In early January, Kotaku weekend editor Zack Zweizen wrote about his experience unknowingly purchasing burger delivery from popular YouTuber MrBeast. I read, laughed, shook my head, and promptly forgot it happened. Then, late last month, while home alone and hungry, I did the same damn thing with drastically different results.
Frequenters of dining apps like Postmates, Uber Eats, and Doordash know that sometimes a picture of food is all it takes to completely derail whatever craving brought you to the app in the first place. I’m pretty sure I was craving Mexican food when I opened Doordash on Friday, February 26, but my giant snausage fingers hit the ‘burgers’ button instead. That’s where I saw this.
Oh man, did that look good to hungry me. “Smashed crispy beef patties with house seasoning,” the description began, and I was salivating. I could almost taste those slightly charred edges. This was exactly what I needed.
I did not register the name of the restaurant. I did not make the connection when I selected the “Beast Style” burger. I swapped out the diced white onions for fancy caramelized onions with my pinky raised. Seeing as the burger was only $7.50, I added an order of Beast Style fries and added bacon. I tossed in a couple of chocolate chip cookies for the kids and submitted my order.
It wasn’t until the email confirmation of my order came through that I realized what I had done. What follows is the conversation that occurred in our work Slack once that realization hit.
MrBeast Burger is actually a very clever concept. Instead of opening physical restaurants, YouTuber MrBeast, working with Virtual Dining Concepts, sells the ability to offer his food to existing restaurants. The food is delivered via apps, so a restaurant preps it, puts MrBeast stickers on it, and hands it off to whichever app’s driver is handling delivery. It’s like they’re subletting their business, giving restaurants the power of a brand without needing to rebrand.
When my MrBeast order arrived, I had one of my nine-year-old sons grab the bag from the front door. He laughed at me for ordering food from “a meme.” My other nine-year-old, seeing the discarded bag, said “This is fake. MrBeast made a restaurant?” I should let my children order my food from now on to save me from making hideous mistakes.
The food looked nice enough at first glance, the burger tightly wrapped in its foil, the fry box dotted with greasy fingerprints. Upon unwrapping the burger, however, I was greeted with a very different burger than what Zack ate back in January.
My MrBeast Beast Style burger was a hideous mess of sauce and cheese. I feel like the restaurant that prepared it combined the ketchup, mayonnaise, and dijon mustard that comes on the burger into a singular substance, which was then either ladled onto the burgers or the burgers were dipped into it. Everything was so wet. The cheese. The onions. The meat. So very moist. I expected a lovely smash burger with crispy edges. I received a damp bunsplosion with pickles.
Sloppy as the burger was, I had to rush to eat it to minimize spillage, which is never fun. In the few moments I could focus on the taste, however, I wasn’t too disappointed. The flavor of the meat cut through the sauce now and then, and I was pleased. Were I ever to brave the restaurant again, I would order the burger without sauce, adding my own at home.
Also, I would not do this.
You are looking at the Beast Style fries, add bacon. The crinkle-cut pickles are sort of a defining MrBeast feature, so they are fine. The bacon, though glistening with grease, is great. The fries, which can be seen in the bottom left of the photo, peeking out from under the pickle, were okay. The thick soup of mayo, mustard, and ketchup globbed on top? Fucking disgusting. Just looking at it I feel stomach cramps coming on.
The odds of me ordering from MrBeast again, accidentally or on purpose, are pretty slim, thanks to the magical machine that is my body. For the week after I ate this meal I was deathly ill. I could not eat. My digestive system ground to a standstill. We’re talking stomach cramps, nausea, and liquids taking the place of things that should normally be solid. I am not saying that the MrBeast food caused this reaction; I ate other things that Friday, and had a not-great salad Saturday for lunch. Whatever the cause of my intense sickness, the timing is such that MrBeast Burgers is now inexorably linked with gastric distress in my mind. That’s body magic.