I never heard of MrBeast. How about you?
I learned about him listening to one of my favorite podcasts – After Hours with Youngme Moon and her colleagues who teach at Harvard. Youngme wrote one of my favorite marketing books, Different.
MrBeast has created a fascinating new business model in the restaurant universe.
Let’s start with Mr. Beast, AKA twenty-three-year-old Jimmy Donaldson. He has almost 58 million followers on YouTube.
That’s 58 million more than me. That’s a lot of people watching him and what he does. California and Texas have about 58 million residences to give you an idea of how many subscribers follow him.
MrBeast is known for doing wild, crazy, and expensive antics online. Many of his elaborate videos cost millions to produce.
Did I say this is a 23-year-old kid with ZERO knowledge of the restaurant industry? But what intrigues me about MrBeast is a new virtual venture he started in the last year called MrBeast’s Burgers.
He sold one million burgers faster than any fast-food franchise – ever. And he did it in two months! No chain has ever come close to that kind of revenue acceleration.
Beasts and Ghosts
There are over 1,500 ghost kitchens today that are like restaurants without seating. They are kitchens that cook for virtual restaurants that only exist online. They can live in low-rent districts and serve people selling meals directly to consumers with delivery by Door Dash, Uber Eats, and the other usual suspects.
MrBeast decided to leverage his oversized brand to create a menu of MrBeast burgers and sold over one million burgers in two months. He did it by creating 300 virtual restaurants across America, almost instantly.
The business was built as an app connected to virtual kitchens all over America. His landing page/website is helpful – but the site is designed to drive people to download the app.
MrBeast leveraged his monster awareness among his audience and the ability to open a restaurant with an app and connected to virtual kitchens. I haven’t tasted his food, but he is tapping into the ability to open up a business in a novel way, given the technology available today. Jimmy’s power is his brand and his relationship with his large tribe.
Where Is the Power In This Value Chain?
Who has the leverage in the home-delivery restaurant world today?
- The kitchen?
- The delivery service?
- The restaurant or brand?
The power exists in whoever owns the customer relationship. If you can generate the demand, the other functions will support your effort.
In this new world of virtual brands, power accrues to who can generate demand.
Keep in mind, MrBeast has no food experience other than eating food. None. Yet, he launched 300 restaurants across the U.S. simultaneously and built a multi-million dollar restaurant brand.
Jimmy works with ghost kitchens and existing restaurants that want to make his virtual brand’s menu. So, if you live in Cleveland and place an order on your app, the food might come from a pizza joint or pancake house that uses MrBeast’s brand and his recipes as a side hustle. The virtual brand creates the front end to attract demand.
Amazon and MrBeast and The Virtual Brand
Just like Amazon Basics, MrBeast has catalyzed his subscribers to go buy his burgers, instead of McDonald’s or Wendy’s. I doubt those chains felt any business loss, but this is a fantastic story for a startup in restaurants by seeing new dials and levers to turn.
Virtual brands start by building a brand or leverage an existing community, perhaps in an adjacent space. Someone like Chrissy Teigen, Rachael Ray, or Bobby Flay could instantly develop a menu that leverages this new business model. All three of them would have more concern about consistency and quality than a brand like MrBeast so they probably wouldn’t leverage this channel.
Still – think about all the sports or entertainment stars who open up and quickly close their restaurants. Leveraging a big-name celebrity or influencer like Jimmy through ghost kitchens and Door Dash opens up a new channel. Abby Wamback Salads, Shaq’s Sliders, or Venus’s Vegetarian Cuisine. Virtual brands are here to stay and watch for more individuals or companies – with big brands, playing in this home delivery foods space.
Who would you like to see leverage their virtual restaurant chain based on their tribe?
Need help rethinking your business model?
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Images courtesy of MrBeast
