Mrbeast in Halifax — a delight to some burger lovers
Your level of excitement about the fact Mrbeast Burger is now available in Halifax probably correlates with whether you’re a huge fan of Mrbeast or never heard of him.
Shannon Bruhm’s house has people in both groups, which helped when Bruhm, the president of the RCR Hospitality Group, got a call a few months into the pandemic.
“I had no idea who he was, but I have teenage daughters, one in university and one in high school, so I said, ‘Do you guys know who this Mr. Beast guy is?’ They said, ’Of course dad, how do you not know? He’s the biggest Youtuber in the world!’ I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a Youtuber, but when they said that, I called back,” related Bruhm on Friday.
Mrbeast rose to Internet fame by pioneering a genre of stunt videos. His burgers are sold through partnerships with existing restaurants. In Halifax, that restaurant is RCR property Waterfront Warehouse.
“It might be different for other people, but for us, if you have kitchen resources that are not at capacity, you’re able to add some revenue to what you’re already doing,” said Bruhm. “It’s not foreign to us – after the pandemic started, we did our own virtual restaurant ... Motor City Pizza. We were open to anything at this point because we went from primarily existing on catered events and restaurants, to selling virtually no food and beverage. I was looking to keep our team working and retain employees.”
RCR was having some success with its own virtual product, but Bruhm was curious about partnering with an entity that included a national marketing team and with the wherewithal to air commercials during the Super Bowl.
“So we started talking to them, we signed up to partner with them and it did take another eight months, I would say,” Bruhm said. “They needed to work through the details of having Canadian distribution and the legalities of operating in Canada. The rollout was pushed a few times, but I think they rolled out nationally the day before Remembrance Day.”
The model has the parent company sending recipes and ingredients to its partner restaurants, which do the cooking and packaging. The burgers and fries are available by delivery only, in Halifax through Doordash and Uber Eats, with more platforms to come.
“They manage everything with communications, so we are pretty blind to anything like that. They deal with the third-party delivery apps, with menus,” Bruhm said. “We’re basically doing somebody else’s food and they’re managing the marketing on their end.”