How MrBeast Made Millions of Dollars Dropshipping Burgers
With 0$ spent on marketing
In December 19, 2020, Jimmy Donaldson (aka Mr. Beast) did a one-time pop-up launch for his burger franchise, Mr. Beast Burger. the fastest growing fast-food chain in the world Mr. Beast burger in 300 locations across 35 states.
Cars lined up for about 20 miles. Traffic was backed up.
The next month he opened over 300 more Mr. Beast Burger locations across the United States. Three months later, it announced it has sold 1 million burgers
So, how much money did they make, and what are the economics behind MrBeast Burger? The business model, the logistics, the marketing? What does this mean for the future of restaurants?
Numbers
Mr. Beast burger launched with over 300 locations in the US more than Shake Shack, which is super popular but doesn’t even have 300 in the USA, and almost like In and Out Burger, is only approaching 400.
Shortly after the launch, Mr. Beast burger app was the most downloaded app on iTunes and Google Play with over 1 million downloads.
Business model
Mr. Beast partnered up with the company Virtual Dining Concepts (VDC). created by Robert Earl, who is also the CEO of Planet Hollywood and creator of Hard Rock Cafe. VDC’s business model is to connect the three necessary pieces for a virtual kitchen: celebrities or influencers, a menu, and local operators.
First, VDC finds celebrities with large followings since they can easily create demand and interest. Next, they create the perfect menu that aligns with the influencers’ brand. Then they find local operators across the country with underutilized kitchens who are paying rent but lack demand. After fulfillment, VDC connects these kitchens with delivery apps.
Having all these systems in place allows them to pump out restaurants practically overnight. a “win-win-win-win” situation for everyone:
Mr. Beast was able to monetize and profit from his 88 million subscribers following.
Local restaurants can make money by renting out their underutilized space and equipment.
Delivery apps and drivers make money by servicing the kitchens
And VDC is being paid for their services doing all the logistics and legwork to fulfill and connect the parties.
Logistics
Mr. Beast first launched his first virtual restaurants in 5 cities across USA (LA, SF, New York, Chicago, Dallas). A choice made by studying analytics of his main channel Mr. Beast to figure out the top cities, among his subscriber base and watch time.
For distribution, they not only partnered with top apps like Uber Eats DoorDash and GrubHub. But they also created their own app. And choose to do burgers exactly because it’s the simplest thing to make and is something that any restaurant can easily replicate versus something more specialized or complicated, like burritos.
Marketing
Jimmy credits the success of his virtual restaurant business, MrBeast Burger, to the first YouTube video he did about it, which he describes as a “gamble” and ended up going viral with almost 100 million views.
The video went viral, and it got over 35 million views the first month. A genius idea and a well-polished and professional marketing strategy engineered for virality, that got millions of people to talk about his products. starting from the tittle of the video “I opened a restaurant that pays you to eat at it” to the hook, the first 30 seconds of the video, a free restaurant, a long waiting line and he’s giving out money to people to eat his burger.
The video was the number 1 trending on YouTube on December 19 and Mr. Beast Burger was the fifth most searched term on Google with over 1 million searches.
As well social media posts, one Instagram post has almost 1.4 million likes. He did one tweet, there’s over 300,000 like on this one tweet
Profitability
So how much is Mr. Beast making from this burger drophipping business?
In the first three months of opening the doors, all the 300 Beast Burger locations sold their first 1 million burgers, that means that they sold over 11,100 burger every day. And since most of their burger’s cost between $6.99 and 8.99an average of 7.99$/burger, So, in just 3 months, Mr. Beast made around 8,000,000$ from burgers alone and he is on track to net more than 32,000,000$ a year.
However, Beast Burger continues to grow. As of now, they have close to 1,000 locations and they are close to breaking onto the list of the top 500 highest grossing restaurant chains in the United States.
What’s next?
This is just the beginning, Mr. Beast team is planning to keep scaling the number of locations for Mr. Beast burger every month, they also plan to open a physical store by borrowing space from restaurants that are not as.
Mr. Beast now has paved the way for a lot of other creators to get into virtual dinning or any other business.
Read more stories like this by subscribing to The Side Hustle Club’s newsletter.
