One of YouTube’s biggest stars has set up shop in Cambridge, offering for the first time his popular line of burgers and a piece of his marketing empire.
Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast is considered YouTube royalty and has amassed over 215 million followers across social media. Known for his dramatic giveaways, selfless acts of kindness and marketing prowess, he recently landed in Cambridge to serve up his line of burgers called ‘Mr. Beast Burger.’
Siebra, a restaurant at 84 Water St. S has been cooking up the burgers and acting as a ghost kitchen becoming a retailer for the YouTuber's massive brand.
“I saw Jimmy on a Joe Rogan podcast and thought he was really smart with his branding and advertising,” said Mike Faria, owner of Siebra. “He is really dedicated to putting out an amazing product and we wanted to get on board with that.”
Siebra has only been serving Mr. Beast Burger's for around two weeks and they are already seeing a massive success with the content creators' food. The food is only available through mobile ordering apps, like Skip The Dishes and Uber Eats.
Being a small restaurant, Faria and his team have to temporarily shut off the online orders to catch up with customers in-store or give them a break from the mass orders coming from the apps.
“Sometimes we have to turn off the tablet and stop the orders, because we are getting too busy or we just run out of ingredients, they sell so fast,” said Faria.
Since Siebra is operating as a satellite kitchen for Mr. Beast Burger, they need to adhere to the cooking techniques and the specific ingredients list for each burger. Training for the restaurant came from videos provided by Beast Burger to make sure the cooks know how to properly cook up the specialized menu.
According to Faria some of the ingredients are so specific they have to be custom ordered from local vendors.
“One of the burgers requires a split double bun. None of our vendors carried this, so we had to reach out to the local Zehrs and get their bakery to make it specifically for us,” said Faria.
There are four burgers named after each member on the Mr. Beast team: Beast style, Chandler style, Chris style and Karl style; made with the flavour preferences from each member.
“They’re all smash burgers, thin crispy beef patties topped differently according to the style,” said Faira. “The quality is so good, we have adopted some of their ingredients into our own food.”
Siebra now carries smash burgers and a grilled cheese on an inverted bun, just like the Karl style sandwich. They have also completely changed their chicken burgers and tenders to match the Mr. Beast menu, because the staff loved them so much.
This is filling a need for this food here in Cambridge, noted Faria. The closest one besides the Cambridge location is at a Casey's in Kitchener and a Shawarma Express in Guelph.
“People were telling me they would drive all the way to these other cities, because there was no option here in Cambridge,” said Faria. "Even if you don't know who Mr. Beast is, they are just amazing burgers I would recommend anyone try."
In one day, Siebra will cook up over 60 Beast Burgers to send out across Cambridge and they would sell more if they kept the app running all day.
The Mr. Beast food empire has spread to over 1,700 locations around the world and has only been in operation for a little over a year. This points to the marketing genius of Mr. Beast and his ability to sell products to customers, added Faria.
