The Untold Truth Of MrBeast Burger

It's hard not to get sucked in by the viral videos of YouTube phenom MrBeast. Expertly edited and fun to watch, one of their biggest draws is MrBeast himself, A.K.A. Jimmy Donaldson. The 24-year-old entrepreneur is the highest paid YouTube star of 2022, according to Forbes, but instead of sitting around counting his money (and he's a stellar counter), Donaldson is known for giving it away. In fact, he's donated millions since launching his YouTube channel back in 2012, Business Insider reports. In March 2020 alone, as millions lost their jobs, Donaldson gave more than $1 million in supplies to food banks. It's hard not to like the guy!

If you're out of the loop, here's the basics: MrBeast is a North Carolina native whose fame is based on his antic-filled philanthropic videos. He gives away cars, money, tech gear, and, most recently, food. In December 2020, he launched 300 virtual kitchens, dubbed MrBeast Burger, and gave away food and cash to what seemed like thousands of people as part of the marketing. He also uploaded a corresponding video titled, "I Opened A Restaurant That Pays You To Eat At It." 

It. Went. Huge.

Donaldson's video has gotten more than 117.9 million views at the time of this article. You might have also seen some of Donaldson's fellow YouTubers reviewing the burgers, chicken sandwiches, and fries themselves on their own channels. But reviews are not all you need to know about MrBeast's first venture into the world of fast food. Here's what you're missing:

MrBeast Burger is a virtual kitchen concept. The credit for the idea goes to Virtual Dining Concepts, the startup that Jimmy Donaldson/MrBeast partnered with for the original 300 restaurants.

The startup specializes in linking pre-existing restaurant kitchens with new virtual restaurant concepts. This means that an up-and-running restaurant kitchen can make food for another brand while maintaining its own establishment. Considering it had already established its "turnkey, delivery-only restaurant concept" with other big-name celebs like Mario Lopez and DJ Pauly D, Virtual Dining Concepts had the setup in place and connections it needed to make the MrBeast Burger venture happen. 

Restaurant chains whose kitchens MrBeast Burger has been using include Brio Italian Grille, Buca di Beppo, and Bravo Italian Mediterranean as well as The Burger Boy location in Wilson, North Carolina. Not only has the virtual MrBeast Burger concept been successful for the brand, it might also be a way to support the partnered restaurants, who might have faced difficult times, while providing jobs for food industry workers. Now, MrBeast is looking for more restaurant partners. 

Focusing on the growth of virtual restaurants instead of brick-and-mortars could be a more long-lasting investment for MrBeast, as the COVID-19 pandemic might have gotten people more used to ordering in.

In addition to the free burgers given away during that day of filming in Wilson, NC, MrBeast Burger also gave away wads of cash to "customers" through the drive-through window. A line of cars outside the temporary brick-and-mortar location was so long — more than 20 miles to be exact — that police officers had to shut down the restaurant for disrupting traffic. Now that's a successful launch (and it made for a great moment in the video)!

Then there were the Apple products that were given away and, at one point, even a new car. MrBeast told the car recipient, a woman whose car had been damaged while waiting in line, that he'd happened to have a car to give away that day, and he'd like to gift it to her. She cried, and MrBeast also looked misty-eyed, in what was a heartwarming moment.

Will you get a tablet or a stack of bills nestled between some crinkle-cut fries in your next order? Probably not: Now you have to actually pay for your food, with an average meal for one costing between $10 and $20 with tax, tip, and delivery. The price is in line with McDonalds but a bit less expensive than Smashburger. But even without free stuff, you can still feel good about a charitable act: Part of the money raised from sales is supposed to go to feeding "hungry families across America." And judging by app reviews, plenty of MrBeast's fans are liking that part of the transaction.

Like the restaurant chain Smashburger, these burgers are short and have a wide circumference. They're shaped like hockey pucks and then flipped from wax or parchment paper onto the hot grill, so the meat spreads out a little, and there's more meat touching the grill, which means more caramelization and crispy edges. It also means the patties are thinner.

It's a concept that's proven successful for others, and MrBeast is riding the wave of its popularity. And even though these burgers might lack in heft and density, if you really want height, you can always get a third patty for $2 more.

When it comes to fries, MrBeast is going with classic crinkle-cut fries, which come seasoned with spicy red pepper, garlic, paprika, lime, sugar, and salt. With straight fries you lose out on a lot of nooks and crannies. The Beast fries, though, are un-crinkled fries, but still have some rough edges for texture, because you don't need all that crinkling to pick up seasonings when there's already so much else going on with the fries. In this case that includes caramelized onions, cheese, ketchup, mayo, and pickles.

Instead of spending money on advertising, MrBeast simply tweeted about the launch and made a viral YouTube video. Why waste money on Instagram ads, Facebook, or even billboard ads when your audience is already following you, especially when you're sometimes spending nearly $100,000 per YouTube video? Between the 10-minute viral video on the MrBeast YouTube channel with its 104 million subscribers, plus MrBeast's 15.4 million followers on Twitter, 9.77 million followers on Facebook and 19.9 million followers on Instagram, he might have built a big enough audience to not need to pay for marketing.

And it makes sense: Donaldson is the one that other brands go to when they want to market their products, not the other way around. 

MrBeast/Donaldson also launched a separate @mrbeastburger account on Instagram, which now has more than 790,000 followers. That's small for MrBeast, but we all know how it might grow as he cross-promotes.

MrBeast Burger's success meant the app ended up crashing for a while on the day of its launch, leading MrBeast to apologize to fans and quickly upgrade the servers to get everything working again. But there still seemed to be some glitches with mixed up orders, which some said could have been the app's fault or the fact that there were so many new locations all at once. 

Judging by Donaldson's history, MrBeast Burger might still have a successful road ahead. These glitches could have been less stressful for MrBeast than filming $100,000 worth of videos that would later be thrown out. Or, you know, cracking the YouTube code for making viral videos in the first place.

And some fellow YouTubers are praising Donaldson for launching the company's own app, which one business news influencer says develops more brand loyalty, reduces fees paid to other third-party apps and allows Donaldson to potentially translate those customers into more sales down the road for additional MrBeast ventures.

But if you have problems with the MrBeast Burger app, you can also place orders on Grubhub, Doordash, UberEats, and Postmates as well as directly from the MrBeast Burger website. 

Launched in 2020 as a delivery-app-only restaurant, MrBeast Burger grew to more than 1,000 outlets worldwide by September 2022 (via BBC). That's when the burger enterprise opened its first actual, physical location, where diners could order and eat in person. According to MrBeast Burger, the inaugural not-online-only restaurant opened for business on September 4, 2022, in the American Dream Mall, a New Jersey shopping and entertainment complex. As there was already a built-in audience for the new restaurant from previous just-app customers as well as MrBeast's massive YouTube following, a line had formed by the time employees opened the doors. According to MrBeast himself, who showed up on day one, about 10,000 people queued to be among the first to get a burger from the inaugural meatspace MrBeast Burger.

MrBeast claims that this set a new watermark for high-volume food service. "Our grand opening broke the world record for most burgers sold in a day by a single restaurant lol," he tweeted. (Guinness World Records would be happy to certify that claim, so long as the burger company provides solid evidence).

With his millions of followers and video views, MrBeast clearly understands what the internet, as an entity, wants to consume. His huge fanbase, primarily young people, also has a fondness for the "Shrek" movies, both genuine and ironic, turning the popular animated fairy tale sendups about an ogre, a princess, and a talking donkey into memes and other online content. When the time came to expand the menu at MrBeast Burger to include temporary offerings and heavily promotable licensed items, the company logically chose to sell an entree inspired by Shrek.

In March 2022, according to Attractions Magazine, MrBeast Burger partnered with Universal to launch the Shrek's Quesadilla for a limited time (as of September 2022, it was no longer listed on the menu). Like the titular green-skinned ogre, the outside of the sandwich was green because it used a spinach tortilla. Inside came two huge patties, American cheese, more green stuff (chilies and pickles), and onions, because, as an often repeated line from the "Shrek" movies says, "Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers" (via Quotegeek).