It took McDonald's 6 years to open its first 300 restaurants in the US.

It took Burger King 8 years to open just its first 10….

But what took McDonald’s 6 years and Burger King over 20 to accomplish…

MrBeast (the largest creator on YouTube) did overnight.

In his first 24 hours, MrBeast had 300 locations up with the ability to sell, make, and deliver burgers to fans.

Wondering how this is possible?

What could a YouTuber possibly know about running a burger restaurant, not to mention 300 of them?

Great question.

Here’s what we got for ya:

Read Time: 5 min 9 sec

MrBeast Burgers has everything your typical fast-food restaurants serve…

Burgers, fries, cookies…

On day one he sold 6,212 burgers.

Within his first two years, he broke the record for most burgers sold in one day.

And in the last three years, he’s made over $150M in rev.

There are two reasons MrBeast Burgers grew so fast:

#1 - MrBeast could leverage his personal brand

(PS - This is why we talk about personal brands so much. They are the highest leverage any business can have.)

#2 - MrBeast did not open any physical stores. They were all virtual.

Like Tyga and Mariah Carey, MrBeast used what’s called the VDC model to launch a virtual food line.

Let’s talk about what that is…

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Using a personal brand to sell food is nothing new.

There’s the Jack Harlow meal at KFC:

And the Papa John's Shaq-a-Roni Pizza

But the MrBeast burger is a bit different…

First, you can not order a MrBeast burger at a physical location (other than a few pop-up locations here and there)

Second, he is not associated with a restaurant chain like KFC or Papa John's.

Instead, he partnered with the VDC - The Virtual Dining Concepts

Here’s how the VDC works:

Buyers never know if the burger was made in a McDonald's or even a Michelin Star restaurant.

All buyers know is they order a MrBeast Burger online and it shows up 20 minutes later.

Here’s why this works:

Today, Virtual Dining Concepts makes an estimated $10M per year.

But it’s not a perfect system. On the surface, it may seem like a great deal for everyone…

Turns out it’s not always the best deal for brands…

In late August 2023, MrBeast announced that he plans to sue VDC.

Here’s why:

For context, here’s what they were supposed to look like vs what was delivered…

Yikes…

As I said earlier, the idea of using personal brands as a way to sell products is a growing industry…

Especially with A.I

In the last year, celebs have started to create A.I clones of themselves for media companies to ‘rent.’

Take a look at Carmelo Anthony’s clone:

It’s simple - Celebs make money every time they show up in the media.

So with an A.I clone, they can contract their virtual selves out to multiple media companies without any extra work.

But celebrities like Drake and Kendall Jenner have already complained about companies ‘misusing’ their virtual image and breaking contracts.

So as the industry of using brands to sell stuff grows, I guess the lesson here is simple….

Don’t spend your time building a brand, then attach it to something you can’t control the quality of.

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