Jimmy Donaldson aka Mr Beast, who is also the highest-paid YouTuber, held a one-time pop-up debut for his burger business on December 19, 2020.
Mr Beast Burger is the world’s fastest-growing fast-food chain, with more than 500 outlets in 35 states.
Cars lined up for almost 20 miles when it initially opened. There was heavy traffic. Orders then poured in.
The following month, he added over 500 new Mr Beast Burger restaurants across the country. It revealed that it had sold 1 million hamburgers three months later.
Quite a bit of money, you know?
Let’s do the math now!
What are the economics behind Mr Beast Burger and how much money did they make? The company strategy, the supply chain, or the marketing? What does this indicate about the direction restaurants are going? How did he accomplish this?
1. The Fan-base: Mr Beast, Most likely, you are familiar with the name.
With a staggering 97.5 million subscribers, Mr Beast is one of the most well-known and wealthy YouTubers in the world today.
We can all agree that he has developed a sizable fan base, making it incredibly easy for him to pull off a burger stunt in one day that sold more than a million burgers, resulting in the establishment of the franchise before any further growth.
Today, Mr Beast Burger debuted with more than 300 outlets in the US, surpassing Shake Shack, which is extremely well-liked but only has 300 in the country, and is fast surpassing In and Out Burger which has about 400 stores only.
Mr Beast Burger was the most downloaded app on iTunes and Google Play shortly after launch, with over 1 million downloads.
What made that possible? The size of the fanbase.
2. Collaboration: Mr Beast collaborated with the company Virtual Dining Concepts (VDC).
The business model of VDC is to connect the three necessary components for a virtual kitchen: celebrities or influencers, a menu, and local operators.
First, VDC seeks celebrities with large fan bases because they can easily generate demand and interest.
Following that, they design the ideal menu to complement the influencers’ brand.
Then they look for local operators across the country who have underutilized kitchens but are paying rent. VDC connects these kitchens with delivery apps after fulfilment.
With all of these systems in place, they can produce restaurants almost instantly. a situation in which everyone benefits:
Mr Beast was successful in monetizing and profiting from his 97.5 million subscriber base.
Local restaurants can generate revenue by renting out underutilized space and equipment.
Delivery apps and drivers profit from kitchen service.
And VDC is compensated for their efforts in coordinating logistics and connecting the parties.
3. The Watch: Mr Beast first opened his virtual restaurants in five cities across the United States (LA, SF, New York, Chicago, and Dallas).
Mr Beast made this decision after studying the analytics of his main channel to determine the top cities in terms of subscriber base and watch time.
They not only partnered with top apps like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and GrubHub for distribution.
They did, however, develop their own app.
And choose to do burgers because they are the easiest to make and can be easily replicated by any restaurant, as opposed to something more specialized or complicated.
4. Marketing: Jimmy attributes the success of his virtual restaurant business, MrBeast Burger, to the first YouTube video he created about it, which he describes as a “gamble” that went viral with nearly 100 million views.
The video quickly went viral, with over 35 million views in the first month.
A brilliant idea and a well-polished and professional viral marketing strategy that got millions of people talking about his products.
From the video’s title “I opened a restaurant that pays you to eat at it” to the hook, the first 30 seconds feature a free restaurant, a long waiting line, and him handing out money to people who eat his burger.
On December 19, the video was the most popular on YouTube, and Mr Beast Burger was the fifth most searched term on Google, with over 1 million searches.
In addition to social media posts, one Instagram post has nearly 1.4 million likes. He only sent out one tweet, which received over 300,000 likes.
And there you have it, boom!
5. Profit: So, how much money does Mr Beast make from his burger business?
This is the math!
All 300 Beast Burger locations sold their first million burgers in the first three months of operation, which equates to over 11,100 burgers sold every day.
And, because the majority of their burgers cost between $6.99 and $8.99 per burger (an average of $7.99), Mr Beast made around $8,000,000 from burgers alone in just three months, and he is on track to net more than $32,000,000 per year if we go by the $7.99 estimate.
That’s a whole lot of money!
Beast Burger, on the other hand, is expanding.
They now have nearly 1,000 locations and are on its way to becoming one of the top 500 highest-grossing restaurant chains in the United States.
That’s only the beginning; the Mr Beast team intends to increase the number of Mr Beast burger locations month after month, and they also intend to open a physical store by borrowing space from restaurants willing to trade with them.
