After announcing in June that he was “moving on from MrBeast Burger” in a series of now-deleted tweets, YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson is suing his virtual restaurant parent company, Virtual Dining Concepts for “material, irreparable harm” to his brand and reputation.
According to the lawsuit filed Monday with the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York, when Donaldson signed on with Orlando, Fla.-based ghost kitchen company, Virtual Dining Concepts in 2020 to launch his virtual burger brand, the company began focusing on rapid expansion and pitching the same business model to other celebrities instead of quality control.
Although MrBeast Burger is one of the largest and most recognizable virtual restaurant brands to come out of the pandemic, the lawsuit takes issue with the low-quality food — often delivered in unmarked and unbranded packaging — described by reviewers as “disgusting,” “inedible,” and “the worst burger I ever had.”
“Customers, food reviewers, and the press quickly began to call out (and continue to call out in great numbers) the significant problems with MrBeast Burger, commenting that the business’ concept and advertising was misleading, the products were low-quality, orders were consistently late, orders arrived in unbranded packaging, orders failed to include the ordered items, the website functioned improperly, and customers were denied legitimate requests for refunds,” the lawsuit reads, adding that as MrBeast is the most visible face of the business, he is the one that has received the brunt of customer complaints.
According to the lawsuit, Donaldson attempted to fix these quality control issues as soon as he learned about them many times but his requests “fell on deaf ears.”
He also claimed that the company posted his name, image, and brand on social media and registered various trademarks globally with his name on it without Donaldson’s express written consent and in violation of trademark law. Donaldson is seeking the legal right to terminate the MrBeast Burger business, and also seeks fiscal damages from the harm caused by Virtual Dining Concepts’ “multiple breaches” of contractual agreement, including alleged unpaid royalties and distributions.
In response, Virtual Dining Concepts has called the lawsuit a "misguided, bullying complaint" and stated that the pending litigation is "riddled with false statements" and is an attempt to distract from alleged breaches of contract between VDC and MrBeast, which includes accusations of false, disparaging remarks:
"To the detriment of approximately ten million happy MrBeast Burger customers, hundreds of restaurants, and their thousands of employees who make MrBeast Burger products daily, Mr. Donaldson recently attempted to negotiate a new deal to serve his own monetary interests," the statement from Virtual Dining Concept said. "When VDC refused to accede to his bullying tactics to give up more of the company to him, he filed this ill-advised and meritless lawsuit seeking to undermine the MrBeast Burger brand and terminate his existing contractual obligations without cause."
In a recent interview with Nation’s Restaurant News, Virtual Dining Concepts said that while they were able to “tick all of the boxes of reasons why people keep coming back” to MrBeast Burger, the “longevity of a [virtual] brand” had not yet been defined.
According to MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, MrBeast Burger made $100 million in revenue from its inception in December 2020 until July 2022, which worked out to (at the time) $1 per subscriber to his YouTube channel.
Contact Joanna Fantozzi at [email protected]