Vegan Celebrity Chef Matthew Kenny Exposed as a Fraud

Investigations reveal racism and wage theft, among other illegal activity

Two recent jaw-dropping articles have exposed renowned vegan chef Matthew Kenney for various disturbing patterns of behavior.

I met Kenney in early 2020 when we were both on a panel at the vegan restaurant Gracias Madre in Los Angeles (not his). He immediately struck me as cold and arrogant. On the panel, he went out of his way to denigrate “processed” plant-based foods, despite being part of a panel that was meant to celebrate all things plant-based. (You can check out some of the Getty images of the event.)

He insisted on his own superiority for making “real food”. This later struck me as ironic when I noticed Just Egg on the menu at his high-end restaurant, Plant Food + Wine, in Venice, California. (The menu item was pretty blah.) 

I wasn’t surprised to learn the restaurant later closed, but I had no idea of the scale of Kenney’s mismanagement and fraudulent behavior until reading these two detailed investigations. Kenney has long been a darling of the vegan chef world, endlessly fawned over by the movement for decades. But now the ugly truth is out.

In April, the New York Times published a damning article entitled, “Behind a Vegan Chef’s Holistic Empire, an Ugly Reality: Matthew Kenney, one of the most famous names in plant-based cuisine, has left a trail of burned investors, bounced paychecks and graphic text messages.”

Ouch.

That article followed another expose from January in the Los Angeles Times. Both accounts depict Kenney as a serial scammer, raising money to pay for one restaurant only to shut it down, then moving on to raise money for the next failed enterprise. From the New York Times:

… more than 60 former employees, jilted investors and frustrated business associates told The New York Times of a 30-year pattern of chaotic and reckless management by Mr. Kenney, marked by businesses that opened to positive press and then closed, often quickly and amid a flurry of lawsuits, unpaid bills and bounced paychecks.

They said Mr. Kenney has been able to persist, despite repeated failures to meet his financial obligations, in part because of his prominent role since the mid-2000s in promoting vegan cooking. Many investors and employees said they were willing to overlook financial warning signs and excuse his past failures because of their devotion to animal rights and mindful nutrition.

Sound familiar? It should, because this cultish blindness to reality has also led investors (including philanthropists) to pour money into failing businesses pretending to make meat from animal cells in a lab.

And excusing “past failures” is exactly what one of the largest animal rights donors has done in giving Eat Just founder Josh Tetrick an astounding $16 million, despite zero evidence of success, as I wrote about last September.

Screwing Over Workers While Living Large

The most troubling aspect for me is always about how the employees are treated. I don’t care if rich, stupid vegan investors lose their money because they couldn’t be bothered to do their homework, or worse, deliberately looked the other way.

But it breaks my heart to read about how employees, many of them dedicated to the vegan cause, got stiffed (which is illegal wage theft) or discriminated against in disgusting ways. It appears that Kenney has numerous racist views. From the New York Times:

A former executive, who is Black, claimed that he was the target of harassment and discrimination because of a speech impediment and his race, including “being subjected to the use of the ‘N-Word,’” while employed at Mr. Kenney’s company, where “a harassing work environment permeated with racist terms for Asian business partners, and Jewish employees.”

There are additional disturbing examples cited in the article.

Kenney also was notorious for bouncing paychecks, often creating a sort of hunger games where workers raced to cash their paycheck first.

For example, Liora was Kenney’s Baltimore restaurant, opened in 2021. Many workers –predominantly women and people of color – were burned out from the pandemic so were happy to land there. But checks bounced soon after opening, so often that banks often refused to cash the checks. As a result, workers “would all fight to go to the bank to see who would get paid first.”

At another restaurant, the managers were so distrustful of the accounting they installed their own cash registers just so they could get the money directly. Other examples from the Los Angeles Times:

Seven employees of Matthew Kenney Cuisine and some of the chef’s now-closed establishments said at least one of their paychecks bounced, and several noted this occurred regularly. Some described racing to the bank to cash a paycheck ahead of colleagues.

“If you waited too long it would bounce,” said Katie Hobson, a former bartender and server at Sestina. “Sometimes I would submit my paycheck the day of and (it) would bounce back and I wouldn’t get that money until the next pay period. It would be two or three weeks and I’d be scrambling.”

Adding insult to injury, it appears that Kenney was living luxuriously off of money that should have been used to pay workers and vendors. He would use restaurant money for his own exorbitant rent, pool cleaning, housekeeping and even “tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of dental work.” The New York Times explained how “Mr. Kenney maintained what appeared to be a glamorous lifestyle — including renting a $20,000-a-month house in West Los Angeles — paid for in part by his companies.”

Workers saw this going on and were understandably angry:

“You have all of these people, from vulnerable communities, not getting paid in the middle of a global pandemic, and Matthew Kenney is living a very glamorous life,” said 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.”

Of course, like many others, Kenney took full advantage of the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program loans, receiving nearly $1 million, with almost all of that forgiven, according to the Los Angeles Times. Where did all that money go?

This all reminds me of how FTX founder and crypto golden boy Sam Bankman-Fried (with his own ties to the vegan movement) was living large on investor money while his company was crashing all around him.

Taking Advantage of the Vegan Cause

A theme throughout both investigations is the extent to which Kenney preyed upon investors’ and employees’ dedication to veganism, which is often how grifters and cons get away with their fraud for so long.

Even when warned about his past, rich vegans would be charmed by Kenney: he’s almost 60 and still looks great!. Cindy Landon, actress and widow of actor Michael Landon was warned but was so taken in she exclaimed: “He’s charming, he’s bright, he’s passionate”. That’s how grifters use charm to overcome logic.

But she wasn’t alone. From the New York Times:

Ms. Landon is among seven people who told The Times they had invested in Mr. Kenney’s businesses in recent years and felt he took advantage of their commitment to veganism. They said Mr. Kenney provided unreliable financial data about their investments, if any at all, and that they now assume their money is gone.

“In the world of veganism and animal rights, there are a lot of extremely wealthy people,” said Richard Weintraub, a prominent Los Angeles-based real estate developer and an investor in Plant Food. “We really want to trust, and we really want to believe that these people have the same interests at heart.”

But they don’t. They are frauds who only care about themselves.

There was no excuse for investors continuing to fund Kenney’s schemes. It’s not like his past bad deals were a secret. According to the New York Times:

The chef and his companies have been named in dozens of lawsuits in at least nine states, alleging a variety of misdeeds including illegal labor practices and stiffing creditors, landlords and employees. According to public records, Mr. Kenney owes $1.2 million in back taxes in New York State alone.

A class action filed by former employees in New York alleges Kenney’s restaurants violated various federal and state labor laws, including keeping workers’ tips.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a lawsuit filed by a restaurant-supply wholesaler claimed Kenney and several companies owed it tens of thousands of dollars alleged that Kenney “formed various business entities for the sole purpose of preventing lawsuits against them when they failed to pay their duly incurred debts.”

This is not the stuff of a chef who doesn’t know business. He knew what he was doing.

Kenney also got sued by an investor who put up $1 million for his failed pizza venture, Double Zero. The money was supposed to be repaid in two years. The lawsuit alleged that Kenney provided “false financial information” that obscured the venture’s debts. That’s called fraud. A judge ordered Kenney’s companies to pay $1.17 million.

At the Double Zero in Boston, sheriff’s deputies arrived during a meal to close the restaurant because of unpaid rent. Can you imagine enjoying a vegan pizza and the police show up to shut the place down? In less than two years, the Double Zero had more than $1.3 million in debt, including unpaid rent and taxes, according to the New York Times. This guy leaves a trail of destruction everywhere he goes.

Incredibly, Kenney is not done yet. Just in February, a Canadian vegan seafood company with significant investment announced a new partnership with Kenney referring to him as a “trailblazing chef and entrepreneur”. How is this possible? By the time of this release, the LA Times investigation had been out for almost two months. The vegan movement needs to look deeply inward to examine who is being celebrated and rewarded for bad behavior.

The New York Times article ends by quoting Cindy Landon, who stood by Kenney for years, and said her decision to speak out came only after hearing from so many investors and employees who were also burned by him.

“They all tell me these stories,” she said, “and they tell me this man needs to be stopped.”

Now.