Who Was Really the Visionary Behind Plant City—Matthew Kenney or Kim Anderson

Who Was Really the Visionary Behind Plant City—Matthew Kenney or Kim Anderson

 

Matthew Kenney's global plant-based food empire appears to be collapsing. He once claimed to be the visionary behind Rhode Island's Plant City, but those claims are now in question.

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In 2019, plant-based food guru Kenney announced that he was opening an innovative foodcourt in Providence — called Plant City.

Kenney was a celebrity chef and the face of the upscale plant-based food industry nationally and globally.

Kenney told GoLocal in 2019, "I have been thinking about this since visiting food halls in Madrid ten or so years ago and love Eataly, they are great food experiences."

There was no mention of Kim Anderson in the Plant City launch.

Now, Kenney is once more the subject of significant press attention, this time for his business failures, nonpayment of employees, and tax troubles than his cuisine.

This week, the Los Angeles Times wrote a major exposé about the growing number of financial failures.

Providence-based Plant City’s owner Kim Anderson told GoLocal that Kenney now has no ownership in the operations in Rhode Island, and she is distancing her companies from Kenney.

Anderson says today that she was the visionary behind Plant City and that Kenney played a minor role.

“It was my idea, my vision, my funding and he provided the original recipes, menus and concepts we needed and lived in order to launch. [Kenney’s] staff supported training for our opening. All new recipes since opening have come from our awesome Executive Chef, Luis Jaramillo. I am full owner of our 5 restaurants. I’m honored to have worked with him. He’s a brilliant chef and good man,” said Anderson on Friday in an email to GoLocal.

Anderson added, “Any thoughts about representing that Matthew, who really had nothing to do with the local operations of all the businesses he ‘partnered’ with, is responsible for those failures...it’s honestly just not true.” 

“It is important to keep in mind that MKC [Matthew Kenney Cusine] was partners with many restauranteurs around the world who owned and managed their local operations and could not survive Covid, like many restaurants around the world that did not emerge from the ravages of COVID,” said Anderson.

Kenney’s troubles started years before COVID, however, and have continued to today.

In 2017, The Miami Herald wrote, “Matthew Kenney came to Miami to start a vegan revolution. Instead, Kenney, a celebrated chef and cookbook author known as a raw food wizard, has lost his Wynwood restaurant, Plant Food and Wine. He is being sued for more than $1.4 million for unpaid rent and for reneging on an agreement to not open a competing Miami restaurant, public records show. It’s not Kenney’s first brush with financial failure. A trail of liens and lawsuits touches New York, Miami, Oklahoma City, Maine and Los Angeles.”

And the Herald cited Kenney’s business failure going back to years earlier.

“In 2004, Kenney filed for bankruptcy in New York in the wake of debts and lawsuits related to his restaurants. Now he has paved another trail of at least two dozen liens, complaints and lawsuits around the country, a Miami Herald review of public records shows. They range from state and federal IRS claims that he hasn’t paid his employees’ taxes to lawsuits by angry landlords, suppliers and culinary students.”

Plant City, Anderson, and Kenney have feasted on public relations. 

 

Plant City X Unveiled in 2021 Featuring Kenney and Anderson as Co-Owners

After the initial PR for Plant City in Providence in 2019, the next flood of press hit when Anderson and Kenney launched Plant City X.

According to the PR for the launch of Plant City X, Kenney and Anderson were described as co-owners of the new model. The first of the new stores was located in Middletown at a former Papa Gino’s location.

There are now multiple locations of Plant City X — a second one in Warwick and a third at Bryant University.

On Friday, Anderson said that she alone now owns the Rhode Island locations but refused to answer any question if she continues to have any business relationship with Kenney.

Through 2022, Plant City featured Kenney as the culinary force behind the business.

“Matthew Kenney is one of the world’s leading chefs at the forefront of plant-based cuisine with 28 restaurants spanning five continents. His unique approach combines impeccably sourced ingredients with innovative tools & techniques to create minimally processed, plant-based cuisine that is both refined and healthful,” according to Plant City's website.

 

 

Wednesday’s LA Times report on Kenney ends with sad imagery of an empire left in tatters:

On a recent visit to Kenney’s former headquarters, a pile of mail lay on the ground amid dead leaves and other detritus behind the building. Most of the envelopes were unopened. But one had been breached.

Beside it, a 45-page document was smudged with dirt, the words obscured in places by dark stains. Still, it was easy enough to read the header: “SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA.”

It was a legal filing — by yet another landlord alleging one of Kenney’s companies owed it money.