James Garofalo, 52, grew up working at his father’s diner in Chicago Heights, Ill. It can also be a liability, exploding the marketplace in ways that serve big brands more than small businesses. 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. Companies like Future Foods, Combo Kitchen and the Local Culinary are all making similar plays. Franklin Junction, founded last year, helps restaurants do business as known food brands, including Wow Bao and Nathan’s Famous. The parent company of Nextbite, another pioneer of the model, received $120 million in venture-capital funding in October for its 13 virtual brands.

In December, Virtual Dining Concepts, the company behind MrBeast Burger, announced similar ventures with the TV personality Mario Lopez and the “Jersey Shore” alumnus Pauly D. In Manhattan, a MrBeast Burger is prepared at the neighborhood bar Handcraft Kitchen & Cocktails.

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 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. “But we only serve people through delivery apps.”īut MrBeast Burger is not quite what most of us think of as a chain, or even a restaurant. “I literally just opened 300 restaurants all across America,” he said in a video announcing MrBeast Burger, a chain serving smash burgers and fries. But in late December, MrBeast (real name: Jimmy Donaldson, an upbeat bro from North Carolina) dropped something different on his viewers. 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.

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