🇺🇸MrBeast and the American Dream

In today’s email:

• Virtual Kitchen to Brick-and-Mortar: MrBeast Breaks a World Record

• Office Bust: Meta Cuts NYC Office Footprint

• TL;DR: Top Weekly Reads for your Enjoyment.Subscribe now

🇺🇸MrBeast Achieves the American Dream

Back in September, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, opened up his first brick and mortar restaurant, MrBeast Burger, at the American Dream Mall in NJ. 

MrBeast Burger first launched in 2020 as a delivery-only virtual kitchen concept.

Fast forward to today, the company has already done $100M+ in sales!

MrBeast Primer

In case you’ve been living in a cave the past several years, MrBeast is one of the biggest stars on Youtube, with over 116M followers!

Here’s how he got there: 

MrBeast started on Youtube in 2012, at the age of 13. He struggled to get views for years and slowly built up his audience over time.  

He tweaked his format many times before he started to find videos that resonated with an audience.  

He’s now known for creating some of the most expensive content on Youtube, such as the real life Squid Game video, with over 300M views. 

From Content Creator to Restaurant Entrepreneur

In 2020, MrBeast opened up 300 virtual MrBeast Burgers in ghost kitchens across the US.

2 years later, he now has more than 1,000 ghost kitchen locations. Each location can reportedly earn up to $500 per day in profit.

First Physical Location

When you are the biggest Youtuber on the planet, it only makes sense to launch your brand in one of America’s biggest malls, the American Dream in East Rutherford, NJ. 

This past September, MrBeast opened his first physical restaurant location, drawing a crowd of over 10,000 people. 

Here are the stats on opening day:

🍔 6,212 burgers sold

💵 $65k in revenue 

⤴ Mall traffic up 325% 

Oh, and he beat the world record for most burgers sold in one day.

What’s all of this worth? 

MrBeast is reportedly seeking $150M to grow his business empire at a $1.5B valuation.

Why brick and mortar? 

Ghost kitchens can be an amazing way to test a product (and in his case, also make a lot of money)! 

The problem with ghost kitchens is that you don’t get the engagement. Your fans have no physical place to go to engage and interact with your product. 

MrBeast Burger’s brick and mortar opening had 1,000s of fans!  You don’t have that interaction with a ghost kitchen. 

Franchises in the Future?

MrBeast has tweeted about a potential franchise model.

With MrBeast’s 100M+ following, I wouldn’t bet against it.

Meta Backpedals on NYC Office

Meta made news back in August 2020, during the height of the pandemic, with their news of expansion.  In 2019, Meta signed a lease for more than 1.5M SF of office space in NYC, signaling their intent to expand their NYC footprint.

The company was firing on all cylinders. Zuckerberg rebranded the company to Meta and they were set to go full speed ahead into the metaverse.

Now, plans seemed to have changed…

Meta announced 11,000 layoffs this year.  That’s 13% of the whole company!

Last week they announced that they would be moving out of their NYC Hudson Yards offices, reducing their office space by 250k SF. They also recently ended their lease at 225 Park Ave South.

Their plan is to condense workplaces and allow more staff to work remotely. 

I’d happily be working remotely too if this were my home office:

None of this bodes well for Meta or the office sector as it is another signal to the market that the office is permanently changing and landlords will need to adapt to the change in demand.

TL;DR

Brooklyn retail is booming, with emerging retail corridors in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn Heights, and Bushwick.

Parking spaces in NYC cost $300k in some of NYC’s most exclusive buildings.

NYCFC gets a new stadium in Queens, the first soccer specific stadium in NYC.

That’s it for today!

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