James Donaldson, aka MrBeast aka that YouTuber who does weird charity videos aka that guy who sold me a terrible burger, is apparently visiting Walmarts and forcing employees to let him explore their storage areas and then making them restock his candy bars.
A little background before we jump in. MrBeast, one the most popular content creators in the world, has been expanding his empire beyond just creating videos with horrible thumbnails. One of his most recent side businesses is the successful MrBeast Bars, a line of chocolate candy bars that was initially only sold at Walmart. While the candy is now available at other places, a lot of MrBeast’s fans are going to Walmarts looking for his chocolate and, more recently, they’ve been finding empty shelves. Don’t worry, MrBeast is here to personally step in and force overworked, underpaid retail workers to do a better job stocking his candy.
On February 20, MrBeast posted an image of a stack of his candy bars supposedly sitting in the back area of an unspecified store. He explained that after fans had complained of his candy not being available at Walmarts and Targets, he had personally spent 15 hours visiting stores and “helping them.”
“This store was doing 0 sales and when I visited it had 0 product on shelf,” explained MrBeast. “I found these in the back room and had them scan them in. I placed them on the shelf. The store then started selling a bar an hour haha.”
Lots to unpack here. First is the fact that he didn’t just “find” these in Walmart or Target’s backrooms. Stock areas are reserved for employees and are not places you can freely visit. Now, he’s a popular star and the founder of the company, so I’m not surprised they let him back there, but it’s still weird to frame this as if Walmart’s staffers didn’t know the candy bars were back there at all until he went poking around.
It also sounds like a very bad day for those folks working at this store. MrBeast posted this image at 7:30 a.m. EST, the day after he said he spent 15 hours checking stores’ stock. Imagine coming in early for your shift or getting ready to clock out after hours of work at a place you hate and meeting MrBeast’s soulless eyes as he asks to go into your storage area and then makes you restock his candy bars RIGHT NOW! These places tend to have systems and schedules for this stuff. It’s not like Target wants to hold onto popular merchandise and never sell it.
Kotaku reached out to Walmart and Target for comment.
According to MrBeast—a man who once tricked his fans into doing free labor for him by asking them to fix up his candy bar displays—most products don’t have “velocities” like his chocolate does. So, you have to “stock the shelves more frequently” or they sit empty. He ends the thread by saying he’s learned a lot, which is funny. I think most people understand that popular products get restocked often, and when they aren’t, people can’t buy them right away. Seems pretty obvious!
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