Former Le Pain Quotidien chief for Lewis Hamilton’s veg burgers

A new burger chain is coming up, albeit a vegan one: Neat Burger, with none other than Lewis Hamilton and Leonardo DiCaprio as shareholders. At the helm will be Vincent Herbert, who was CEO of Le Pain Quotidien for seventeen years.

Celebrities for fake meat

The British burger concept wants to expand mainly into the United States: after opening a pop-up restaurant in New York, the chain now wants to open fourteen restaurants and internationalise through franchising. The restaurants serve typical fast food, such as hamburgers, hot dogs and milkshakes, but all plant-based, Belgian newspaper De Tijd reports.

Behind the concept are a number of well-known names: F1 pilot Lewis Hamilton is a substantial minority shareholder, while Italian businessman Tommaso Chiabra is its chairman. He was also one of the first to invest in Beyond Meat, a pioneer in ‘nearly real’ veggie burgers that caused a stir because they seem to bleed when baked. Leonardo DiCaprio, too, is now stepping into Neat Burger’s capital.

Belgian national (but US resident) Vincent Herbert, former CEO of Le Pain Quotidien, will lead the company’s American expansion. Herbert was at the helm of the Belgian bakery chain until 2018, where he took care of the intercontinental expansion of the formula. At the end of 2019, he briefly reappeared at the chain, but midway through 2020 a bankruptcy and heavy restructuring came about. Under his reign, Le Pain Quotidien won, among other things, the Mercurius Prize by Comeos for best retail concept.