Supreme-Style Food Scarcity
Share
Sam Parr shares his analysis of how to create viral food sensations and run a successful pop-up food business.
"I broke down what makes food go viral into 5 categories:
- Taking a side dish and making it the main dish - like cookie dough ice cream or fondue-only restaurants
- Changing the shape to something ridiculous
- Playing with sizing - making something really big or really small
- Changing colors - like rainbow bagels or green ketchup
- Creating mashups - like the cronut or Doritos Locos tacos
The business model would be: You set up a small shop in Brooklyn or Manhattan, create these viral sensations using one of these formulas, get distribution through social media, and create artificial lines. You run each concept for about 3 months, then shut it down and switch to something new.
For the concepts that become huge hits, like the cronut, those become your permanent franchises. But mostly you're just constantly launching new viral sensations, season after season. It's completely formulaic - you're basically Supreme for food, doing limited edition drops that create buzz and lines, which the media covers, and it becomes a thing in hipster towns."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.