
In the summertime of 2022, Rebecca Rubel was put answerable for human sources for Matthew Kenney Delicacies, which then operated about 12 eating places in the US. She stated she routinely responded to workers complaining that their paychecks had bounced.
Ms. Rubel recalled conversations she had with Matt Bronfeld, the director of hospitality for Matthew Kenney Delicacies. “It was all the time the identical factor: ‘We’re simply ready for some cash from an investor after which it needs to be high quality,’ ” she stated. “It by no means actually ended up being high quality.”
Mr. Bronfeld’s job gave him operational oversight of Mr. Kenney’s eating places in the US from 2018 to 2023. Mr. Bronfeld had an uncommon background for such a job, having been convicted in 2015 of grand larceny and sentenced to 5 years’ probation for embezzling greater than $400,000 from former enterprise associates.
He stated Mr. Kenney knew of the conviction when Mr. Bronfeld was promoted to the director function after only a 12 months with the corporate.
Mr. Bronfeld turned the primary company contact for managers of the person Kenney Delicacies eating places in recent times. A number of workers stated he was amiable and responsive underneath tough circumstances, and essential to addressing the various monetary issues that arose on the eating places.
Mr. Bronfeld stated he would generally reply to the inadequate funds at one restaurant by transferring cash from one other of Mr. Kenney’s enterprise entities, an assertion corroborated by dozens of emails and textual content messages amongst workers and administration that had been considered by The Instances.
“Matt Bronfeld would say, ‘We’ve to rob Peter to pay Paul,’ ” Ms. Rubel stated in regards to the transferring of funds between enterprise entities.
“That’s the way it all the time labored,” Mr. Bronfeld stated, including that managers who had been within the job earlier than him had carried out the identical factor. “There may be nothing new that occurred once I labored there.”
He added, “Matthew was apprised of all the things happening within the firm.”
In written feedback, Mr. Kenny sought to put the blame on others, claiming that he was the sufferer of embezzlement by unnamed executives inside his firm and that he had reported the matter to the F.B.I. A spokeswoman for the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles workplace stated, “We can’t affirm or deny an investigation.”
In a lawsuit filed in March 2021 towards Mr. Kenney, his firms and Mr. Saliba, a former government for Mr. Kenney’s firms stated he had made formal complaints about “unethical and unlawful monetary practices,” together with Kenney’s “receiving investor money and utilizing it for private functions.”
Different former workers who helped Mr. Kenney along with his monetary transactions described related monetary exercise — together with paying for Mr. Kenney’s lease, pool cleansing, housekeeping and tens of hundreds of {dollars}’ price of dental work — and their accounts had been backed up by textual content messages from Mr. Kenney considered by The Instances.
“The cash was taken out of the working cash for eating places,” stated a former accountant for Matthew Kenney Delicacies, who was allowed to talk anonymously as a result of they feared their title can be related to Mr. Kenney’s. “Subsequently distributors weren’t getting paid and workers weren’t getting paid.”
“There didn’t appear to be any sense of this isn’t the best way to do issues.”
‘A Harassing Work Setting’
In the identical lawsuit, the previous government, who’s Black, additionally claimed that he was the goal of harassment and discrimination due to a speech obstacle and his race, together with “being subjected to the usage of the ‘N-Phrase,’” whereas employed at Mr. Kenney’s firm, the place “a harassing work setting permeated with racist phrases for Asian enterprise companions, and Jewish workers.”
Finally, the case was settled, and the previous government was awarded $80,000 and greater than $20,000 in legal professionals’ charges.
In dozens of textual content messages with Mr. Bronfeld considered by The Instances, Mr. Kenney often referred to workers and enterprise associates in racist, misogynistic and profane phrases. In a single alternate from 2020, Mr. Kenney requested in regards to the lawyer representing his personal facet of the harassment case, “Is she black?,” including, “If she is I’ll kill you.” He went on to counsel that the lawyer was performing intercourse acts on the plaintiff, whereas mocking the plaintiff’s stutter.
In a 2022 textual content, he wrote, “All Latin males are crybabies,” including, “Hate to be racist but it surely’s my expertise.” In a 2018 alternate, he described South Asian enterprise homeowners as “grocery retailer Indians.” In one other, from 2021, he requested in regards to the intercourse lifetime of a feminine worker of shade and criticized the non-public hygiene of earlier sexual companions in graphic phrases. He added that one other girl was enticing “till she turned 21.”
Mr. Kenney instructed The Instances, “These phrases don’t even sound as if they’re written or spoken by me.”
A lot of workers at Plant Meals + Wine additionally stated they had been uncomfortable that Mr. Kenney, then in his mid-50s, had a quick sexual relationship with a 19-year-old hostess on the restaurant. (The hostess declined to be interviewed.)
It wasn’t the primary time that Mr. Kenney had been concerned with a youthful subordinate. Within the mid-2000s he dated a private assistant in her early 20s. And there was the connection with Charlotte MacKinnon, Mr. Kenney’s former girlfriend, whom he met when she was a pupil on the College of Miami in 2016. Ms. MacKinnon finally moved in with Mr. Kenney in Los Angeles and have become inventive director of Matthew Kenney Delicacies.
4 former Plant Meals workers stated that when Mr. Kenney introduced different girls to the restaurant, managers instructed workers to deceive Ms. MacKinnon, a activity made extra uncomfortable by the truth that Ms. MacKinnon was a colleague. (Ms. MacKinnon declined to reply on the file to written questions from The Instances.)
“Folks had been caught in center of bizarre stuff like that,” stated Yvette De Vito, a former Plant Meals server, who additionally knew of Mr. Kenney’s relationship with the hostess. “I bought the impression that this individual had no ethical code or compass and solely cares about himself.”
Covid Growth and Bust
Because the pandemic introduced mass closings and chaos to the restaurant business, Mr. Kenney’s firm continued to develop. “It was actually, actually aggressive development, with no plan in place,” Mr. Bronfeld stated.
Throughout that interval, 22 entities linked to Mr. Kenney acquired $3.5 million in Paycheck Safety Program funds, of which not less than $2.7 million was finally forgiven.
In late 2020 and into 2021, Matthew Kenney Delicacies opened plant-based eating places in Culver Metropolis and San Francisco, and partnered in vegan drive-through eating places in California and Rhode Island.
Liora, which opened in Baltimore in the summertime of 2021, was a part of this growth. Workers noticed a singular alternative within the upscale vegan restaurant.
“Many people had been coming from different eating places the place we had been feeling exploited and had been feeling burned-out due to Covid,” stated Karishma Avari, a sous-chef. “Liora felt like one thing we may make our personal,” she added, “to alter the issues that we noticed within the business that we didn’t like.”
They succeeded, in some methods. Liora made Baltimore Journal’s listing of the town’s prime eating places two years in a row. The staffs at Liora and Double Zero, the vegan pizzeria that operated in the identical area, had been predominantly girls and folks of shade.
“We actually made a distinction within the vegan neighborhood,” stated Natalie Carter, the pinnacle chef at each eating places. “We drew energy from one another.”
However checks started bouncing shortly after Liora opened. Kari Naked, its supervisor, stated that if the payroll was $10,000 for a given pay interval, Matthew Kenney Delicacies would put $2,000 into the account. This occurred sufficient occasions that many native banks began refusing to money checks from Mr. Kenney’s firms, in line with a number of Liora workers. Ms. Naked stated staff “would all struggle to go to the financial institution to see who would receives a commission first. It was simply actually unhappy.”
On the identical day she found {that a} Liora server was subsisting on canned beans due to unpaid wage and ideas, Ms. Naked stated she noticed on Instagram that Mr. Kenney and Ms. MacKinnon had been in Dubai, attending the opening occasion for a luxurious resort the place Beyoncé performed a personal live performance.
After discovering that the eating places’ liquor license couldn’t be renewed due to unpaid taxes, Ms. Naked requested the corporate’s lawyer to assist. In keeping with Ms. Naked and one other supervisor, the lawyer declined to assist, saying she was additionally owed $7,000 by Matthew Kenney Delicacies.
Ms. Naked, who estimated that Liora and Double Zero took in $1 million to $1.5 million in 2022, recalled a FaceTime name she demanded with Mr. Kenney shortly earlier than the restaurant closed in April 2023 to debate the various unpaid payments.
“He saved saying that he’s probably not anxious about earning profits. He’s anxious in regards to the larger image and bringing plant-based meals to the world,” Ms. Naked stated. “I instructed him, nobody will work at no cost.”
Touchdown in Court docket
In keeping with a class-action lawsuit filed in December 2021 in U.S. District Court docket in New York, pay practices at Mr. Kenney’s New York Metropolis eating places violated federal and state labor legal guidelines. The go well with, filed by former workers towards Mr. Kenney and greater than a dozen of his companies and companions, alleges partially that Mr. Kenney, his companions and corporations unlawfully saved staff’ ideas. The defendants have denied the claims, and the case remains to be pending.
The kitchen staffs at two Kenney eating places walked off the job as a result of they weren’t getting paid, in line with former workers — in 2022 at Sestina in New York, and final 12 months on the Double Zero in Venice, Calif.
“I had a dishwasher name and threaten to kill me as soon as,” stated Kara Knowles, the previous normal supervisor at Althea, in a Saks Fifth Avenue retailer in Chicago. “That’s how excessive tensions had been.”
Earlier than that restaurant closed in October 2022, Ms. Knowles stated the shop’s managers grew so distrustful of the accounting at Matthew Kenney Delicacies that they put in their very own money registers within the restaurant, “so they may simply get the cash instantly.”
Mr. Kenney described Althea’s employees as “lazy” in profanity-laced textual content messages to Mr. Bronfeld in 2022. Mr. Kenney was upset that the restaurant’s 11 workers, three of whom had autoimmune-related well being points, refused to work till they had been all examined for Covid, in line with the texts. “So sickening,” Mr. Kenney wrote.
On the Double Zero in Boston, sheriff’s deputies arrived throughout a meal to shut the restaurant due to unpaid lease quickly after Anthony Williams turned normal supervisor in November 2022. In lower than two years, the vegan pizzeria had greater than $1.3 million in debt, together with unpaid lease and taxes, in line with chapter filings.
As bounced paychecks prompted Mr. Williams to fall behind on his lease and automobile funds, Mr. Kenney’s different Boston restaurant, Plant Pub Fenway, racked up accolades — The Boston Globe named it the highest restaurant opening of 2022 — and unpaid payments.
Pat McAuley was an area associate in Plant Pub Fenway, however he stated Mr. Kenney’s firm owned the enterprise and managed its funds. The restaurant was evicted by its landlord, who claimed about $230,000 in unpaid lease, in line with an eviction discover filed in October of 2022, three months after it opened. Mr. McAuley stated he has been left accountable for about $46,000 in unpaid wage claims.
Mr. McAuley stated that within the 12 weeks it was open, the restaurant made a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} in income. “We don’t know what occurred to it,” he added. “They didn’t pay distributors aside from the very naked minimal.”
“You’ve gotten all of those folks, from susceptible communities, not getting paid in the midst of a world pandemic, and Matthew Kenney resides a really glamorous life,” stated Greta Herrin, a sous-chef at Sestina in New York, which closed in 2022 after the state seized the property for nonpayment of taxes. “It was insane.”
Mr. Kenney’s struggles haven’t saved him from beginning new ventures. He nonetheless holds an curiosity in a Double Zero location that opened in Instances Sq. final month. In February, a Canadian firm introduced a partnership with Mr. Kenney to assist develop recipes for its plant-based seafood.
For Cindy Landon, who stood by Mr. Kenney for years, the choice to talk out got here solely after listening to from so many traders and workers who had, like her, been burned by him.
“All of them inform me these tales,” she stated, “and so they inform me this man must be stopped.”
Susan Beachy contributed analysis.
