Fast food franchise disruption and opening 300 ‘virtual’ locations at the same time - powered by Mr Beast and YouTube

I know, many of us just want the pace of disruption to slow down - nope won’t happen, so let’s get our heads around this one.

Is this the way of the future?

I’ve got young kids, boys aged 9 - 15 years old, so YouTube is the main platform viewed in our house - by a LONG way.

With Hootsuite reporting the platform in 2021 having 2billion+ logged-in users a month, and being the second most visited global website (after Google) - it’s massive.

You can learn A LOT about future trends, and directions of basically any consumer market by keeping a close eye on what’s going on the YouTube platform.

YouTube and burgers

But I digress in my love for YouTube, that brings me back to Mr Beast, aka Jimmy Donaldson.

He’s a YouTube phenomena with 71mil+ subscribers on his channel. 

He’s mainly known for giving away outrageous amounts of cash and prizes like houses and cars to random people. Pretty much big scale, entertaining, instant philanthropic events, all filmed and uploaded to YouTube.

Don’t fall into the trap of dismissing the content, due to the approach he takes to be amongst what you may consider ‘silly prank videos’, as he is direct evidence of a vehicle to industry disruption.

He uploads a video, and gets 30 - 40 million views in the space of a week or so - if you hadn’t realised, it’s a changed world people!

The MrBeast Burger brand

In the last year, he’s been able to leverage his YouTube stardom and following, into his own fast food ‘American smashburger’ virtual brand MrBeast Burgers, across nearly 700 locations!

It's a limited menu with burgers named after people in his squad on the channel; Chris, Beast, Karl, and Chandler, and can only be ordered via their dedicated App, the website, or delivery platforms.

Virtual brands aka ‘dark, ghost or cloud kitchens' are food brands created for online delivery only, with the order prepared off a delivery app or online order platform. They have no seating capacity to dine in-house, as they focus only on delivery.

The brands are mostly targeted at high volume food categories.

That aspect of this story is not new, but what and how MrBeast did it, is.

300 fast food MrBeast Burger locations opened simultaneously

To launch the brand, MrBeast branded up an existing fast food burger location into a MrBeast Burger store (there aren’t any ‘real’ stores). 

He sent out a single tweet.

The launch day happened, and yes it was chaos on the ground with Police struggling to control the area with a 20 mile long traffic jam - yes 20 miles.

I highly encourage you grab a coffee, take it all in, and watch a 10 minute video of how they launched it. All the while giving $100 each or Apple iPads and AirPods (as well as a car to one) to people as an apology for the wait.

In part of the planning, they looked at the channel subscriber location density using YouTube analytics in selecting the best locations with the highest number of viewers to reach that are in close proximity to buy a burger - all to ensure the launch popped, and was sustainable afterwards.

How did they do it?

Mr Beast co-launched his delivery-only fast food restaurant chain with Virtual Dining Concepts (LLC), who claim to be ‘The largest virtual dining restaurant group in the world’, whose stated aim is;

“...to help the restaurant community generate secondary sources of income through virtual brands.”

And, it promises in it’s Virtual Restaurant Program “...an easy solution to generate more revenue out of (their) existing kitchens with minimal impact to current operations.”

Their virtual restaurant programs are designed to fit an existing kitchen operation, and Robert Earl, the founder of Virtual Dining Concepts (VDC), does make claims on participant restaurant profits.

“At an absolute minimum, every sales dollar will yield you 30%-minimum- that you keep. This is the answer for the future of restaurants.”

Another part of the VDC site mentions “Restaurateurs, earn up to $500+ profits daily…”

Some operational details highlighted by the company include;

• An average food prep time of 8 mins,
• Targeted food packaging cost of under 30%,
• 19 Food items to sell,
• A target average sale of $25

The big pitch is most obviously about MrBeast’ impact himself

“...going into business with...MrBeast, means you will immediately attract his millions of fans and followers who are extremely loyal to him.”

“He will be very involved in reaching his audience thru videos that he posts on YouTube and his other social media channels.”

Wow. 

Turn the sales tap on by uploading a call to action video any time you want, to 71mil+ subscribers to generate sales!

MrBeast’ Burger v McDonald’s

Well, this is not at all apples for apples of course. 

But, it’s fun to play around with some numbers on all this!

Depending on which of the many count timelines you see,  ‘Over 1 million served’ (burgers), was stated at the time Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald’s franchise in Illinois in 1955. 

Of course, there is quite a history for McDonald’s before then.

MrBeast Burgers sold its first 1 million burgers in a little under 3 months, or around 12,000 burgers a day, or 40 per location, and just under $8mil in sales. 

The initial 300 locations reportedly surged to agreements for 500 within a month.

This rate, and the numbers quoted above, from restaurantbusinessonline, didn’t quite put it in the list of the top 500 highest-grossing restaurant chains in the US market but was within ‘striking distance’ of it.

Oh, and they also suggested McDonald’s sell 12,000 burgers every 30 mins - not especially relevant to this, but I thought it interesting!

We counted 698 locations offering MrBeast Burgers off their website as of 14 October 2021.

How restaurants get involved

Obviously, launching 300 fast food locations in a single day requires immense co-ordination. But just as important would be the simplicity for restaurants to get involved.

In this case the VDC team explains on their website, how restaurants gets started in the program;

• No upfront costs,
• No long term commitment,
• Easy training program,
• Third party platform(s) setup for you,
• Sales promotions, marketing and social media done for you,
• On-boarding complete in 4-6 weeks,
• Purchase starting inventory,
• Commence serving orders.

Where to from here?

So, I guess the only thing you can do now is download the app and wait for the burger offer to arrive in Australia - who knows!

Or, head on over to MrBeast' YouTube channel HERE, subscribe and watch him and others create :-)