In the delivery app era, the ghost franchise can be a lifeline for the independent restaurateur, a way to make thousands of dollars a month in a devastating time
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A video from MrBeast, a 22-year-old YouTube star with 54 million subscribers, usually goes something like this: An outlandish setup — say, staging a fake robbery — results in a fan’s winning thousands of dollars or a new car. But in late December, MrBeast (real name: Jimmy Donaldson, an upbeat bro from North Carolina) dropped something different on his viewers.
“I literally just opened 300 restaurants all across America,” he said in a December video announcing MrBeast Burger, a chain serving smash burgers and fries. “But we only serve people through delivery apps.”
But MrBeast Burger is not quite what most of us think of as a chain or even a restaurant. In exchange for a cut of sales revenue, the brand supplies the name, logo, menu, recipes and publicity images to any restaurant owner with the space and staff to make burgers as a side hustle. When a customer orders from the MrBeast Burger in Midvale, Utah, the food is prepared at a location of the red-sauce chain Buca di Beppo, following a standardized MrBeast recipe. In Manhattan, a MrBeast Burger is prepared at the neighborhood bar Handcraft Kitchen & Cocktails.
Call it a ghost franchise — and expect to see many more of them this year, with and without celebrity names attached.
In December, Virtual Dining Concepts, the company behind MrBeast Burger, announced similar ventures with TV personality Mario Lopez and “Jersey Shore” alumnus Pauly D.
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