MrBeast's $100 Million Suit Against Beast Burger

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Sorry, occupational hazard: This is not legal advice, nor can I give you legal advice. I AM NOT YOUR LAWYER. Sorry! Everything here is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Nothing here should be construed to form an attorney-client relationship. Also, some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, meaning, at no cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. But if you click, it really helps me make more of these videos! All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015).

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[twithnell]

I would argue that Eddy Burback's video about ghost kitchens was way more damning for VDC than Jimmy could have ever done.

[dclikemtndew]

The reason McDonalds can franchise out around the globe and maintain the same level of quality at every location is because they have extreme amounts of oversight. If you want to own a McDonalds, you have to do everything their way. You have to use their cooking equipment, cook everything a certain way, and have all of the product come from their suppliers. Beast burger has none of this. How could this have turned out any other way?

[StoneUSA]

I particularly enjoyed VDC's argument, basically: "Look, even if we were serving substandard food, you have to agree that guaranteeing quality from over 2000 kitchens is pretty much impossible anyway, so it's not really our fault!" The problem is that VDC can't make promises about its quality and pitch that to investors only to later argue that it was always unachievable but then argue that it was basically achieved because at least half of the customers who ordered food didn't complain. I mean that's what cooks call stupid food.

[AnimarchyHistory]

Former Macca's (McDonald's) worker here. There is a reason Macca's HQ has their own literal Gestapo that show up every couple months without warning to check your QC standards, use by dates and crew training standards. Say what you want about the hit or miss quality at McDonalds around the world. Down here in Australia at least, you will always get at least a 5/10 which goes up to an 8 if you're drunk. The idea that you can run a hospitality establishment without QC infrastructure is baffling

[hunterwyeth]

Can’t wait for this case to spawn a Supreme Court precedent and law students will have to memorize *Beast Burger*

[noddygarg]

This is a huge problem with ghost kitchen, lack of accountability, no standards, poor quality... This also happened with Sides from sidemen but they were able to recover as they were relatively small scale

[Ryan_DeWitt]

VDC is actually a huge company. They have almost a monopoly on the virtual restaurant business and are the actual company behind countless different restaurants.

[BerryTheBnnuy]

Having delivered Mr Beast Burgers, I can tell you why it's this way...

One of the places doing it I've delivered from was a Mexican restaurant. Another was an Italian restaurant, and on and on. Basically it's a bunch of restaurants specializing in things other than burgers, that don't serve burgers normally, and the chefs are trained on their own stuff by the head chef. Since there is no actual real Mr Beast Burger restaurant, there is no head chef to train and set a standard of quality control. And as someone who has been a head chef at 2 restaurants, I can tell you that it's pretty much an impossible thing. No store manager is going to let some corporate chef from a company they don't work for come in to their kitchen and tell them how to do things, and having two head chefs, their own and the ghost kitchen's teaching the staff is going to disrupt the kitchen. Not to mention the entire point to ghost kitchens of that sort is to not have to train anybody. You just give the contracted restaurants your recipes and they make it for customers.

[extrahistory]

I love that "Contract Law" graphic so much. Fly you beautiful fiery wings of legal verbiage, fly!

[odolowa]

I'm reminded of the situation with KFC and Colonel Sanders. Sanders eventually cut ties with the company and continually disparaged the quality of the product, eventually he stopped as part of an out of court settlement but it's held up as one of the great cautionary tales of tying your brand to a real person.

[MitchQuadrupleTree]

A big problem I've noticed with the whole "ghost kitchen" concept is that they contract the actual work out to pre-existing restaurants, all of which presumably have their own clientele to worry about serving. That is just adding even more work to an already overworked kitchen.

[russelljacob]

You made a verbal agreement with video documentation promising no more puns, then violated said commitment followed by a confession of lying about said statement.

I do not know if I can ever trust a lawyer again...

[bkucenski]

Contractors are notoriously unreliable. Reviews should relate to the specific ghost kitchen which produced the food the customer is reviewing. By rolling all reviews into the brand, it just removes accountability from individual kitchens, which is the goal. If you are getting your Beast Burger from an established company like Red Robin, you're probably going to have a perfectly decent product. But a number of trash kitchens also claim to sell the burger while producing trash instead.

Virtual Dining Concepts is a demon company that doesn't want to hold those kitchens accountable but also blocks people like Mr Beast from banning those kitchens from making his products if they don't meet quality guidelines.

[robloggia]

I think this just highlights the fact that a ghost kitchen has no benefit for the consumer. It's just the illusion of more restaurants in a given area.

[maikatase]

I think ghost kitchens are the real issue here. Seems like there's no way to guarantee food safety from a food inspection standpoint, and no way to guarantee food quality from a consumer standpoint. Hopefully there will be some legislation covering this type of business venture in the coming years.

[ignitionfrn]

1:05 - Chapter 1 - MrBeast complaint
4:00 - Chapter 2 - IP rights
4:40 - Chapter 3 - MrBeast legal claims
6:25 - Chapter 4 - VDC's countersuit
9:50 - Chapter 5 - VDC legal claims
10:50 - Chapter 6 - Did anyone materially breach the contract
12:50 - Chapter 7 - Damages
14:35 - End roll ads
PS: The eagle goes beast mode !

[theprecipiceofreason]

It's almost like having random strangers make food for you with little oversight was a dumb idea.

[smugboi_]

I cannot imagine the insanity the workers faced on the first day of that Mr. Beast burger in Jersey
I mean, the place literally just opened. For some of those employees that might be their first job or at least first fast food job. I cannot imagine. What a nightmare

[lukes]

Wow, VDCs countersuit is some fighting words. Its ine thing to argue that the food and contract details weren't followed to a high enough standard, it's another to say one party was just blowing meetings, blocking things they're suing over not happening, and straight up lied about being paid. Those are all pretty easily verifiable too ...

[bobafettjr]

I feel no sympathy for Mr. Beast or VDC. If you want your name on a product and you want that product to be good, then you should make the product yourself and control your business directly. The Mcdonald brothers didn't want to franchise specifically because it was so hard to control quality at every location. Ray Kroc found a way to enforce that quality control. Now McDonald's is everywhere.

If this were a simple endorsement deal then I could understand the tarnished reputation claims. But MrBeast specifically wanted it to be his product without putting the effort into creating a product.