Grammy-nominated hip-hop star Tyga is trying his hand at the restaurant franchise industry with his latest venture Tyga Bites. The California rapper has teamed up with restauranteur Robert Earl and his son Robbie to launch a chain of delivery-only, virtual restaurants. So far, the partnership has already produced 30 locations at underutilized kitchens across the U.S.
The “Taste” rapper kept the menu very tasteful, sticking to the strategy of simplification for his brand. The menu offers 8-piece, 16-piece and 32-piece oven-baked crispy chicken bites with a variety of dipping options, including the Spicy Honey, Korean BBQ, Bourbon, Mango Habanero, General Tso, Tamarind, Orange and Caribbean, just to name a few. The bites can be complemented with Tyga Tots or Sweet Potato Tyga Tots.
Conceptualized over a year ago, Tyga Bites is the latest celebrity-inspired restaurant in Earl’s Virtual Dining Concepts portfolio. He also has Wing Squad, which operates out of some Buca di Beppos across the nation.
As the chairman of Earl Enterprises, Earl idealized Virtual Additional Concepts, also known as VACs, where restaurants that have underutilized brick-and-mortars can make additional revenue by hosting a virtual restaurant and allowing it to use their kitchens and sell food through delivery platforms such as, GrubHub and Postmates.
Hosting restaurants only have the startup costs of purchasing the product and packaging. Then, all they have to do is pay a commission fee to the delivery platform.
Tyga Bites was able to successfully create a product that could be consistently duplicated across states without raising costs through the restructuring of already existing kitchens.
“In my estimation, there are 15,000-20,000 virtual brands in this country already, but they are single units. And that poor restaurateur is going to have to try to work out how to do packaging, social media and marketing, all for one or two units. I’m offering the opportunity to become part of a franchising system,” Earl said.
He continued, “I believe that five years from now a very large percentage of the independent restaurant community in this country will have a second brand that is not available to the people dining in their place and has no interrelationship to the building, except that they’re using the kitchen — This could be the solution to the downturn in the restaurant industry.”
Tyga Bites intends to have over 500 distribution outlets across the U.S. by the end of summer 2020.
