What Happened To Kevin Hart's Vegan Fast Food Restaurant?

A vegan fast-food joint serving up crispy chick'n sandwiches and rich plant-based milkshakes sounds incredible for those of us who don't eat animals. This is exactly what Hart House was: a vegan fast-food restaurant opened by comedian and actor Kevin Hart in 2022, with four locations throughout the Los Angeles area. In September 2024, though, Hart House closed all locations simultaneously, without an explanation. All its customers got was an Instagram post stating, "A Hartfelt goodbye for now as we start a new chapter."

Hart himself isn't vegan or vegetarian but considers himself "flexitarian," according to Plant Based News. According to the site, he told Joe Rogan on his podcast that he eats chicken occasionally but not red meat and enjoys eating a lot of vegetarian food. Hart House was a result of the comedian noticing that it was incredibly easy to find regular fast food on any corner, but there were not many options for plant-based fast food.

Los Angeles is a hotspot of the health food and wellness movement and one of the capitals of vegan food in the United States, so a vegan fast-food chain makes a lot of sense for L.A. But there's lots of choice for vegans in L.A. — something you'd learn even if you only had one day to eat in Los Angeles. Hart House faced competition from established vegan chains like the L.A. favorite Monty's Good Burger and the small West Coast chain Veggie Grill. Overall, 2024 was a difficult year for restaurants, too, with big-name chains like Red Lobster and TGI Friday's filing for bankruptcy and fast-food giants Wendy's and Denny's shutting down low-performing stores. It's not a surprise that a smaller chain with fewer resources like Hart House would also struggle as well.

Profit margins are quite low for restaurants, ranging from 4% to 7% on average. They're likely going to be slimmer for an expensive town like Los Angeles. This is why it is important to keep every cost — like labor, ingredients, marketing, and rent — minimal. It's possible that a few factors contributed to the Hart House closure: for starters, the small chain offered employees better-than-average wages and added benefits including better health care packages, which would have added to labor costs. Hart House also made its own burger patties (rather than using Impossible or Beyond), so the cost of ingredients may have been higher for this key menu item.

Reddit users on the r/FoodLosAngeles subreddit reported that the dining room of a local Hart House location almost always seemed to be empty, making it seem like it was closed or simply not a popular food spot. Those who did try the restaurant reported that they enjoyed the food, but others who walked by any of the restaurant's locations said they assumed the food wasn't good because Hart House was never busy.

Hart House also may have depended too heavily on its celebrity backing to compensate for a lack of marketing. It's easier for celebrity chefs with restaurants, like Bobby Flay, to make a profit, but for celebrities like Hart who are not chefs themselves, food ventures still require traditional marketing efforts like advertisements, commercials, and a digital presence. In the aforementioned Reddit post, users commented saying when they walked by the establishment, they weren't even sure what it was and thought it was something else, like a Med-Stop center or recreation center based on its branding and colors.