Lewis Hamilton-backed synthetic meat burger chain shuts last UK restaurants as losses mount

• Neat Burger has struggled to become profitable amidst cost-of-living pressures
• Its customers have proved ‘flighty’ as cost of living pressures mount  

By HARRY WISE

Updated: 12:10 BST, 22 April 2025

A synthetic meat burger chain backed by Lewis Hamilton and Leonardo DiCaprio has closed its last remaining restaurants in the UK.

Neat Burger has struggled to become profitable amid slowing demand for vegan food, cost-of-living pressures, and the slump in delivery orders as pandemic-related restrictions loosened.

Having once planned to have 30 sites across the capital, the group shut four London restaurants at the end of 2023 after losses more than doubled to £7.8million the prior year.

In a letter to shareholders, Neat Burger’s co-founder, Tommaso Chiabra, noted the firm had taken multiple measures over the past 18 months to make it ‘financially viable in challenging market conditions’.

These included shutting its dark kitchen model due to heavy competition and the high expenditure involved in attracting new customers, which it said ‘tended to be flighty and cost-conscious’.

Difficult times: Neat Burger has struggled to become profitable amidst slowing demand for vegan food, cost-of-living pressures, and the slump in delivery orders

Neat Burger also retreated from a store-owned model and exited the US market, where monthly losses at its New York outlet totalled around $100,000.

And the business launched a new menu, which failed to stop customer transactions from slumping by a fifth in the second half of last year and trade continuing to drop over the first 12 weeks of 2025.

Founded in 2019 by Chiabra, Zack Bishti and Stasi Nychas, Neat Burger has sought to capitalise on the growing number of people adopting a vegan diet.

Early financial backers included Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton, and Rajeev Misra, the former boss of SoftBank Investment Advisers.

Hamilton once said the company was set up to ‘make plant-based eating more accessible to everyone whether you eat plant-based all the time or just want to add it to your diet every now and again’.

Neat Burger was valued at $100million following a funding round in May 2023 that raised $18million from new investors such as the boutique bank LionTree and Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.

It intended to use the money to open another US location and up to three further sites in London by 2025.

However, six months later, the business announced the closure of its restaurants in Canary Wharf, Oxford Street, Liverpool Street, and Westfield Stratford.

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Lewis Hamilton-backed synthetic meat burger chain shuts last UK restaurants as losses mount

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