Crushed
When I started Revegenist, despite being a vegan cooking & nutrition enthusiast for a long time and plant-based for 6 years, I still felt like I needed some sort of credential to write this blog. I found PlantLab - a completely vegan culinary academy. I have no desire to cook meat, so traditional settings aren’t for me. (Apparently, you can’t be an accredited culinary school unless you cook them, so what’s that about, eh?) It looked awesome, so I talked to admissions. The full PlantLab certification required time in New York, which was a no-go because I have a little lady at home. They had what appeared to be a well-developed online options though, so I was still interested. I took an onsite weekend course - hosted at a facility directly above Plant Food & Wine in Venice, CA - to get a feel for the style, and loved it, so I signed up for three courses. About 4 weeks in, the whole shebang imploded. See news coverage here: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/319599
When I signed up, the program looked to be led by Matthew Kenney - superstar vegan chef and owner of Plant Food & Wine, and many other restaurants across the country. He’s really successful. He was featured in the coursework and led a lot of the videos. Plus the onsite training takes place directly above his restaurant in Venice. Turns out, he SOLD his intellectual property - the videos, recipes, etc. - after his own school didn’t take off or whatever.
This guy he sold it to, who was already shady (which ultimately was the reason PlantLab went belly up - because he got busted for those crimes and couldn’t keep it going), turned around and embezzled SO MUCH money from people. The held flash sales on the courses and were just making money hand over fist. The on-site training was minimum $30,000 for certification. Individual classes were anywhere from $1000-$5000 regular price. There are so many people whose entire savings were lost to them through this. Thankfully I only lost $1500 for a couple online courses. I feel terrible for everyone. The situation is still unresolved. Lots of people have gotten no refunds (me), some people have gotten their credit card companies to give their money back, but many are just hanging in the breeze. He is apparently working to approve chargebacks from credit card companies before he goes TO JAIL, but still….
Obviously there was a crime here and it was committed by someone else, but I think it’s especially crappy that Matthew Kenney had no problem selling his likeness to promote a vegan culinary school when he isn’t even involved. This piggybacks on my point that being vegan goes (well, should go) well beyond the food you eat. Matthew Kenney appears to be a stand-up dude, but he had to have known that it wasn’t clear that he wasn’t involved anymore. He completely divorced himself from the situation for his own self-benefit. That feels like he’s capitalizing on the sudden surge of interest in vegan food and not really living a vegan life. His endeavors hurt a lot of people, and that isn’t AHIMSA bro. He’s doing it for the ‘gram.
But! I realized I don’t need a certificate. The Internet is a magical (and sometimes scary) place and so much information is out there. And I figure, we can learn stuff together. Cooking is about trial and error. Progress, not perfection. Thankfully, Sean and Zoë will eat just about anything I make. Thanks fam.
