Herberus

Herberus was a farming research and development company funded by Cerberus.

History
Cerberus had invested in Oscar Green Agricultural where they owned 40%, Oscar owned 51%, and Speedy owned 9%. Speedy also owned a company called Putos Frutos that Oscar was the CEO of. A conflict of interest arouse when Speedy asked Oscar to cultivate and research seeds, because that meant Oscar did seed research for both OGA and Putos Frutos. On November 31st, 2021 when Leslie Lingberg was with Speedy at the La Fuente Blanca Ranch, Putos Frutos client Vinny Pistone arrived at the Ranch and Leslie overheard Speedy about to tell Vinny all of the progress and research they had made on the seeds. Leslie stopped Speedy and pulled him aside to tell him not to give out the formula or any information especially to Vinny. The next day, Leslie went to Lang Buddha and Dean Watson about founding a new business that based on agricultural research, named Herberus.

The initial idea for Herberus was to drop Oscar and bring in the Rooster's Rest employees who were already doing the seed research for Lang. Lang and Leslie offered the CEO position to Nancy Drew. The business plan was to funnel the High Quality product to Rooster's Rest and Burger Shot, and sell off the Low Quality product to the other restaurants. Cerberus knew they might lose a lot of money in the short term, but were willing to go through it to see if it succeed. Lang's main concern was that he didn't want the competing restaurants to know that Rooster's Rest was researching seeds.

Nancy Drew accepted the offer from Lang and Leslie to become the CEO of Herberus. To Speedy's confusion, she turned down his job offer to run La Fuente Blanca--an offer which Leslie had originally facilitated. Nancy paid a lawyer to create an NDA agreement for all employees to sign, and hired on Penny Farthing, Eve Summers, and Lando as the top executives of the company.

Farming Research and Development
Herberus began as a single filing cabinet hidden in plain sight at Dean World, where farmers could store their seeds and produce. The storage eventually moved to Herberus' office mailbox at the Cerberus Business Center. Eve set up a seed classification system inside the storage.

After rejecting Penny's proposal to transport produce with Dodo Logistics, Dean Watson, Leslie Lingberg, and Lang Buddha became upset by the Chang Gang backlash caused by Penny telling Turbo that Herberus didn't want to work with Dodo because of his "boss". After a subsequent Cerberus meeting where Nancy vouched for Penny, Lang ended up just speaking to Penny privately.

Worried that farmers were becoming burnt out by how unsustainable Los Santos farming was, Nancy set up a field trip with Dean and a fascinated Harry Brown on January 21, 2022 to teach them how to plant crops. To the delight of Nancy, Penny, and Eve, Dean became so miserable planting and watering sunflowers that he began drinking heavily (then unsuccessfully tried to flee the area). The next day, Los Santos received hoes and pitchforks to expedite the farming process.

The End of Herberus
Despite the new farming tools, Penny and other Herberus employees still grew burnt out by the farming grind and their frustrating lack of grade progression. Nancy felt bad pressuring them to work, and wanted to shift focus to her brand-new position within Cerberus as their Vice-President of Operations. In addition, Rooster's Rest competitors kept undercutting Herberus by farming their own higher-quality ingredients for free. On February 18, 2022, Nancy conferred with Cerberus and convinced them to dissolve Herberus. Nancy broke the news to Penny and Eve in the Herberus office (they were surprised to learn that Nancy had never been received a paycheck as the CEO). Eve took charge of paying out the departing employees.