The chief operating officer of a plant-based food company allegedly attempted to bite a man’s nose during a road rage incident.
Doug Ramsey of Beyond Meat was reportedly leaving a University of Arkansas football game on Sept. 17 when he got into an altercation with another driver inside a parking garage near Razorback Stadium.
According to a police report obtained by KNWA, police officers who arrived at Stadium Drive Parking Garage said the two men both had bloody faces.
The other man involved allegedly “inched” his Subaru in front of Ramsey’s Ford Bronco, which was in a traffic lane waiting to exit the parking structure. The driver told police his car made contact with the front passenger’s side tire of Ramsey’s vehicle, at which point the executive got out of his car and “punched through the back windshield of the Subaru.”
When the Subaru driver got out of his vehicle, Ramsey “pulled him in close and started punching his body” and then “bit the owner’s nose, ripping the flesh on the tip of the nose.”
The report includes statements from witnesses who said Ramsey threatened to kill the Subaru driver before occupants of other cars intervened and separated the men.
Ramsey was arrested just before 10:30 PM and taken to Washington County jail. He is scheduled to appear in Fayetteville District Court on Oct. 19.
Ramsey worked for Tyson Foods, which is based in Springdale, from 1992 to 2021. During that time he was the president of the company’s poultry division and president of its global McDonald's business. He was named the COO of Beyond Meat in December of 2021.
During his time with the company, Ramsey has overseen partnerships with McDonald’s and Yum! Brands, which owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
The company's other partnerships include A&W, Denny’s, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Panda Express, Hopdoddy, Dunkin’, Blue Apron, and Tim Horton’s.
The plant-based food company saw rapid growth during 2020 with retail sales of its products doubling. In 2021, Beyond Meat has a gross profit of roughly $117.3 million worldwide – approximately a $17.5 million increase from the year before.
The company’s growth began to cool at the end of last year with some industry experts currently speculating that the company is experiencing significant financial turmoil.
“Through the first six months of 2022, Beyond Meat's free cash flow was a loss of $278 million,” reports The Motley Fool. “The company's inventory levels are way too high relative to sales, and its ability to convert that inventory into cash is limited. There's only so much retail demand for its products, and turning to liquidation channels means accepting rock-bottom prices.”
Ramsey took over as the company’s COO after Sanjay Shah, a former executive at Tesla and Amazon, left the company after two years. Ramsey joined Bernie Adcock, who had also worked for Tyson Foods for roughly three decades, at the company.
“Doug and Bernie bring a proven track record of impressive operational excellence in the protein industry that our global partners, customers, and consumers expect and deserve,” said CEO and founder Ethan Brown in a statement, per Just-Food.com. “As we’ve made clear, we are investing today in tomorrow’s growth, whether by adding to our best-in-class management team or by building out operations around the world, to advance our vision of being the global protein company of the future.”
The announcement currently does not appear on Beyond Food’s website.
