MATTHEW KENNEY’S VEGAN RESTAURANT EMPIRE SHOWS SIGNS OF ROT

Chef Matthew Kenney, the founder of Plant Food & Wine in Venice and multiple other vegan, plant-based restaurants in Los Angeles and globally, is the subject of a new report published today by the New York Times, in which former employees and investors accuse the restaurateur of alleged financial misconduct, racism against coworkers, and fostering a hostile workplace. The report is based on conversations with more than 60 people who spoke on a 30-year pattern of financial misbehavior that led to bounced employee checks, millions of dollars of lost investor money, $1.2 million in unpaid taxes in New York state, and dozens of lawsuits filed in nine states.

Kenney rose to prominence in New York City in the ’90s, first for his acclaimed non-vegan menu at Matthew’s and later for raw vegan cooking at Pure Food and Wine with partner and girlfriend Sarma Melnagailis — also the subject of the 2022 Netflix documentary Bad Vegan: Fraud. Fame. Fugitives. In the documentary, Pure’s backer Jeffrey Chodorow called Kenney “a very talented chef with a bad financial history.”

After opening numerous projects in New York, Oklahoma, and Connecticut, Kenney debuted the raw vegan restaurant M.A.K.E. in Santa Monica in 2012. (The restaurant closed after three years with $360,000 in alleged back rent.) His Los Angeles-based group, Matthew Kenney Cuisine, was among the city’s most prolific restaurant operators, opening Venice’s Plant Food & Wine in 2015 and Double Zero in 2019; Culver City’s Make Out in 2015 and Sestina in 2020; and Costa Mesa’s Veg’d in 2021. All of these restaurants are now closed.

In January 2024, Kenney was also the subject of a Los Angeles Times report detailing multiple sudden restaurant closures, millions of dollars in unpaid rent, bounced worker paychecks, unpaid suppliers, and the alleged failure to return $1 million to an investor. In August 2023, Kenney relocated Plant Food & Wine to the Four Seasons Hotel near Beverly Hills, closing six months later in January 2024. Kenney responded to the Los Angeles Times’ saying he planned to change the way he operated.

Eater attempted to reach Kenney through his parent company Ascention Global regarding the report, but emails bounced, and the Matthew Kenney Cuisine website was no longer active ahead of publication. Eater will update this piece if more information becomes available. The Matthew Kenney Cuisine Instagram account was last updated six weeks ago.

However, the new exposé provides even greater details of Kenney’s financial dealings. New York Times reporter Brett Anderson spoke with Cindy Landon, an actress and producer who invested in Kenney’s flagship restaurant Plant Food & Wine, which opened in 2015. Landon and seven others Anderson spoke with claimed they invested in Kenney but felt the chef took advantage of their commitment to veganism. The investors allege Kenney kept unreliable financial records and assume all the money is now gone. In March 2021, former partner Kyle Saliba, who opened five restaurants with Kenney, sued the chef and two of his businesses for fraud, seeking more than $25 million in damages.

The Times report further discusses conversations Kenney’s human resources director Rebecca Rubel had with director of hospitality Matt Bronfeld. Bronfeld managed operations from 2018 to 2013 but also had a history of embezzling funds and was convicted of grand larceny in 2015. Rubel alleges Bronfeld would respond to insufficient funds from one restaurant by transferring money from another Kenney entity.

Kenney was known for his glamorous lifestyle, spending $20,000 per month on a house rental in Los Angeles, allegedly paid in part by his companies. Saliba’s lawsuit claims the chef took investor cash and used it for personal purposes, including “rent, pool cleaning, housekeeping, and tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of dental work.”

A Black former executive alleges in the lawsuit that he was subjected to harassment and discrimination in Kenney’s restaurant group, claiming that he was targeted for his speech impediment and because of his race. The executive said he was subjected to the use of the N-word and claims that the group had “a harassing work environment permeated with racist terms of Asian business partners, and Jewish employees.” That case was settled, and the executive was awarded $80,o00 and more than $20,000 in legal fees.

The Times report also alleges Bronfeld and Kenney exchanged dozens of texts wherein the chef would use racist, profane, and misogynistic terms against women, Black people, South Asians, and those of Latin American heritage. Kenney responded to those allegations, saying, “These words do not even sound as though they are written or spoken by me.”

An ongoing New York class action lawsuit filed in December 2021, claims Kenney and more than a dozen businesses and partners violated federal and state labor laws by retaining employee tips, which the defendants denied. Kitchen staff at Venice restaurant Double Zero walked off the job in 2023, and at New York restaurant Sestina, workers walked off in 2022, both because of unpaid wages. Former employees and partners in Boston and Baltimore alleged unpaid wages due to insufficient funds.

Kenney also had a record of getting into personal relationships with subordinates. The report claims Kenney’s girlfriend Charlotte MacKinnon, whom the chef met when she was still a college student in 2016, moved to Los Angeles and became the creative director of Matthew Kenney Cuisine. Four employees at Plant Food & Wine in Venice further allege they were instructed to lie to MacKinnon when Kenney brought other women to the restaurant.

Landon told the New York Times that she finally came forward after hearing that so many investors like herself and employees had been burned. Though the subject of two major investigations, Kenney still has ownership interesting in Double Zero in New York, which opened last month. In February 2024, his company announced a partnership with Canadian plant-based seafood company New School Foods.

2024-04-22T22:06:04Z dg43tfdfdgfd